Rooms placed, but not visible (or accessible) in some plan views

[dan_fluegeman]

I am working in a model where several rooms have been placed, but the schedule shows them as not enclosed.  There is one plan view where they are visible and can be selected, but I cannot access or select these rooms in order to place them in properly enclosed spaces.  Since the rooms already exist, I don't want to duplicate them - this model is large enough (380 MB) already.  Have checked all the obvious  things - phasing, visibility graphics, reveal hidden elements, etc. - but don't understand why the rooms that are already there can't be selected and properly placed.

[ToanDN · Accepted solution]

Do you have any finish floor above the Level and set to Room Bounding? Can you select the non-enclosed room rows in the schedule and highlight in model?

[RobDraw · Accepted solution]

If it's only a couple rooms, I'd just delete them and create new.

[dan_fluegeman · Accepted solution]

Looks like the answer is a combination of your suggestions.  An investigation of the model (which we received from the firm that did the schematic design, revealed numerous compound ceiling objects being used as floors, and were located 1/4" above the floor level. Because of this, the rooms were, as you guessed only 1/4" high and were trapped below these "floors".  But, this was only part of the problem.  When we received the model, there were only two phases:  Existing and New Construction (the defaults).  Due to the size and nature of this project, I added seven new phases of New Construction, and changed the phase of the building components accordingly.  This created the issue of rooms being listed as "Not Enclosed", as there is no way to change a room from the phase it's placed in to a different phase (the parameter is read-only).  So, while the bounding objects for these rooms went to phases 2-7, the rooms all stayed in phase 1.  In hindsight, if I had inserted all my new phases before the default New Construction phase, this may not have happened, since the phase in which the rooms were placed occurred after the bounding objects were created.  As it is, I took the advice of the second responder and just inserted new rooms into the model.

At this point, I am considering this problem solved.

[SteveKStafford]

Some people like using ceilings for floor finishes because the Auto-Ceiling placement option is fast. When they do that they do need to remember to make them not room bounding. That's true for floors that are used for finish only too though.

A room can be Cut to clipboard and Paste Aligned into a view assigned to a different phase to move it to another phase. It can also be Copied to Clipboard to add it to another phase, for example if the room lives on into future phases it would need to be copied into all of those phases too, using a view assigned to each phase to do it.

[dan_fluegeman]

Thanks, Steve, I appreciate your reply.

I admit that I didn't think about the Automatic Ceiling option being a
reason why ceilings were being used instead of floors. My concern would be
if you are scheduling floors, and have a mix of floor objects and ceiling
objects representing floors, how do you get them in the same schedule?
Multi-category schedules? One of my colleagues tells me that floors aren't
typically scheduled, but if you're using the model to do a material
take-off, you have to do one for floors and one for ceilings.

I don't know - maybe I'm overthinking it. Again, thanks for the info on
this subject and about the rooms as well.

[SteveKStafford]

Filters do wonders for hacking categories so they bend to our will.

I generally advise clients to use floors for floor finishes apart from the structural slab, instead of using Filled Regions to apply hatching which unfortunately is quite common. That way the structural discipline can own that and the arch/int team can place finishes for their own scope more easily. Filtering something as simple as careful Type Naming can separate them from each other in a schedule. They do need to shift them up by their material thickness and turn off room bounding to play nice with other disciplines.

A ceiling and floor are not substantially different (as a form within the software) apart from their category and our own expectations when we talk/deal with them. Where a floor grows down from a level a ceiling (like a Roof) grows up from their level relationship so it sits on the level (assuming they are placed at zero elevation). The user doesn't have to sketch the ceiling (assuming Auto-Ceiling works) or adjust for its thickness, when hacking ceilings for floors instead.

Most people would be surprised to find ceilings on the floor though. 🙂  It happens...out there in the wild frontier of Revit.