Paint applied in family editor shows incorrect material area in schedule

[james.levieux]

Hi All,

I made a mistake and drew the framing for this bench in the family editor, then later realized I couldn't schedule the framing members. So, instead of redrawing it, I decided I could try to paint one face on each member then use the known thickness of the member to extrapolate the length. It appeared to work perfectly except the numbers looked off so I did some checking and, yeah, it's way off.

The perimeter facia sweep length is around 66' (792"). The reported area is 11049 sq in. (the red color). The area should report 792" x 1.5" = 1188 sq in.

The (8) 6x12 structural column posts are 18" high (the green color). The total paint area should report 18" x 8 x 5.25" = 756 sq in

Am I missing something, or does this simply not work?

James

[barthbradley]

post the project containing the family and schedule

[james.levieux]

Hi Barth,

Thanks for looking at this.  I created a new clean project and added the family and the schedule.  Same results.

[barthbradley]

You didn't Paint the Material Parameter on the Face.  You need to pick a Material that has the "(param)" designator. First you need to create a Material Parameter to Paint with. The Parent Family has one, but the Nested Structural Framing Family has none.  

[barthbradley]

[james.levieux]

Thanks again for looking at this.

I think maybe your numbers aren't right either. The pink still seems way too high.  The posts only account for about 1sf of area per post.  I'm expecting the pink color to be about half the orange color (excluding the posts).  Notice that the orange has a perimeter that is only a bit smaller than the pink perimeter.  the extra orange cross members should make the orange area roughly 2x the pink area.

Regards,

j

[james.levieux]

Sadly, Barth is correct and this issue is also confirmed per this post: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-architecture-forum/paint-on-sweep-area-problem/m-p/6374784#M119...

The bug reports the entire surface area of the geometry (instead of just the painted surface) if the material of the unpainted geometry is "By Category" (usually the default!) AND the material assigned to the category in Object Styles is blank (the default).  If you change these values to any other random material, the paint area numbers are corrected.  This issue/bug applies to other geometry forms and not just sweeps.  No wonder building construction costs through the roof these days!!!  This really needs to get fixed.  Super dangerous.  

Until then, I've found it's possible to simply assign a material in Object Styles.  You can assign the material "Default" to every category that you might paint.  Unfortunately, This might not work if you have assigned your geometry to a sub-category, so you'd have to assign a material to that subcategory too. Lastly, I have no idea how this might affect performance, but I suspect that's the reason why the "bug" is still and "issue".

 

 

 

[barthbradley]

Huh? If there is no Material assigned to the Category under Object Styles and BY CATEGORY is used, then there is no Material to "count" in an MTO. 

...have you noticed this button before?  It literally says: "No Material".  

[barthbradley · Accepted solution]

Just an FYI, FWIW: Object Style default settings come from the Template (RTE). You can change that.  Open a New Project based on some Template, assign a default Material to all the Object Style Categories, such as "Default", and then save the Project as a Template (RTE).  Bada Bing!  Use that Template to create another New Project and see that all the Object Style Categories are using a default Material. 

[james.levieux]

Hi Barth,

Oh yeah, I'm def going to add default materials to my template (after I test that it doesn't blow performance)

In my post I do address that adding a material to Object Styles will correct the bug, but that's not enough.  It's the type of problem that NOBODY would ever know about until they try it and notice mistakes.  There are like three articles like this on the entire internet so nobody is ever going to stumble onto our sage advice unless they notice their numbers are fishy.  It's too scary for words.

Here's my post on Revit Ideas:

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/warning-when-painting-geometry-that-has-no-base-material-...

James