How to retrieve the orientation of windows ?

[Angayo]

The orientation of windows is important for the heating and cooling of the building.

I can make a schedule with several parameters of windows, but I don’t see an orientation parameter. Cheking the orientation of each window individually would be a lot of work. Less slow would be to add a the parameter orientation to windows, type it in for each window (based on the wall it is in) and then add that parameter to the schedule. Perhaps faster is to create a plan view that shows only and all windows and start from there, perhaps by continuing with the previous.

 

However, is there an efficient way of getting the orientation ?

Inclined windows are more complicated, but there are few of those.

I am holding off on trying the plugin suggested in forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-architecture-forum/revit-architecture-2015-wall-openings-area-amp-orien... as at first sight it doesn’t appear to do what I want.

[ToanDN]

Create exterior Rooms and name them NSEW, add the Room name to the Window schedule using the From: Room or To: Room parameter.

[Angayo]

Thanks for the advice. I proceded as follows :

• I added the fields From Room: Name and To Room: Name to my schedule
• In each view where I intend to measure orientation I set in Properties palette --> Graphics --> Orientation to True North. (Based on ‘Rotate a View to True North’ in the help, that also said to set the position to True North in Manage --> Project Location --> Position, which I didn’t do.)
• I drew external rooms using room separators to each external wall that might have windows, one room per wall.
• For my first exterior room in the Properties Palette --> Identity Data --> Department I typed in a new department to identify it as external. That department is thus added to the list of choices.
• For some rooms I measured the orientation of the walls and included it in the room name. Later I didn’t need to measure anymore due to most walls being at easy angles to one another.
• I tried to resolve the problem of external windows that didn’t seem to connect to an external room. In hindsight, this step is not important. There is an easier way to find the orientation of recalcitrant windows (see later).
• I exported the shedule as a text file and opened it in Excel. I had two columns where for most windows one of them had a name containing an orientation. This can probably be improved by just typing a number like ‘-45’ for a -45° orientation iso a name like ‘exterior -45°’.
• I created an orientation column and typed over the orientation from one of the other columns where it was available.
• Some windows that are not interior have not acquired an orientation. On the Modify Schedule/Quantities tab (which can be made to appear by going to a different view and then returning to the schedule) on the right there is a Highlight in Model button which worked quite well.
• Being already familiar with te orientation of the walls, I typed in the orientation in my orientation spreadsheet column.

On the whole this was still a lot of work. I am disappointed to have to draw all those rooms when window or wall orientation is something revit should be able to retrieve. The other solutions I suggested in post 1, that I haven’t tried, may sometimes be less slow.