Area Boundaries - Draw Within Groups

[ttourangeau_svn]

The Problem

It's often the case that you have area boundaries which you want to have as part of a group. That's easy enough - you grab the area boundaries, you make a group. You're happy. 

Then - you make the dreaded decision to edit the group. What do you have to do? Well you certainly can't add an area boundary. Nope. You have to exit the group, draw the area boundary, re-edit the group, click on the "add to group" button, then select the area boundary you just drew to bring it into the group. 

God forbid you have to add another line, because then you have to repeat the process all over again. 

The Solution

Just make it so that we can draw area boundaries within groups. PLEASE. This is one of those issues that give Autodesk a bad name, and makes the users think that you guys don't even use the software on a regular basis... it's infuriating as part of our daily workflow, and it's been an issue for a long time. Can we please put it to bed? 

[GA-LT]

"users think that you guys don't even use the software on a regular basis... " - We just simply know it! In my opinion 3 months of work in our office would change those guys to make Revit better and user friendly in very short time 😉

[ttourangeau_svn]

or they could make an effort to hire current / former architects! Or bring them on as consultants...

[Anonymous]

better yet- instead of having to make area lines into groups, why can't they function like a filled region or a polyline in CAD (one object)?? seems like it would be WAY more functional this way, easier to resize/move/adjust, and much less messy than the current setup.

Also..allow room boundaries to function this way too!

[ttourangeau_svn]

That's also a good idea! But I'd still want the ability to draw them in groups.

My reasoning for groups is that because Revit's way of defining areas doesn't jive with how our clients want to see areas reported, and because Revit doesn't allow you to establish your own automatic area calculation parameters, we often end up with two sets of area plans for a building - one which governs the overall floor area, and one which governs the internal units. They both need to share the same perimeter, so we draw it manually and make that into a group and paste it into both area plans. make a change to one and the other automatically adjusts.

it's not an ideal solution, but after setting it up it works well enough. 

[Anonymous]

That makes sense- we do the same thing for a lot of plans, just not always with groups.

It's frustrating that the group thing (which we can't even currently do!) is just a workaround for one of a number of functionality problems with how areas currently work- I'd love to see Autodesk fix this so they're more useful for how we as designers typically want/need to use them! Right now they're clunky at best, and it seems like they could be so much more user-friendly with a few tweaks. The ability to adjust or add to the options of how areas are calculated - which I think has been posted several times- would be invaluable; as would the ability to draw them as objects similar to rooms.

(All of that said, allowing us to draw areas in groups would definitely be a helpful stopgap measure until Autodesk can actually rework them...)

[ttourangeau_svn]

unfortunately this is the big problem with Revit and Autodesk in general - they've got a myopic approach to development ("this is how people will use the software") rather than an open approach ("let's make the tool as flexible as possible and figure out how users WANT to use it"). the way areas are generated don't work at all for condominium developments (let alone the area / room tools) but the tools aren't flexible enough for smart/clever users to adapt them accordingly. 

and if the past is any indication (i'm looking at you, "FormIt"... and "revit live" which is the only way to get the software to batch render) they would rather build a new program for area calculations than just improve the function in revit. or, they will only THINK about making the change if the idea gets enough community support - which is itself ENORMOUSLY FLAWED as an approach because they're relying upon an extra-keen subset of users (I'd bet 90% of revit users don't have the time to browse forums, let alone to promote their submissions).

the day they said "sorry, this won't happen for a while" about allowing us to import PDFs is the day that I basically lost any kind of faith in their ability to build flexible software. nevermind that they may never revise the fill pattern system to include background colors (even though other software does it just fine). I think a big problem they have is that they see things as minor inconveniences because they think we just do things once - like you can't export to a XLS file, but you can export to a TXT format that excel can read... that's fine if you do it ONCE, but if you do it ten times in a day it's really, really annoying. same goes for converting PDFs to JPGs just so they can be imported. If my Excel spreadsheet is constantly changing, then i'm constantly printing to PDF, and then i'm constantly converting to JPG. And it's completely unnecessary because the building blocks of exporting to XLS and importing PDFs as jpgs is already there (autocad does it!!!!!). but yet they can't seem to pull their heads out of their butts...

[almeidaandre]

Any chance to have area boundaries inside group?

[ltvhung_arch]

God, please do something to show the area in the group. Please. area bound or fill region or something. The day the area was displayed in a group was the happiest day in the life of an architect like me. Please