Label Existing Rooms in Demo Plan: A Best Practice Guide

[ouspensky]

Here is a best practice for placing room labels of the existing rooms in a demo plan.  My hack is based on the thesis that existing room names are "survey data" i.e. they will not change during the design.

1. Create a label generator view:  everything off except walls, rooms, room tags, and generic annotations

2. Phase = Existing Phase Filter = Show All

3. Insert a the generic annotation family Room Tag Existing.rfa

4. Run the attached dynamo script (adjust or modify as necessary, its very basic)

5. using FILTER create a saved selection set of the Room Labels

6. Copy and Paste to Same Location between the label generator view and the Demolition view

[SteveKStafford]

Alternatively, using steps 1-3, then place the "label generator view", with room tags on existing rooms, on a sheet "over/overlaid" the demolition view. Repeat for each floor/level of the building.

[Anonymous]

The two viewports makes it too difficult to adjust label positions around other annotation objects.  it does not work well in real world architecture business

[SteveKStafford]

Some might argue that deploying dynamo graphs on an ongoing basis across multiple versions and offices in the real world isn't easy either. My approach doesn't require any new skills or tech and its proven itself in the real world for a very long time now.

I'm not knocking your ingenuity or providing another way. Not everyone using Revit is savvy enough to cope with adding Dynamo to their workflow. I support a wide variety of people...in the real world too.

...and...Revit could stand to revisit how rooms behave in the model world versus the real one.

[Anonymous]

I think you are right.  As simple as the graph is, it should be transferred to pyrevit as a button on the toolbar "4D room labels" or something like that.  That feels like a more permenant solution.

[Charles.Ball]

IMAGINiT Utilities has a "Room Phase Copy" tool that duplicates rooms into the same location in an alternate phase. 

[Louis_Sullivan]

Is ImagineIT Utility free?  b/c the OPs dynamo solution is freeware

[rmircsov]

it's things like this issue is what gives Revit a bad name. Having two view ports overlapping is just a bad idea all around. The drafting / modeling should be done in the view not on the sheet. Working from the sheet is not a good practice since it is easy to mess up things like placing notes on the sheet and not in the view. It seems like there is a disconnect between the designers of Revit and the designers who use Revit. 

[RSomppi]

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@rmircsov wrote:

It seems like there is a disconnect between the designers of Revit and the designers who use Revit. 

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It goes way beyond that. Designers who use Revit have many different ways of accomplishing the same goal. Of which there are two types. Those that resist change and think the program should conform to their needs and go on to blame the program for not being able to do what they want in the way that they want. And then there are those that can adapt and modify their workflows so they can get what they need. 

[SteveKStafford]

FWIW, overlapping views is not "bad"... consider "we" used to create entire document sets with overlaid mylar drawings in the "olden days". We referred to it as pin bar drafting. One mylar sheet had the title block, another the architectural plan, and for trade specific work they'd use the architecture mylar and drop their work over that and the title block sheet. So the concept predates computers. Might as well mention that using Xrefs or linked models (and layers for that matter) is just another form of overlay. I've never understood the negative reaction to put more than one view on a sheet, probably never will.

[ToanDN]

Now you can show existing rooms in demolition plan by using view filters, not phase filter graphic overrides.

[kkhanP6GED]

Please explain how it works.

[RLY_15]

The method requires some buy-in from other users on the project since it may not be considered a standard workflow.

You're able to create view filters that reference Phase Created / Phase Demolished for elements that can have those parameters. Notably, Room/Spaces do not have those parameters and can't be filtered....but almost every modellable element does.

View Filter graphics settings have a higher priority on the hierarchy than Phase Filter graphics settings: https://help.autodesk.com/view/RVT/2024/ENU/?guid=GUID-67D3D6DB-E78D-4711-B9C3-4D30F1C22205

So, create a View Filter referencing every modellable category, where Phase Demolished equals a specific Phase of the Project (New Construction). If you have multiple construction phases in which demolition occurs, you need View Filters corresponding to each of those phases (Phase 1/2/3/....n)

When you go to create a demolition floor plan, you are not going to make it the New Construction phase/Phase1/Phase2, etc. with 'Previous + Demo' Phase Filter.

Instead, use the Existing Phase, with 'Previous + New' Phase filter. Then, add the View Filter you made.

The floor plan is set up for Existing Phase (thereby showing Rooms/Room Tags, since those can currently only be displayed in the phase they exist in), but the View Filter provides the demolition line overrides on the modelled elements.

• This, for better or for worse, bypasses Revit's built-in phase filter management for Views.
• This, for better or for worse, bypasses Revit's Phase Filter graphics settings.

Up to you if this method is preferable to overlaying floor plans, or a Dynamo workflow, or any other method.

You will need to update this filter system for new projects based on phase criteria.

You will also need to update this filter system for new versions of Revit when new Family Categories are added. Or not, depending on how quickly those new Categories are adapted into workflows.