Space Tool - What it is good for?

[Tom Klaber]

Absolutely nothing as far as I can tell, but I am sure I am wrong since it has its own dedicated pallet.

In practice, what are they used for? I have only used them once to create a table that showed square footage by room and floor. I have tried to use it for a room finish schedule, but it just does not work. Every space assumes you only have a N, E, S, and W wall. Feature walls, or rooms that are not square, can not be scheduled using this tool. I have this sneaking suspicion that there is a whole world I a missing out on.

What do you use this tool for?

[Dieter @ DWorks]

Like you say yourself: get the area off it and for schedules.

[Tom Klaber]

If that is it, then that is it. I was hoping they were more powerful than they first seemed.

The senior associate here simply uses rectangles for that. I have been trying to get him to use spaces instead, but I have been unable to convince him why they are all that much better.

[Dieter @ DWorks]

but I have been unable to convince him why they are all that much better.

- They can be bound to walls (2013)

- They can semi-auto update (faster then manual update)

- can hold many info for reports

- The label can be customised to show things like area, height, ... and linked to your data

- You can only show the label so the actual shape will not be in the way

- Putting the label outside makes a leader line visible.

- Labels can be switched very easy

- ...

[Tom Klaber]

Next project, I will give them a go again.

[Dieter @ DWorks]

It will take time to set and customise the space tool, but when done, it's nice to work with.

[D Wood]

Great post Tom, but I can't get that d**n song out of my head now.

[Danielj1]

If you're doing commercial work involving multiple spaces, and indeed requiring complex space planning activities, this is a wonderful tool in the arsenal (along with several of the other tools in the Space Planning palette). Even if you're doing smaller projects, the space tool has capabilities that speed up the process of moving from bubble-diagram planning to quickly creating 3-D volumetric representation of spaces, to the installation of walls, calculation of volumes, and other useful data-aggregation activities.

Dan J.

[Tom Klaber]

Its true, I get calls asking for Square Footages, and I always have to jump into the file and draw a polygon. If we had spaces feeding that info to a schedule, it could be save some frustrations.

[mike m oz]

Spaces can do that Tom.

[Tom Klaber]

Thanks, I know. I phased my post poorly. My wonder is: is this function enough to warent the time needed to set it up and maintain it. I am going to test on the next project.

Thanks for the template!

[David Sassano]

When I use the labels created by Spaces in different scaled viewports, the spacing between the text gets all messed up.

Any fixes or workarounds.

[PVA - Admin]

Is it just the scale of the viewport that was altered, or in the Advanced Properties in the viewport Object Info, has the Text Scaling been changed as well?

[David Sassano]

I changed the text scale in the viewport, because the viewport is an enlarged plan.

The size of the text changes just fine. But the space between the rows of text did not change accordingly. So in the viewport, which is 3 times larger than the design layer that the space is in, the text is .33. But now I have these huge gaps between the room name and the room number below it.

[PVA - Admin]

Send that file in to tech@vectorworks.net with "ATTN Jim" as the subject and I can have a look. Mark which sheet layer I should be looking at if there are many, please.