show existing rooms in "show previous and demo" phase

[Anonymous]

Can you please address why new rooms show up in lieu of existing rooms when"show previous and demo" are set for the phase filter?  Every single other existing element including doors, walls, windows, etc. show in the "show previous and demo" phase filter with the exception of rooms. Thank you.

[MKFreiert]

mastjaso

it seems that there are some things you don't understand about revit, and that's fine, it's what this forum is here for. to learn about your tools and how they work.  we all learn from each other.  

being willing to understand how the tools behave is critical to working with them, rather than blaming the tool.  if some of these "impossible" things were easy to implement they would be built in. i've *repeatedly* explained why this particular item is NOT simple (or necessary), and i'm not even a programmer or data base admin, but i've learned enough about how revit works to understand why some stuff isn't feasible, easy, or in this case actually very desirable.  

that understanding also helps troubleshoot problems my users have, and helps me to understand unexpected behavior within projects.  it's kinda like knowing how your opponent usually plays in a game of chess.  

autodesk and revit are NOT perfect, but they do keep improving. maybe not in the ways that you or i want, but generally in useful ways. (but not the ribbon, don't get me started on that debacle of a UIX mistake)

all that said, i'll digress and fix one of your complaints (they all have solutions):
include a symbol within the family and set your model object visibility off in plans and rcp within the family.

we're now way off topic.

[spgeorge]

A quick way to add revisions is to create a rev cloud on a sheet referencing the correct revision then copy and paste to selected views then select all the sheets you want. Then make sure the revision is set to Show "None" rather than "Tag" or "Cloud and Tag." Yes this is a work around and I think it would be nice as an option in the Sheet List or some better way.

Keyed notes editor can be done with other add-ons which is another issue I have right now. It's annoying that you can't re-order the keyed notes after they've been placed with stock Revit. We've gotten comments from owners when the same note is #1 on one sheet but then #3 on another. We have to just say sorry. I went with the method of using a notes block that had a sheet parameter but you'd have to create a notes block schedule for every sheet and that was voted out by my co-workers who prefer maintaining the text file as it is more automatic with placing the key not legend on each sheet then using user keynotes. 

Autodesk really does have the industry by the "you know what" (don't want to get booted from the forums) and they know there isn't competition for an alternative yet the text editor hasn't improved in 10 years nor has the schedule (spreadsheet) capabilities. Windows 95 probably had better spreadsheet capabilities than Revit. 

[mastjaso]

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@MKFreiert wrote:

mastjaso

it seems that there are some things you don't understand about revit, and that's fine, it's what this forum is here for. to learn about your tools and how they work.  we all learn from each other.  

being willing to understand how the tools behave is critical to working with them, rather than blaming the tool.  if some of these "impossible" things were easy to implement they would be built in. i've *repeatedly* explained why this particular item is NOT simple (or necessary), and i'm not even a programmer or data base admin, but i've learned enough about how revit works to understand why some stuff isn't feasible, easy, or in this case actually very desirable.  

that understanding also helps troubleshoot problems my users have, and helps me to understand unexpected behavior within projects.  it's kinda like knowing how your opponent usually plays in a game of chess.  

---

You're right, I don't understand everything about Revit, but I've used it enough, and used the API enough that I have a pretty good understanding of what works, what's possible and what is completely technically infeasible. And this room issue, is by no means technically infeasible. 

But first of all, unlike you keep trying to insist, Revit is a tool to create construction drawings (a drafting tool as you keep calling it). Can it do a bunch of cool stuff with it's calculations and it's database? Yes. But until the day that contractors start regularly getting models as the deliverables, those cool things are just to make drafting construction drawings easier. The millions of licenses that Autodesk has sold to AEC firms, haven't been sold as a tool for making a cool virtual model of a building, they've been sold as a tool for producing better construction drawings. Any regard that it fails at that it fails as a tool. There are better and worse ways to use it, but also a lot of ways in which it really really sucks as it's purpose, or does things super inefficiently. 

But back to the topic at hand, a room in Revit is fundamentally just a point. That's where the X's cross, and that point looks out from it's location to find bounding elements and create the room volume. There's no reason that volumes couldn't change with phase, except that that is how Autodesk has chosen to implement it. There is no huge show stopping technical reason they couldn't change it's behaviour beyond the fact that it would take a bunch of work and Autodesk has no competition to actually put a lot of work into improving Revit. 

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@MKFreiert wrote:

autodesk and revit are NOT perfect, but they do keep improving. maybe not in the ways that you or i want, but generally in useful ways. (but not the ribbon, don't get me started on that debacle of a UIX mistake)

all that said, i'll digress and fix one of your complaints (they all have solutions):
include a symbol within the family and set your model object visibility off in plans and rcp within the family.

we're now way off topic.

