Rooms, Space, zones or another suggestion to group equipment

[khaeid]

Hello, 

In a large project we are working on, we have hundereds of rooms from a linked model.

In these rooms have family instances of Electrical Equipment families in them in the local host model.

These rooms should be grouped in ZONES (or spaces or any other suggestion)

The name and number of ROOM and the name of the ZONE should both show in Family parameters, and in Schedule.

How to achieve this?

1- The Name/No of rooms from linked model are shown automatically in Location Parameter in the family

2- When we draw a larger Space to contain group of rooms, the Location Parameter shows the Space information instead of Room information.

3- A solution was to export the rooms to the model with rooms (Or remove spaces) - use Dynamo script to write the room information to dedicated Family Parameters, then after that introduce the Spaces and write that to other parameters, (But this is lots of work, as the project is large, and doing so each time for the whole project may need a full week of work, and the room geometry keep changing from architectures)

4- We tried Zones, but they do not show neither in Parameters nor in Dynamo.

5- We are open to suggestions of changing the Family type from electrical to other if needed,

6- If there is a suggestion for a type of Areas that can be read in Dynamo and would not affect Location Parameter Room info, it would be great.

7- Perfect solution would be to have Location Parameter to show the room info from linked model. While Zones (or other thing) drew in local model,  to be either automatically shown in a Paramter, or to be written using dynamo script.

Thank you 

[RDAOU]

@khaeid 

The Space from the Host will override the Room from both the link and the host if it resides therein. Spaces can be added to Zones while rooms can't so use that to your advantage. The question is whether you have specific criteria based on which you want to group or zone those spaces.

Aside from that, the Dynamo graph for what you’re asking is simple. The one below collects family instances based on rooms from the link, then sets the Room Name and Room Number into a custom location parameters. This should suffic if you do not wish to create spaces

Nonetheless, the graph below also creates a Space in the Host model for each Room in the link with the same name and number of each room. (ie: the built in Location parameter will populate as desired). You can then

• either group those Spaces into Zones manually
• or extend the graph below to automate that and add the spaces to a zone (if you have criteria you can use such as department/occupancy/function...etc). A short Python can do that or use a package such as MEPover which has some nodes for managing Zones

[RLY_15]

My limited understanding of the Location parameter is that it's

A. Exclusive to Electrical Equipment category,

B. Prioritizes the host model definitions over linked model definitions, and

C. Prioritizes Space definitions over Room definitions (you can test by putting both into a common model).

With this behavior in mind, if you want to carry both Space and Zone information through in each Electrical Equipment family, you'll likely need to push that manually via Dynamo using some location checking logic for the Zone. If you're using HVAC Zones, even if the Zone geometry itself isn't available, you can get there using the union of the associated Space geometries.

Generally speaking, Space and Room naming/numbering conventions would be similar, except where there's deviations due to discrepancies in the definition (maybe a Room is carrying too many occupancies and you would use space separators to split it up), so unless you're using Space name/number convention to carry wholly different data I don't think that would be a negative impact to your continued use of the Location parameter. But unfortunately, Zone updates will need to be done manually through Dynamo or Add-In.

[khaeid]

I tried doing this with different nodes, it worked, but as I mentioned, it took 5 hours to do it, and the rooms are changing from linked plan continuously, so would not be practical to do so every day for 20 different models

[khaeid]

Yes true, I believe leaving Location to show the linked model rooms is more practical, as the rooms are changing continuoustly in the linked model from the designers, and getting these room information takes hours each time, so Location Prameter will be more helpful in this.

Zones that we designs on our model are more stable and larger, as a zone will contain large area of different rooms, so it would be practical to have it as a Zone not affecting the Location Parameter, beside pushing the information will be much faster, and less frequently needed.

My issue is that I was unable to get these Zones information to be written in my Family Parameter with Dynamo.

I believe I should get the geometry, convert to space temporarily and push the Zone name in the Prameter.

I tried HVAC Zone, Analytical Zone, Electrical Zone.

You mentioned Add-In, is there one for this? or a starting point for the Dynamo script? or a helpful link

[RLY_15]

I'm not familiar with an add-in that would align to this, but wouldn't doubt one exists.

I'm admittedly concerned that the rooms would be modified that frequently in a way that breaks any original associations, but I understand that you can't really control what other designers are doing.

As for guidance on Dynamo, the method depends on how you're creating Zones. If they're actually HVAC Zone category, which you would have generated from creating Spaces in the host model, you can get the Geometry of that collection and compare it against the location of the Electrical Equipment, so you would compare a list of Solids corresponding to the Zones against a list of Points corresponding to the Equipment. The downside to doing this is what I mentioned prior, that your host model Spaces are going to override the Location parameter, so that would necessitate using the Room:Name and Room:Number parameters instead in schedules, or manually pushing those values into the Electrical Equipment as well.

If you have a different method to generate Zones specific to your workflow, then that bypasses the Location problem but may change how you do the geometry comparison.

[khaeid]

Yes, we cannot control the designers, and it is Mega project, so somehow impossible to do everything manulally.

There are Zones created by the designers, we need to get their name into a dedicated parameter in the electrical family.

We need to create our own Zones for other purposes, these need to be written to another dedicated parameters in the same electrical family.

plus the usual room information which we will always see in the Location parameter (which should not be overwritten)

I did not check yet the type of Zones created by the designers in the linked model.

We are open to use any type of Zones to create in our host model.

I am thinking of using dynamo to push the designer zones in linked model and our zones to the family paramters.

So the creation of the solids representing the zones would be temporary to get the information to the family, and then these solids should be removed, keeping the information of zones in the equipment parameters, and the rooms information in the Location parameter.

My issue is I cannot find a workflow to create this solid from a zone

[khaeid]

I am looking at the script you provided, 

Is there a way to create spaces in host by Zones in linked model? (or by Zones in local model)

[navya_gelli]

Hi @khaeid,

I wanted to check in and see if you still needed assistance, or if you found a solution to your question already? Let us know if you need further assistance by providing an update or if you have found a solution, please share it with the community so other members who may have the same question could learn from your experience.

All the best,

Navya | Community Manager

[khaeid]

I am still looking for solution.

I am working on an idea to draw AREAs on the host model, and then build a script to convert these areas to rooms, push these new rooms names to family parameters, and delete these rooms.

so AREAS on host represent our needed zones.

and we still have the Location parameter showing linked model rooms

Not there yet, still working, and facing some issues I am solving at a time