Gettin' Fancy

You're probably all aware of the Upper Limit Parameter on the Room Element from previous releases.  That controls the top extent of the Room Element you've defined.  The actual top extent of the Room is not always the Upper Limit value however, because of the Bounding Element behavior we have spoken about recently.  So, if a Roof is encountered by Revit as it extrudes the Room vertically, then the Room Volume will stop at the Roof.  Makes sense right?

Well, what happens if you need to extrude the bottom extent of the Volume in the same manner?  Until this release, there was no good way to do it.

Based upon our discussion yesterday, we talked about how the overall cross section of the Volume is calculated.  This is all good and logical, but there are certainly situations where your typical approach to defining Volumes breaks down.  Like....let's say for instance an outward sloped wall....*hushed silence falls over the room*...this has always been difficult if not impossible until this release.

"Show me" you say?  Gladly...

Volumes in Complex Geometries

So there you have it, we now have a few more tools in the toolbox to handle complex building forms.  The box may not have every tool necessary, but this is a step in the right direction for our Revit Analytical Models.

Comments

[Scott Davis]

Kyle,

Please explain why you set the Space height to be 1" short of the level line...ie 9'-11" rather than 10'-0"

Cool stuff!

[Tomislav Zigo]

Nice improvement. However when, both top and bottom surfaces, within a Room/Space object are converted to the Air surface enumerator, DOE engine understands that there is a thermal flow between those volumes. Unfortunately that does not apply to the light penetration as the Daylighting calcs. will end up being skewed due to the fact that Air is regarded as an opaque surface (which in itself is an interesting concept), at least in the case when the gbXML model is submitted to GBS. How does IES interpret this condition form the Daylighting perspective?

[Kyle Bernhardt]

Good question. I recall getting an error at some point with the Height set at 10', but now I'm not getting that error. You could go either way.

Cheers,
Kyle

[Kyle Bernhardt]

Tomislav,
There's not much we can do to change the way that the DOE-2 engine handles this situation.

The IES has a setting that allows daylighting to pass between adjacent spaces, so proper daylighting analysis is possible given the configuration of the example model.

Cheers,
Kyle

[Tomislav Zigo]

Thanks Kyle!

Good to know.

Cheers