he task is to get an estimate (to an accuracy of about 10%) the total length of data cables in a building (with perhaps a subdivision in types, floors, …). The cables aren’t drawn in Revit to save time. The cable trays are drawn though. The traditional way of getting the information is to print floor plans in a good scale, take a ruler, measure all cables (where they are expected to lie) and do the math with a calculator.
At first sight that wouldn’t be faster to do on computer, but there must be a way.
Here is an example with part of a building floor :
There are single and double wired data connection points that have a hight above the floor (a property). There are cable trays that are just under the ceiling. There are wireless connection points (not shown) on the ceiling. There is a gather point that is either a server room or a shaft that leads to another floor.
How could one get such an estimate efficiently in Revit ?
One way to proceed to get the cable length on a single floor that is simple, but may not be accurate enough, is to get the distance in a straight line from each connector to the gather point and multiply with a correction factor to account for detours. Height difference between the connection points and the ceiling must also be added. That is simple provided Revit can provide the distance of each element from a category to the gather point. Is that an idea that could work ?
Does anyone have other ideas ?
