Archibus Smart Client Extension for Revit

Standards for Area Accuracy

The standards for hand-off data often specify that areas will be drawn to a particular quality standard.

Internal Chargeback . If you are using the model information for internal space planning, allocation, and chargeback of operational costs to internal entities, a lower standard of accuracy will do. Typically, you can use the architects room schedule as it stands with few changes.

External Chargeback . If you are using the model information to do external chargeback, you need a higher standard of accuracy. External chargebacks to insurance carriers, government grants, and tenants are subject to audit. Any discrepancies -- such as the failure to exclude a structural column or structural wall from a particular room's area -- is subject to penalties. As such, more accurate area drafting techniques are appropriate for this usage.

Use Cases

Archibus supports multiple types of area assets. This feature helps you achieve the needed level of accuracy without excessive effort. For instance, there is no need to draw and number rooms if all you need are suite areas for leases.

Type of Area Object Appropriate Usage
Revit Rooms Allocation, occupancy, chargeback to internal entities, space planning work request locations
Revit Areas for bounding Rooms

Allocation, occupancy, chargeback to internal entities, space planning work request locations, and external chargeback to external entities (such as insurance carriers and government grants) in cases where the "near BOMA" defaults of Revit are not accurate enough.

Revit Areas for bounding Internal and External Gross

As part of the space inventory of rooms or room areas for determining building performance statistics.

Revit Areas for bounding Suites

External chargeback for leases, which need only suite boundaries (to demising walls) and not detailed room inventories.

Revit Areas for bounding Groups

Space planning and forecasting at the group level rather than the room level

Revit Areas for Zones

Emergency preparedness, security, or system zones

Using Rooms vs. Using Areas in Revit

Autodesk’s Revit Architecture, Revit Structure, and Revit MEP have multiple methods to acquire a building's room and area information. These methods include Rooms, Areas, and Spaces. For the purposes of this documentation, Spaces will be taken out of consideration, because Spaces only exist in Revit MEP, and are primarily used for heating/cooling and lighting calculations. Primary differences between the remaining objects, Areas and Rooms, include:

  • Areas are 2-dimensional only; Rooms can include volumetric information.
  • Assets such as furniture and equipment can natively know what Room they are in; they have no such internal association to Areas.
  • Architects will virtually always use Room objects inside Revit projects, Areas are less common.
  • Objects such as walls can be set as “Room Bounding”, meaning that they can automatically help define the perimeter of a Room; Areas must use Area Separation Lines to define their perimeters.
  • Areas can be set to comply to near-BOMA standards; Rooms require more manual work to accomplish this.
  • Multiple Area Schemes can be defined for different area utilization plans; Rooms do not have multiple schemes.

Beyond these primary differences, Areas and Rooms behave similarly and can contain similar information to synchronize with Archibus databases. In order to best utilize the existing information coming from the Revit model, Areas will be used for Suite Areas, External Gross, and Internal Gross.

The following topics describe multiple scenarios and the recommended methods for using Revit to generate the desired results: