Revit and fire safety in buildings

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I would like to use Revit to work with fire safety in my future projects.

Some of the points I am mostly interested in:

1. Walls - different fire resistances (30, 90, 120 minutes, combustible, non-combustible)

2. Doors - different kinds of fire doors

3. Areas - ability to easily mark specific areas such as emergency routes

4. Legend - I need a legend with all associated symbols

5. The symbols of doors should be put on the plan as well

In the attachment you can find the plan which illustrates what I want to achieve. I apologize since it in German.

My first though was to use Families to create all possible things I could use. Beside that, I would like to have opportunity to change the existing walls and convert them from regular walls to walls which have fire resistance. For example, if architect sends me a Revit project, I would like to be able to change certain things, and use this plan as basis for my fire safety design.

Thank you!

[barthbradley]

Gruß

I’m not sure what your question is, or what your workflow is. How is the Architectural Model brought into your Project? Are you Linking it in, or Work Sharing it in, or are you just opening and working within a copy of  Architect’s project? 

Regarding the things you want to be able to do: it seems very typical and doable. 

[ToanDN]

@Anonymous

What you listed and showed can be done in Revit quite straight forwardly and (relatively) easily.  When you start working with Revit just post specific questions and we are glad to help you along.

[chrisplyler]

You can make a "fire rating" parameter for walls, create different wall Types reflecting the different fire ratings, make view filters which identify that parameter, apply those filters to your views, and override the walls' cut fills and cut patterns. In that way you can get all 1-hr walls to display one way, get 2-hr walls to display a different way, etc.

Heck, you could do the same for doors too.

That's just the easiest way I can think of to get you going.

[Anonymous]

The model is based on Work Sharing principle. Architects and civil engineers are already working together on the same model, and we should jump in as well.

1. Basically, I am not allowed to change anything, just to add certain properties (for example, there is a standard wall, I need to make it also firewall, or there is a normal door, but I have to make it fire door etc.)

2. I should be able to produce at the end fire safety plans, which means that only the things related to fire safety should be presented there (for example, colors of different fire resistance walls in ground planes or annotations for different fire doors). In other words, I am not interested in showing concrete material of walls in a ground floor plan, but simple color which represent the fire wall.

3. Since we already use AutoCAD in our office, is it possible to use the same print layout from AutoCAD (headings, symbols, legend etc.) and import it in Revit? This way all the plans would look similar, no matter in what program they are made.

The biggest thing for me is not to collide or change something that somebody other did, but just to add the fire safety parameters and present them correctly.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

The model is based on Work Sharing principle. Architects and civil engineers are already working together on the same model, and we should jump in as well.

1. Basically, I am not allowed to change anything, just to add certain properties (for example, there is a standard wall, I need to make it also firewall, or there is a normal door, but I have to make it fire door etc.)

2. I should be able to produce at the end fire safety plans, which means that only the things related to fire safety should be presented there (for example, colors of different fire resistance walls in ground planes or annotations for different fire doors). In other words, I am not interested in showing concrete material of walls in a ground floor plan, but simple color which represent the fire wall.

3. Since we already use AutoCAD in our office, is it possible to use the same print layout from AutoCAD (headings, symbols, legend etc.) and import it in Revit? This way all the plans would look similar, no matter in what program they are made.

The biggest thing for me is not to collide or change something that somebody other did, but just to add the fire safety parameters and present them correctly.

---

1. You should refer to @chrisplyler's answer, as that is the easiest (and most commenly used?) way of identifying and displaying fire demands on specific views. Essentially the workflow is: Adding a "Fire Rating" parameter for the family types you want to work with -> Create a filter which selects these family types based on your parameter -> Create views which then utilizes your filter in V/G to create the plans you need. 

2. Will be solved with 1.

3. This can be done, but is a little bit tricky. I believe this article might help you: http://archsmarter.com/autocad-to-revit/

[ToanDN]

Revit really shines come to creating Fire Safety plans.  Below are a couple of tutorial on View Filtering:

http://www.bim-manager.net/2013/08/parameters-part-2.html

[Anonymous]

Thank you very much for the useful link and video tutorial. So far I managed to work with walls and doors. I am able to present them correctly using the Filters.

1. However, I do have a little problem with the annotation of doors. It works fine, but only by creating a new family for the door annotation. The family has a few Types: number, dimensions, surface etc. I would like to create a new Type called Fire Resistance and it should information about fire resistance of my doors. Other types I would like to turn off and have only Fire resistance of my door.

2. The second problem is related to the surfaces which I would like to use to mark for example evacuation corridors. So, my idea was to do the same thing as for the walls and doors. I created new parameter called Fire resistance, created new Room and put EC (evacuation corridor) in the later parameter, applied filters (when the parameter is EC, mark the whole room blue color). However, nothing happened and the room is there, but it is not marked at all.

[chrisplyler]

To use ROOMS to denote fire rated corridors and such, and to have a Room Tag which displays that fire rating, you will need the following:

1. Create a Shared Parameter (must be Shared type to allow Tags to display the value) of the Text Data Type called Fire Rating that is applied to Rooms.

2. Select all Rooms needing a 1-hr rating and enter the Fire Rating value of 1-hr. Select all Rooms needing a 2-hr rating and enter the Fire Rating value of 2-hr. Etc.

3. Create a Color Scheme for Rooms called Fire Rating. Establish rows for the values 1-hr and 2-hr etc.

4. In the Plan View, apply the Fire Rating color scheme you've created for Rooms. Rooms should display in color according to the value entered in their Fire Protection parameter and the Color Scheme rows you created to match those values.

5. Edit the family for your Room Tag. Edit the label to include the Fire Rating parameter value, or create another label underneath to include it. Save-As a family with a new, unique name, such as Room Tag Fire.rfa or similar. Load this new tag family into the project.

6. Select the room tags you desire and in the Type Selector choose your new family. Selected tags should change to display with the rooms' Fire Rating values.

[chrisplyler]

And you can create a Shared Parameter for Doors called Fire Rating also. You can make it a Type parameter and create new door types with various fire rating values, or you can make it an instance parameter and just enter the required value where necessary for individual doors of any type. Then edit your Door Tag similarly, save it with a new name, and tag your doors with it so that they can display their fire rating. Also can make a filter to change their display characteristics according to their fire rating value.

[ToanDN]

There is Fire Rating parameter for Door category already. Just make a copy
of the door tag family and add that label.

[ToanDN]

There is Fire Rating parameter for Door category already. Just make a copy
of the door tag family and add that label.

[chrisplyler]

ToanDN,

At first I thought you were trigger happy this morning with your double replies. But then I realized ALL your posts are getting doubled today. What's up?

[ToanDN]

That's because I replied from mobile. It's a known bug of this site.

[Anonymous]

I actually need only colors for different rooms, nothing more. I do not need room tags, and I do not want to modify existing ones created by architects. Although I followed the steps you wrote down, I could not get the results after 4th step. Color scheme did not work.

However, I did create Shared Parameter, applied it to Rooms, and directly worked with Filters as described in this tutorials: http://www.bim-manager.net/2013/08/revit-parameters-part-1.html and http://www.bim-manager.net/2013/08/parameters-part-2.html. I was able to change the outside lines of rooms, but it is not possible to change the color of the surface in ground floor (Revit would not allow this, the option is blended). I know that the thing works, since the color of outside lines changes with the Filter settings I mentioned earlier.

[Anonymous]

The first step for the fire doors I already did and I am able to put in what kind of door I need. What I really want is to change the family of door tags, in order to incorporate one new element - Fire Rating. I do not want to produce new family, if it is not completely necessary. This way, I would able to hide all other parameters in the tag (Dimensions, Number, Surface etc). and display only the information I need (Fire Rating). I managed to open the tag family, but I was not able to understand how I can incorporate another element in Groups-Details.

[chrisplyler]

Step #4 above...this is to apply the color scheme you created to the view. You have to look for the Color Scheme parameter for the View in the Properties Palette, and change it's value from <none> to the name of the Color Scheme you created.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for the tutorial, I managed to follow it now. I could not figure how to apply the Color Scheme to the plan, now I know. However, I do have another problem which has to do something with the Rooms. For example, in the screenshot I put Room in the stairwell. The red color (which I choose for the emergency route) is shown only in part there the stairs are. In the room nearby, I was not able to get the red color. It seems that either I can not put Room properly, or it is not visible in the plan at all.

[ToanDN]

Change the color scheme to Foreground in the View's properties and/or the Stair category to 100% transparent from VG.

[Anonymous]

Thanks, I tried it and it works. The only problem I encounter now is that the Room area reaches the middle of the wall, which is not what I want to have. So, the red color which represents the evacuation corridor finds itself on the walls as well. I tried to play with the option in Room Area Boundary Location, but it is already set to Wall finish (other options I tried did not change anything). See the attachment.