Adjusting Visibility and Creating Spaces in Revit MEP

Welcome back to the CAD Teacher VDCI video course content for the BIM 321 course Introduction to Revit MEP. In the previous videos, we went ahead and LinkedIn our architectural file and talked about the Revit MEP interface. In this next video, I want to go ahead and start talking about how we can adjust the visibility of the linked file and also create what are called spaces.

So to adjust the visibility, obviously, we're going to be using VV; it's slightly different in the sense of how it works with a linked file. So what I'd like for you to do is please let's go ahead and go into VV. And as you can see, it looks pretty standard from right here, model categories, annotation categories and so on.

If you look at the far right-hand side, you'll see where it says Revit Links. So I'm going to go to Revit Links really quickly. If I were to uncheck this box here, obviously, our linked Revit file is shown here; if I were to uncheck this box here and hit Apply, it's going to turn off my entire link.

So it's not visible. Obviously, we still want that on. So under Revit Links, please make sure that's checked.

Now if you look over "Display Settings, " you'll see it says "By Host View." What that means is it's going to look to what's on and off here to make sure that it is representing the same information. So then if I went into here and clicked on this "By Host View, " I can either choose "By Host View, " "By Linked View, " or "Custom."

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Then if I chose "Custom, " I could choose the different model categories I want on or off, the annotation and so on and so forth. So it's a little bit more work in managing what you can see and what you can't see. We're going to go ahead and just leave this alone for right now, and we're going to leave it by "Host View."

Under the model categories though, what I'd like for you to go find is "Furniture" and "Plumbing Fixtures." So again, I turned off "Furniture" and "Plumbing Fixtures." I'm going to go ahead and hit Apply and hit OK.

As you can see, it's giving us a cleaner model. Now we need to go ahead and give spaces. Spaces are different from rooms, but they represent the same information.

Spaces are what MEP users use for their analyses, mechanical loads, plumbing, and other related tasks. You might think it would be in the Architecture tab with other room information, but it's not. Spaces are under the Analyze tab, as you can see here.

I'm going to go ahead and click Space. Right now, what I've done is I've actually changed the setting to allow spaces to recognize rooms. On your machine, it may not necessarily be doing this right now where it's hovering over the rooms.

If I were to select the link, go ahead and select your link. I'm going to go up here under "Revit Linked Model, " and I'm going to go to Edit Type here. As you can see, I've had mine checked as "Room Bounding."

Yours probably looks similar to this, without "Room Bounding" checked. When you select your link, go to Edit Type. Please have your constraints under here, under "Room Bounding."

Please make sure that box is checked. That's going to allow those walls and those other items of the linked file to allow us to put our spaces in. So please go ahead and check this "Room Bounding" box, which can be found once you select the link and then hit Edit Type, and I'm going to go ahead and hit OK.

There we are. I'm going to hit Escape to deselect. So that will allow us now to actually place our spaces.

Let's go to Space, and I'm going to just pick through. So there, there, there. Don't worry about the names and the numbers right now, we'll be doing something a little bit later on that will fix that for us.

I'm going to go ahead and place in my hallway, this small electrical room here, the office, office, office there, office there, office there, and the lobby. Once I've placed all my spaces, I'm going to go ahead and hit Escape to deselect. All right, now I'm done.

Now, if I zoom in, let's say, to this space here, right now it just says Space 4, but I know that the architectural model has its own room names, it has its own room numbers, and we want to represent those here. So I'm going to go ahead and select where it says Space 4, and I'm going to go ahead and hit Edit Family. Right now, this is what comes up.

So as you can see, we have different labels here. Under Space Name, I'm going to go ahead and select Space Name, and I'm going to go ahead and hit Edit Type. And what we're going to go ahead and do is change the label.

Actually, not "Edit Type, " as that would change the size and formatting of the label. I want to go under Label here and go to Edit. This is going to bring up this "Parameters" field.

Now this "Parameters" field is fairly easy to use. I'm going to go ahead and scroll down and find the Room Name parameter. What I'd like for you to do is then use this button here to add the parameter to the label.

What I'm going to do now is I'm actually going to select the first name here where the sample value is Space Name, and I'm going to go ahead and remove that parameter from the label and hit Apply and then hit OK. Now it's changed to Room Name. I'm going to go ahead and select this number here, go back to Label here, hit Edit.

I'm going to find Room Number. I want to add that parameter to the label, and I'm going to remove the standard number from the label, and hit Apply and hit OK. And there we are.

All I'm going to go ahead and do now is I'm just going to go "Load into Project, " "Overwrite the existing version, " and as you can see, it gives us all of our numbers perfectly, everything that was in our previous file. Let's go ahead. I'm going to go ahead and let's hop up to the second-floor plan.

Do the same thing. I'm going to go VV. I'm going to scroll down and find Furniture and Plumbing Fixtures, hit Apply and OK, and there we go.

Let's go ahead and place our spaces. So I'm going to go to my Analyze tab here. I'm going to go Space, pick here, pick there, and as you can see, it's already populating with the correct information because the space tag has been modified.

There. And again, I'm just walking through all these rooms again. It's going to take those room names and the room numbers from the linked file, which makes this very easy, very simple.

So all the information stays the exact same. We want to be able to represent exactly what the Architect has on their drawings with regard to room names and numbers. Don't forget the small space down here also.

And there we are. I think everything there is good. I'm going to go ahead and hit Escape to say that I'm done.

Let's go ahead, Zoom Extents. I'm going to hop back to my first floor mechanical plan, Zoom Extents, ZE, Control-S, save the file. And one thing I want to do real quickly before I end this video, let's go ahead and move these elevation tags so that they're just in the correct location.

We're not really going to be using them, but it's just kind of annoying to have them positioned incorrectly off to the side. So let's go ahead and move these elevation tags just so that they're centered on the building. We do not want to move the building to fit the elevation tags.

We want to move the elevation tags to fit the building. I'm going to go ahead and Zoom Extents, Control-S, and save the file. And what I'm going to go ahead and do now is I'm going to stop this video here and in the next few videos, we're going to get started with the actual modeling.

See you there.