---

None of the things I've complained about have solutions without diving into the API, it's pretty ludicrous that you've even claimed you can "fix" the text editing issue, or the title block issuance issue.

Regarding the light fixture, no, that is not a solution to the problem. Light fixtures need to be face based, if they're face based and hosted on a vertical face then the annotation symbol displays parallel to the Plan / RCP so it's not visible. In the "Lighting Device" category (or "Electrical fixture", "Security Device", "Nurse Call Device" etc.) there's an option for "Maintain Annotation Orientation", but for some reason this does not exist for the "Lighting Fixture" category. Take a light switch family and change it to lighting fixture and it's symbol disappears. 

it seems that there are some things you don't understand about revit, and that's fine, it's what this forum is here for. But don't just blindly defend Autodesk and say that things are technically impossible if you don't understand how the underlying database works. Most of these things are possible, and some may be difficult, but having a software engineer spend 1 month on a problem that would save every AEC firm hours of time on every single project is more than worth it, it just doesn't happen because AEC software is not an economically competitive industry. 

[MKFreiert]

i'm starting to think you're just trolling this thread.

revit is a modeler.  it's not a drafting program.   most people use it to produce draftings, but a lot of firms are using models as part of their deliverables, and a lot of construction firms are using it for estimating and qc.  arguing that because most people who use a tool don't use it to it's full potential, or that because the workflow its designed for doesn't work for you, is just blaming the tool, not the user, person who picked the tool or workflow.    it sounds like a better tool for you may be AutoCAD Architecture, and it's (kinda) smart 3D drafting.  if you don't need/want the model, it can be much faster to use.

what happens to the data when elements bound by the expansion off that point change?  how do you monitor nested elements changing?   you could easily end up in a recursive loop of hosted elements causing problems between demo and new objects.    there are a passel of logic problems that you're ignoring or unaware of.   a simple full recalculation could be run, but then you're just processing a new room, which is what you didn't want.  

time savings?  you'll have to demo every room (or almost) in most projects when they're remodeled.  you're talking about a massive time waste for every office i've worked in on almost every project.  all to save you a couple of copy/paste?  

what happens when i want to move a room, that is the same function how does sorting rooms that are preexisting vs new vs new with the name of a preexisting room happen?   there's a lot of complexity that you're adding to most users that is not desirable.

you need an intermediate face based family for the annotation.  sorry if i wasn't clear on that.  i use those on almost everything that's got a symbol because they allow so much more versatility and it's easy to forget common habits.  (or you can use "lighting devices" for hard wired, and "lighting fixtures for corded)  

there's a lot that's theoretically possible, but at what point does what could be possible become an encumbrance to work?   one of the problems i run into daily is users who have decided to take an "easier" way out because the "right" way is "too complicated".  (despite it taking more time to fix later on, or causing inaccuracies that they spend time fixing)   we could just be working in the database instead of a GUI.  

[mastjaso]

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@MKFreiert wrote:

revit is a modeler.  it's not a drafting program.   most people use it to produce draftings, but a lot of firms are using models as part of their deliverables, and a lot of construction firms are using it for estimating and qc.  arguing that because most people who use a tool don't use it to it's full potential, or that because the workflow its designed for doesn't work for you, is just blaming the tool, not the user, person who picked the tool or workflow.    it sounds like a better tool for you may be AutoCAD Architecture, and it's (kinda) smart 3D drafting.  if you don't need/want the model, it can be much faster to use.

---

Some firms use model deliverables on some projects. It is by far the minority use case for Revit, and it is not how Revit it is sold. If Revit was not a tool for drafting, it would never have been licensed every year by millions of firms, and I don't see how you can think I'm trolling when you refuse to acknowledge that basic fact.

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@MKFreiert wrote:

what happens to the data when elements bound by the expansion off that point change?  how do you monitor nested elements changing?   you could easily end up in a recursive loop of hosted elements causing problems between demo and new objects.    there are a passel of logic problems that you're ignoring or unaware of.   a simple full recalculation could be run, but then you're just processing a new room, which is what you didn't want.  

time savings?  you'll have to demo every room (or almost) in most projects when they're remodeled.  you're talking about a massive time waste for every office i've worked in on almost every project.  all to save you a couple of copy/paste?  

what happens when i want to move a room, that is the same function how does sorting rooms that are preexisting vs new vs new with the name of a preexisting room happen?   there's a lot of complexity that you're adding to most users that is not desirable.

---

What happens to what data? The elements that are bounding the room would only change with each phase. So a room would have a different volume for each phase, it's not complicated. 

Rooms don't have nested elements, so I don't know what you're talking about there. 

Why don't you explain this "passel of logic problems" rather than just make vague reference to them?

