Problem to show previous phase spaces

[EKey]

Hi,

Let's say I have an existing building with existing spaces. It is reasonable to create spaces in the Existing phase. Ductwork for the building is created in the New Construction phase. The problem is that I can't make space tags and ductwork visible at the same time. I activate the New Construstion phase for the view, and regardless of the Phase Filter setting the view never shows Spaces.

Is there a way to make the spaces visible?

Thank you.

[Anonymous]

Spaces have a phase associated with them, but for some reason their visibility doesn't align with the usual phase filters.

[L.Maas]

Spaces (like rooms) are Phase dependent

You would have to create (or copy) them in the same phase as your ducting.

The reasoning is that during phases rooms and spaces can be divided, merged, added or removed.

[EKey]

Other elements in Revit are also Phase dependent, i.e. Mechanical Equipment category. For those elements the Phase Filter for view works as expected: I can set it to "None" and see all elements regardless of the phase they has been created. Unfortunately the "None" setting doesn't make any change to Space visibility, I can't see spaces from various Phases. If I want to see them I should set the Phase property for view to the phase on which the Spaces has been created. It is very inconvenient. Imaging that we have a renovation project. The spaces already exist for the building and are created in the Existing phase. I set the Phase propery for view to "New Construction" to draw my ductwork and the space names disappear - I don't know what are the spaces I neee to work with. 

Is there a way to show Spaces from previous Phases?

[SteveKStafford]

Rooms and Spaces exist in just one phase while other elements can exist across phases. For example a wall that is created in the existing phase is still there in the new phase as long as it isn't demolished. Rooms and Spaces don't behave like this. It would be nice if they could. In conversations with developers about this they've described a number of design conundrums that they encounter with the implementation of it. For now it remains out of reach.

When I have many rooms/spaces that are existing and are to remain unchanged I use Copy/Paste to put them in both phases. Use C/P in views dedicated to the correct phase. We have to manage any discrepancies between the copies of the same rooms/spaces, if for example a field survey reveals something we didn't know earlier...or their name/number is wrong, different than we thought.

For demolition plans, if there are many of these rooms, I duplicate a floor plan view of the existing model. Then I turn off all the categories except for Rooms/Spaces and their tags. This way the only things visible in the view are the rooms/spaces and the tags that identify them. I put this odd view over the demolition plan view on its sheet using a different View Type that doesn't use a View Title. We call it overlaying views on a sheet, like we did in the old days of pin bar mylar drafting. It's not hard. A View Template makes short work of managing what is visible and once it is setup up we can sort of forget about it, nothing to really manage at that point, changes happen on the fly.

If there aren't many existing rooms/spaces then I might consider using Text in the demolition view instead. It just depends on which one is more work.

For new work plans, the copies (that I used Copy/Paste for) of the rooms/spaces that remain unchanged are visible so those don't need to be tagged in the way I described above, they can just be tagged directly. I only need to do the overlay trick in the demo plans because we are more concerned about all the existing rooms and the new configuration of the building isn't visible yet.

Hope that helps clarify it.

[EKey]

Steve,

Thank you for the time you spent for the detailed description of Phase-and-Space considerations and your techniques. They could be useful with the current Space element behaviour. Unfortunately the existing implementation of phases for spaces doesn't look "natural" for me.

Let's take the simple example I already described. We have existing spaces and I make a ductwork renovation design. For this scenario Revit should seamlessly show space names on floor plans. This behaviour is expected and is "natural".

The second example. There have been two existing spaces with a wall between them. We demolish the wall during the "New Construction" phase. So, we have a single space now. I would propose the following workflow for spaces: "demolish" the two existing spaces and create a new one on the "New Construction" phase. It looks natural for me and should give proper data structure for displaying both spaces and ductwork for both phases - new and existing. It may be a problem for displaying spaces properly for demolition plan, but I don't get deeply into this specific case. I will think about it later. 😉

Please consider the third scenario. After the tender we issue dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of Change Notice for our mechanical design. We found that the Phases mechanism works in the best way for the purpose. We create a new phase for every CN, what give us an opportunity to print changes with emphased graphics, and make elements take-off for estimation software, i.e. Accubid ChangeOrder. And all this works from box! If we would use some parameters it would be more complicated to manage. And again, CN's sit on project timeline as naturally as Phases. But spaces give us a grief: they are not shown on drawings. Should we copy them to every of the hundreds CN phases? It sounds quite frighteningly.

One more comment if you please. Space's Phase property is read-only. If I want to see it on a later phase I should cut/paste it to the required phase. The new Space element appears with a new ID. A reference to the previous ID is lost. I believe you understand how bad it is from database management standpoint. I would like to preserve the ID's.

The bottom line is that, sorry, from my prospective the current Phase implementation for Spaces is incorrect. A Phase should affect Space elements exactly in the same way as it works for other Revit entities. We need Spaces existing across Phases. I understand that it comes against currently accepted Revit philosophy. I just hope my examples make some sense.

Thank you,

Evgeny Kurbatov.

[SteveKStafford · Accepted solution]

I believe the developers are well aware of the various things people expect naturally, as you wrote. The example you gave of the wall between rooms being demolished is one such conundrum. When we use the Demolish (hammer) tool on the wall it's Phase Demolished is assigned to that view's phase. Any doors that wall hosts are also altered to assign their own Phase Demolished parameter to the same phase value.

It might be easy to assume the same thing should happen to the rooms on either side of the wall. In some cases people expect one room to remain, getting larger in the absence of the other demolished room. This room is no longer the same, it's larger but conceptually people are able to deal with the abstract idea that is it the same room...just larger now, same room name and number...but larger area. The computer doesn't see it that way...it's different.

I seem to recall being told the Cut/Paste operation retains the original GUID of the room element. I've not queried the database to verify that claim. Copy/Paste definitely generates a new GUID. Yes, having a new GUID isn't ideal. If I've put the room in the wrong phase accidentally then it is unfortunate that any external database relationship will have to be fixed too. This external relationship is outside Revit's control and it has to deal with its own integrity as a priority.

They just created a new Revit Ideas forum to post ideas. This is the sort of thing that should be added there.

[Anonymous]

@SteveKStafford @EKey @L.Maas @Anonymous  Agree with most of what has been said so far.  One workflow we use is, of there is ANY change to a room, whether configuration or new door or wall paint, the room gets copied to the new phase.  In the case of a room growing, the room would get copied.  When speaking about a room changing over time, since Revit has no mechanism for tracking changes to an element over time, it would seem the most robust database would track a value other than GUID (perhaps a shared project parameter, that stores the GUID of the previous Room being replaced.  Who knows, perhaps when Autodesk enables demolishing of Rooms, they could also add ability to link Rooms through time, even if only by GUID reference. 😃