Creating Spaces in Revit MEP Using Room Bounding and Space Naming

Welcome back to the VDCI course introduction for Revit MEP courses. In the previous video, we went ahead and talked about copy monitoring and using our linked architectural model. In this video, we're going to kind of expand on that and use the architectural model to go ahead and define some of our spaces as they're used.

Spaces are created via room bounding elements, which are similar to rooms. But spaces also have more analytical properties where we can assign mechanical properties, electrical properties, and other energy analysis items. So I'm here on my level one floor plan.

Now before I can actually create the spaces, I need to go ahead and make my Revit link a room bounding link. We have a Revit link here that has also been pinned in place so it doesn't get accidentally deleted or moved. And I need to make it room bounding, because rooms are defined by room bounding elements as our spaces.

So to create this as room bounding, I'm going to select my Revit link file. I'm going to go to edit type here. And I'm going to check the box next to room bounding.

This makes it so that my walls and columns and elements that are defined as room bounding in the link model are also room bounding in this project. I'm going to hit apply and I'm going to hit OK. And that's all I need to do to create this as room bounding.

Learn Revit MEP

• Nationally accredited
• Create your own portfolio
• Free student software
• Learn at your convenience
• Authorized Autodesk training center

Learn More

Now I need to create the spaces. So the spaces is going to be under the Analyze tab. Now the rooms, which we're not using in this class, but rooms are typically found under the Architecture tab.

Spaces, since they're more of an analysis aspect, are going to be here under the Analyze tab. I'm going to go here to space. So this places my spaces.

I can pick this. Now I could drag and just click, click, click, click, click, click and go through every single room and every single area that I want as a space. Sometimes though, I've kind of found it pretty much easy, a bit easier to place spaces automatically.

This does create some additional spaces that aren't defined as rooms in the link model, but we have an easy way of cleaning it up and we'll go through that. So I'm going to click place spaces automatically. Pick.

There it goes. So 73 spaces have been created automatically. I hit close.

If I zoom in, you'll notice that there's also a tag there. So I have the space element and then also the space tag element. The tag was automatically generated.

And you'll see that they say space 14, space 8, space 9. We're going to clean up all of the naming and everything so it links up with the linked model from wherever we're getting that from, whether it be an architect or another designer. Let's go ahead and save our file. Now, to get these names to match up, I'm going to go ahead and back up under the analyze tab.

There's a space naming button. Taking a little bit of time to save. So space naming, it assigns the names and numbers from the architectural rooms to MEP spaces used for building performance analysis.

So I can go space naming. It pops up this dialogue. I want names and numbers.

I could choose names only or numbers only. And I'm going to go for all levels. Now creating the spaces in the way that I have has only created spaces on this level that I'm seeing here.

It hasn't applied to the building all the way across. So what I'm going to do though is I'm hit all levels, names and numbers and I hit OK. It's going to read what room is in the location that my space is in.

And then it's going to start to name that out. So you can see classroom, classroom, so on and so forth. I'm going to go to my second floor and do the same thing.

I'm going to repeat that entire process. I need to create the spaces then get the room to get the names lined up. So I'm going to go here to space.

I'm going to go play spaces automatically. Create those it's created 59 spaces on this. Hit close.

And then I'm going to go here to space naming. I'm going to go names and numbers and I'm just gonna do all levels again. Redoing it from level one doesn't hurt anything.

It just double checks the information. You would also want to do this space naming process. Let's say the program of your building has changed from schematic design to say design development or wherever.

And the architect has maybe changed some numbers or changed some room names. You can always redo this process over and over again to relink back up with those names and numbers. And it won't hurt anything.

So names and numbers for all levels, I could choose specific levels if I wanted to, I'm going to go ahead hit OK. And there we go. Now, I think there's a couple little possible things going on.

It's saying that these are the corridors over here. And these kind of got moved around a little bit. I don't know.

Let's see here. This space tag goes with this room. So again, there might be some items that are not proper, unfortunately.

