Allow All Families to recognize rooms in linked models

[cprettyman]

Currently, the Room tag family can see, and tag, a room that is in a linked model, and a Space family can see rooms in linked models.  But other families cannot.  Since the rooms are typically in the architects model, the other disciplines involved in the project cannot directly leverage the room info.  I work in low voltage, so I frequently need to schedule things like

• What room is this data connection in?
• What room is this display in?

I imagine that lighting designers, furniture designers, etc, have similar challenges.

The work around right now is to make spaces, and match the space names/numbers to the underlying room names/numbers.  But that adds a maintenance issue - space naming and numbering is updated by the architect as the design evolves, and so we are constantly needing to update the spaces to match.  

Spaces offer the ability to create a space-like object that has additional parameters that you control, which is great.  But if all you need is for an object in your model to know what room its in, when the room is in another model, they require too much maintenance.  

Allowing all of the families to recognize the rooms in the linked model would streamline things for me, and I think for many others.

[christopher_holden]

Simply allow the room location point of elements in one model see the rooms in a linked model. For example to read the COBie.Space data from the Architects model without having to duplicate rooms or add spaces in consultants models. People have suggested tools to sync the data between rooms and spaces in the host and link, but in many cases hit should not be necessary to add more spatial elements than already exist in the Architects model.

[Reed_Weinstock]

All families should be able to recognize rooms from a link. Electrical Equipment is the only family category that can do this currently. Electrical equipment has a system parameter called "location", can this be expanded to all other family categories? Having to copy rooms from one model to another is very time consuming!

[cprettyman]

@Reed_Weinstock - Not being an electrical engineer, I was not aware of that feature - that's fantastic, and it just goes to support my argument, there's value in this, and Autodesk has already figured out how to do it.   If electrical devices can do it, why not data, audiovisual, security, light fixtures, lighting devices, furniture, furniture systems, etc.  

I'd like to see it expanded a bit, have a set of parameters that are seen in rooms in a linked model, but even just this much would be a step forward.

[Ric_Weber]

This should definitely be possible in a BIM world.  The system knows the coordinates of every object in the model.  The system knows the extents of every room and space and area.  So why shouldn't every object be able to have a location ability.  Now, if an object sits between two or more rooms, what then?  My suggestion would be that a <varies> is used perhaps?  List both/all rooms?  A point be designated as where the object is.  Defaulted to center of the mass?  Not sure there, but let's just take one step at a time and get everything to have a location indicator!!