Space Creation - Part 2

You'll notice a theme with many of my posts thus far regarding our upcoming release, the use of video to illustrate the new feature of workflow.  I just don't know a better way to do it for all of you loyal readers, so I'll stick with it (thanks for your great feedback as well, keep the comments coming).  So with that in mind, let's keep on moving towards the promised land of Revit MEP 2009 mastery...

We already began speaking about the new Space Element in a previous post.  I thought I'd continue that discussion today, as it's the core of a lot of other improvements we'll be talking about over the coming weeks and months regarding Volumes in your Revit Models, and how to define them properly.  Once defined, they are the cornerstone of an accurate Analytical Model, which in turn is the cornerstone of accurate Building Performance Analysis.

Today we're going to continue to talk about the new workflows for success in Revit MEP regarding Spaces.  I know I could just give you a list of new features, or even just show them, but illustrating the workflows associated with those features is the best way to introduce you to them.  In short, I don't want to just feed you a delicious new fish, I'd rather teach you how to catch it.

As I've spoken about earlier, I don't spend all day on these videos, as I don't have all day to do so (I've got to actually do my regular job AND try to have a life).  Trying to get a video up to perfect quality without "UMs " and "Ahhs" and minor screwups is pretty time consuming, so I just send them out into the wild.  Keeping that in mind, post any comments for points that need clarity.

Spaces and Ceilings

There you have it.  A little more understanding of how Volumes in Revit interact with other Elements in the model.  I hope you found that informative.

<huge dork>Tomorrow we're going to talk about how we calculate the Cross Sectional Area of Volumes...oh boy! </huge dork>

Comments

[Joe Fields]

Very cool stuff. Can you show us what you would do if the architect defined the rooms to go floor to floor? Would you then split the archiects room at the ceiling and have each room with its own plenum or is there a way to combine those MEP plenum spaces into one plenum.

Thanks,
Joe

[Kyle Bernhardt]

Joe,
It depends on how you want to structure your volumes. You are free to define your Spaces however you'd like.

Assuming the Architect has placed a Ceiling, then I would recommend that you create two Spaces, one for the Occupied Space and one for the Plenum.

If the Walls only extend to the Ceiling level, then the Plenum Space will cover the entire Plenum Volume.

If there are Walls that extend up to the Floor above, then the Plenum Space would be bounded by those Walls and you'd need to have multiple Spaces to define the Plenum Volumes.

You could then group together the Plenum Spaces into HVAC Zones....which is another new feature that I'll be discussing at a later date.

Kyle

[Tomislav Zigo]

Unfortunately, when working in RAC 2008/9 the ceiling entity does not translate in the "Ceiling" surface. The user needs to manually change gbXML file in order to convert the "Air" surface between the Room and the Plenum volume into the "Ceiling", plus a building’s surface area needs to be altered in order to be able to submit such an altered file as GBS will reject the geometry. Also there might be an issue with the accuracy of the calculation as the Air surface normals are pointing in the opposite direction from where the Ceiling normals would.
Nevertheless, the improvements in the Room objects are fantastic as the more complicated volumes are now being accurately translated, and few other issues in respect to Room-geometry interactions are successfully resolved.

[Nader Bakhoum]

Kyle, with the new workflow now in Revit MEP 2009, is it possible to propagate the room info or the space info from Revit Arch or Revit MEP to the IES when I start calculating the cooling and the heating loads

[Kyle Bernhardt]

Tomislav,
Now that the Ceiling Element is Room Bounding, we do get the proper output of Ceiling Surfaces in our Analytical Models. It shows up in the gbXML file as well.

A nice side-benefit of this decision.

Cheers,
Kyle

[Kyle Bernhardt]

Nader,
The IES Hating and Cooling Loads functionality and gbXML references the Space Name and Space Number parameters, not the Room Parameters.

You will need to manually define the Space Name and Number at this time to achieve the desired output in those two situations.

Cheers,
Kyle

[David Baldacchino]

Hi Kyle, thanks for posting these informative videos.

One thing in this video that caught my eye....you locked the new level to the ceiling that is in the linked file and you said that the level will move if the ceiling moves. Unless something changed in 2009 (which I haven't seen documented anywhere), if the ceiling does move, when the link is reloaded, you'll get a constraint error. Could you please confirm?

[Kyle Bernhardt]

David,
You're right, that will not work. I myself am still learning how all the constaints systems work, and it seemed like a logical thing to do.

I'll add note on the post and see if I can update the video.

Thanks,
Kyle