Time savings? First of all, no, you do not demolish all rooms in most remodel projects. You do in some, and this would very greatly from firm to firm depending on the type of work you do. In most renovations there are at least some rooms that remain. This is also more accurate to what's actually happening in the building. That room remains there, but maybe gets expanded or maybe just remains. If all the rooms are being demolished it's a matter of "Right Click > Select all instances > change phase demolished to New Construction", and saves having to set up a demo phase for a project without a demo phase.

If a room needs to move then it's the same as any other element that needs to move, you set it to be demolished in new construction and recreate a new version of it that was built in new construction. It happens all the time with any equipment that's being reused and moved. It's not complicated.

I'm not adding complexity, I'm just making rooms behave like everything else in the model. 

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@MKFreiert wrote:

you need an intermediate face based family for the annotation.  sorry if i wasn't clear on that.  i use those on almost everything that's got a symbol because they allow so much more versatility and it's easy to forget common habits.  (or you can use "lighting devices" for hard wired, and "lighting fixtures for corded)  

there's a lot that's theoretically possible, but at what point does what could be possible become an encumbrance to work?   one of the problems i run into daily is users who have decided to take an "easier" way out because the "right" way is "too complicated".  (despite it taking more time to fix later on, or causing inaccuracies that they spend time fixing)   we could just be working in the database instead of a GUI.  

---

An intermediate face based family is what we use, but it's a stupid work around. It causes your families to behave weirdly with selection points way outside the symbol, and it means that any user who needs to go into the family doesn't see the symbol / sub family. It's confusing and more to the point, completely unnecessary.

I honestly don't get how you can keep defending these huge glaring inconsistencies with how Revit behaves. The light fixture issue is mind numbingly stupid because everything else behaves normally and the room issue is no different. There's no reason that rooms can't behave like everything else with a phase created / demolished property. You have yet to list any show stoppers, just things Autodesk would have to consider when implementing it. 

[MKFreiert]

i've never seen revit marketed as as drafting program. it's explicitly listed as a BIM not a BID program. if you have issue with sales people, blame them, not the manufacturer.

and no, in the hundreds of projects i've worked on in revit, if there is a demo phase (not new single phase construction) from retail to residential to entertainment to hospitality to commercial and campuses, the majority of rooms have changed name/number/use/existance/location. the single exception would be a couple of single family home additions where the body of the house didn't change. from consulting that's dozens of firms across the world, so anecdotally it would seem your practice is an outlier.

i'm not defending inconsistencies, i'm explaining how revit treats information. which you don't seem to like. that's fine, but try to stay on topic.

rooms do indeed have "nested" elements in the information they calculate off of. any bounding element isn't part of the room, and elements hosted by those bounding elements, be they void or profile adjustments can interact across phases in varying ways. a door in a demo infill gets us out to a 4th level dependency in seconds.
but you've said that you don't care about the smart context of the model, so why not just use dumb annotations for room tags and then group them across views? it's the drafting solution you asked for.... if you want a modeler, you need to work with that tool.

[RDAOU]

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mastjaso wrote: 

Autodesk doesn't do things because Revit doesn't have competition and there is zero chance of the construction industry switching to anything else. They staff Revit with as few staff as they can while taking the hundreds of millions of dollars from the construction industry and laughing all the way to the bank. 

@mastjaso

funny because there is more than one competing software that that can do what revit and more (cost more though)  but I wouldn't expect someone to know that such platforms exist namely when that someone is still figuring out rooms and treats demo as a phase and phasing as construction sequencing.

when one is unable to adapt with certain workflows and it's always give me this tool and change that tool, no software will be good enough

[mastjaso]

See and this is why I can't stand Autodesk apologists. Every time people complain about something your response is just "adapt your workflow". Well guess what sherlock? We all use Revit on a daily basis and do "adapt our workflows" or use whatever dumb, inefficient, waste of time work around people propose because at the end of the day we need to get our jobs done. The difference is that if you extract your head from Autodesk just a little bit, you'll see the glaring inconsistencies, flaws, and inefficiencies that Autodesk could fix, but chooses not to. Every hour spent by an Autodesk software engineer is probably 10 saved by the AEC industry.

And if there's really so much competition, why don't you name a reasonable competitor for an architecture/MEP firm?

[MKFreiert]

you're trying to use a tool in a way it wasn't intended to be used.  

pointing that out doesn't make anyone an apologist, it makes us people who try to use appropriate tools for particular tasks.  

graphisoft and bentley are both pretty fully featured in their suites.  

i'm not a fan of archicad in no small part because of how it behaves more like drafting software in some ways, and the ui is less intuitive to me.  

bentley i've not played with in years, mostly because i haven't had the need to, although friends using it love it. 

[RDAOU]

@MKFreiert

Add to that list Digital Project, GTeam, Tekla and many more! All one needs to do read up a little bit on what's going on in the industry...but again what can one expect and how could one reason with a mentality summed up by a reply similar to the above! 