And that's sometimes what happens, you would want to alert the architect or the designer to that. And we can clean this up and make sure it's good to go. But you can see it also created some spaces here in these other little areas that these are defined by room bounding elements, but we're really not going to use them for any performance analysis or anything such as that.

I'm going to go ahead and make sure I save my file. Now, let's kind of clean up our rooms a little bit. Let's clean up these spaces.

So what I'm going to go ahead and do is I'm going to go to my view tab, and I'm going to create a schedule. By creating a schedule, that is really the only location that I'm actually able to remove spaces and or rooms from a project. If I were to delete this space here that I've just selected, it would remove it from this view and from the 3D aspects of this model, but it doesn't remove it from the model entirely.

The only way to remove either a room or a space from a project is by deleting it from the schedule. So let's go ahead and create a space schedule. I'm going to go here to schedules, schedule and quantities.

I'm creating a new schedule. The category I want to create the schedule under is going to be spaces. So I go here to find spaces.

Where are you spaces? There you are. We want to schedule building components and under phase new construction. I'm going to go ahead hit OK.

There we go. And it's going to give me all the parameters that are associated with spaces. So you can see there's a ton of parameters that are in spaces, but not in rooms.

So I want to go ahead and I want to find the word level. I want to bring that over first. Then I'm going to bring over a number.

And I'm going to bring over a name. I'm going to go ahead hit OK. There we go.

And then I need didn't really sort this, I could have sorted it when I was going through that. Sometimes I just like to create the schedule, get out there, and then I'll look at it. And then I'm like, OK, let's sort this bad boy.

So I'm going to go to sorting and grouping. I'm going to go to sort by I want to sort by level. I'm also going to create that as a header, so that it only shows that there.

And then I'm going to sort it by number. Everything else here is good. I don't need a header or footer and I don't need to sort by anything else.

I'm going to go ahead hit OK. And there we go. So you can see I have this level one, all my level ones first, and then my level twos.

Then I'm going to have my number. So I have all sorted by number and then the name. Now I want to remove so since we did the space naming, I want to remove anything that just has the word space.

So I'm going to click on that one, I'm going to click hold and then drag to select multiple. Okay, you can also click hold shift and click again to select a multiple. And I'm going to delete these from my project.

I just select those. So click on the top one. Click on the bottom one while holding shift or click and hold and drag.

I'm going to hit delete. It's going to say this will delete nine selected spaces and any associated space tags. Perfect.

Hit OK. I'm going to go down here to level two, find the ones that are just spaces. Select all of those by holding shift or and clicking or by clicking, holding and dragging down.

I hit delete. There we go. It's going to delete 10 spaces.

So I've removed 19 spaces. Hit OK. And there we go.

And I always like to have a working space schedule just so that I know what is there and what is good to go. One of the things I want to show you real quick is that if I were to take a space, so let's say this classroom 1508, and I was to delete it from this view, a space was deleted from all model views, but still remains in this project. This space can remove from any schedule or place back in the model using the space command.

If I go over to my space schedule now, if I go over schedules, I'm going to go to my space schedule that I created. You notice I now have a not placed. That not placed, and this kind of happens throughout projects.

And this is why I like to have this working schedule. I can, if that space or that room has actually been removed from the project, let's say it's no part of the scope of work, or whatever, I could actually delete it from here, and it's no longer adding to my file size. Or sometimes rooms get deleted, they get recreated, but then the old room doesn't get replaced.

I'm going to show you how to replace this one right now, because we obviously want it in our project. So I'm going to go up here under the Analyze tab. I'm going to go to space.

Then I'm not, I'm going to look at my options bar here, right? So this is my contextual tab of space. And then there's an options bar down below, or it's a space new, I'm going to pull down and find 1508 classroom, pick. And just like I'm placing a room, I can just drag into the area I want, I'm going to use Revit snaps to line it up, I'm going to pick.

And there we go, I've replaced that. Now if I go back to my schedule, you'll see that that 1508 is now back on level one. Great.

Return back to my mechanical floor plan here, I'm going to save my file, and we will see you guys in the next video.