Rooms, Room Tags, & Oprions

[Anonymous]

I have been working on a project and everything was complete.  Now the client wants an option with all of the rooms mirrored as a second option - One with an elevator on the right, and one with it on the left.  I created the option set, added another option, added all of the walls, doors, windows, floors, rooms and tags, etc, etc, to both of the options.

So far:  Option 1 has all of the original layout of rooms, walls, etc.

I now switch to Option 2 and mirror (in place - no copy) all of the rooms, walls, etc.  I get all sorts of errors and warning about multiple rooms in the same place.  Sigh.  I tried a bunch of things.  Bigger sigh. 

I then tried deleting the main room and adding it back in.  The boundary of the new room reflects the original wall locations, not the ones that are actually visible in this design option.  WTH???

So then, having been a software developer for many years, and knowing what is required to actually work on bugs in a system I created a new project with four walls 16' x 20' and created a smaller room inside this on the right, say 6' x 8'.  Create an option set, and a second option, and add all 6 walls to both options.  Now, create a room in the larger area and another one in the smaller area on the right.  So far so good.  All done in Option 1.

Switch to Option 2.  Mirror the two walls defining the smaller room to place it on the left.  Add the same two rooms (they will get different numbers).

NOW, try making Option 2 Primary - basically, all hell breaks loose - nothing is what it should be.  If you mirror the actual rooms it gets even stranger.

SOOOOO, how do you make an option like this.  I am attaching a picture showing the result of making Option 2 Primary.  I duplicated the original layout on the right so that both Option 1 (right) and Option 2 (left) could be seen together.

Thanks, Jan (jyodak)

[semko_dm]

Hi Jan!
You should use "Add to Set" tool, to add your rooms to different options. When you copy, revit creating new room with new number. With "Add to Set" revit uses just the same room in different options.

If it's not clear enough, I can record a screencast later.

If my post answers your question, please click the "Accept as Solution" button. This helps everyone find answers more quickly!

Kind regards,
Dmitriy Semko.

[FGPerraudin]

Hi Eric.

There are two main issues in your description, both that you can adress very easily.

1. You need to add your rooms to your option. What happens is that you added rooms to your option 2, but the original ones are still in the main model. The result is that when you activate option one, only the main model rooms show -> it works. When you display option 2, the rooms in the main model AND the rooms in option 2 display -> you have both in the same enclosed regions... Select the rooms in the main model and assign them to option 1 as described above.
2. Tags are view specific and therefore cannot be assigned to an option. The is only one solution there: assign the option to the view. It assumes that you create one view per option, but it is the cleanest way. In order to sdo that, duplicate your original view, and then in the Visibility/graphics properties, go to the last tab (options) and pick the option you want to display. As the view will be option specific, you will have not problem / option conflict with annotations anymore. On top of that, the views that are option specific will be deleted with the validatioon of the main option, which makes your project cleaner and easier to manage.

Hope this helps,

Cheers,

François

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Note the UPDATE below:

Thanks Francois for your response. It does not solve my problem, because the problem is not with how I define my objects, but the way that Revit deals with things when making an option Primary. All is fine as long as I do not make the second option Primary. So I am not sure how to proceed. I will probably have to make a second RVT file for the mirrored option, assuming that the client will not go with it, but this completely violates the "single model" concept and the very idea of Option Sets. The Revit Help system only states the obvious and is NO HELP with anything it does not already assume that we know. When I was writing help systems, the whole point was to help users understand not only what the feature was intended to do, but how. If there were limitations or work arounds it was best to spell them out.

So, to reiterate: Adding rooms to options works, until you make a second option Primary. Even trying to add the rooms AFTER making the option Primary does not work as expected. The boundary for the room uses positional data from the other option, at least it does in my real model.

The idea of using separate views for the tags, while it sounds like it would/will work, seems inherently flawed, though I just found that I can set which Option to show under Visbility/Graphics Override, under the Design Options Tab which I had never seen before - that helps.

UPDATE: It turns out that there were Room Separation Lines that were not being mirrored (why not,since I thought I was selecting everything), and were almost invisible because there were coincident with a wall. The problem that led me to using these lines, and thereby leading to other issues was that I was using a (Door) Opening to visually break a wall to create an alcove because I wanted the header to carry over, and that is how it would be built as well, so I was modeling a real world situation. However, the "room" was to extend into and through that opening. Others have been wondering why doors cannot be used as room division elements, and here is a good reason why it is a good idea - if the door (opening) was a room dividing element, and I could turn off that attribute (make it NOT room dividing), then all (or at least much) of my issues would have never been an issue.

Once I put the Room Separation Lines in the correct places, my room creation problems disappeared, and using the separate view trick with Design Options allows me to explore both options visually at the same time. I win!

[Anonymous]

Thanks Dimitry. I was attempting to do just that.  Other issues were at play.  See further discussion in this thread.