EDIT: i am not sure if a solution is being sought here...so I think best would be to unsubscribe to this post

[mastjaso]

And how well do those competitors support MEP? Answer: barely if at all.

But this conversation is honestly insufferable. "You're not using the tool the way it was designed to be used", I know. I'm saying it's designed badly. Everything else in Revit has a phase created and phase demolished property. Neither of you have explained why rooms could not also have them. All you've done is make vague allusions to it being complicated or brought up non issues. 

Rooms could just as easily have phase created and phase demolished. All that would happen is that their room volume would be different for each phase. They would then behave like everything else, and not necessitate creating an unnecessary phase. The "solution" to this thread is another work around, create a "demo" phase, or create a duplicated version of existing plans with just room tags and layer that on top of your other plans. I'm not seeking a crappy workaround, I'm seeking Autodesk to fix the behaviour of rooms to match everything else.

[MKFreiert]

you may want to look at those solutions again.

revit is designed quire well as a building modeling tool. it's clearly not designed with your requirements in mind, and you seem to want something custom built, and to not want to work in the manner in which the tool was designed to be used.

it really is. i've explained why it's technically difficult, complex and potentially not feasible, and practically not desirable. you don't like those explanations

you don't want a solution, you want to complain about autodesk because they haven't built a tool just for you. let the thread go back to sleep for another year.

[Anonymous]

This is crazy.  I'd like to repeat my post from last October.   I don't know what's worse, that ACAD hasn't resolved this yet or that there are so many people willing to put up with it and preach to everyone else that Revit isn't for producing construction drawings (say what?) or we're not understanding what a "room" is.  Creating phone layout overlays or copying rooms/dumb room labels around is NOT a solution.  It's the kind of bad-practices crap you don't put up with in 2D CAD, let alone a "smart" database-driven program.  

[MKFreiert]

it is for producing CDs, however it's more so for creating an accurate model, which then generates the CDs. that new workflow means reevaluating how you accomplish certain tasks. folks are asking for workarounds on bad modeling practice, and don't seem to like that what they're doing isn't standard, and what they're asking for causes more problems than it fixes.

[spgeorge]

@mastjaso

Rooms cannot exist across multiple phases with the ability to recalculate the boundaries because it would take too much calculation power. No other elements in Revit change aspect properties as they exist across different phases. A wall is a wall with height, length and width in the existing phase, if you want part of the wall demolished, you split the wall into two parts and leave one part alone and "demolish" the other part. The same goes for pipe, duct, lighting or anything else. Implementing an aspect of an element that changes properties in respect to it's surrounding elements in whichever phase it exists would take a lot more than it's worth.

@MKFreiert

I have never recommended for that option though but I'll let it go because we aren't on the same page on how it would work to view contents based the view filter rather than just by the phase.

Sorry for stirring up the hornets nest on this one.

[mastjaso]

I, or someone else, has refuted every single reason you've given. Let's do a summary of our points:

Rooms don't have a phase created or phase demolished property unlike virtually everything else in Revit. 

Typically for a standard single phase project, you'd have your existing phase, and your new construction phase. Demo plans would be in the new construction phase, but phase filtered to not show anything new, and show anything demolished in this phase as dotted. Except that since this phase is "New Construction" your existing rooms don't exist (even though the walls that make them up do and our dashed).

My proposal is that rooms do have phase created and phase demolished, so that existing rooms would then phase filter like everything else. Your "Show Existing" would show only existing rooms, "Show Previous + Demo" would show the existing rooms as well, and "show previous + new" would show the existing to remain rooms + any new rooms created in that phase. This would necessitate that rooms' 3D volumes could be different for each phase. All they need to do is change rooms to have a variable number of volume objects each one corresponding to each phase. It would take a little bit of work on the database side.

Now why wouldn't that work? It's really simple.

 @spgeorge but I don't see why that would take appreciably more "calculation power"? The rooms would be calculated once for each phase (assuming a two phase standard project, that's only twice) and then that volume is stored. If you move or add a wall in new construction, then it just recalculates the room volume for that phase as it normally would. Placing a room in the existing phase would require a little bit more calculation power, but it scales with number of phases. It's not anything crazy like an order of magnitude difference.

[mastjaso]

Or you just change your phase filtering to have an option to show rooms from the previous phase. If that's what your suggesting @spgeorge I would see no issue with it either.

[spgeorge]

Because a single element (room) would have to adjust to its surrounding elements that might be different in each phase which is unlike anything else in Revit which is why it can't be treated like everything else in Revit. 

[spgeorge]

Yes, That's what I'm suggesting as a potential solution.

[mastjaso]

Yes, but a volume is just a property of a room in the database. I'm not saying it would be no work, but it's by no means impossible for it to just have multiple volumes, each corresponding to a phase within the project.

Edit: though I do agree that just doing it from the filtering side would be easier.