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Create volume reading from walls and roof or similar


markymarc

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Hi there, 

 

I have a simple project (a house) with a very complex geometry (nothing parallel, sloping ridge on a pitched roof, half the room a mezzanine storey the other half a void). I need to find out the volume of each room - and I am wondering is there a way to do that (similar to the bucket fill for an area in 2D maybe?) somehow ? I've never needed this in the past, but do now. The volume is defined by walls, roofs, extrudes and slabs. Any ideas appreciated. Thank you ! 

 

Cheers

Marc

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Have a look at the Space Tool + the 'Fit Top of Space to Objects' command. I think in terms of the Walls, Spaces will take into account wall projections/recesses + door/window niches, plus columns, but I'm not sure what will happen if you've modelled some of your structure using 3D solids... But interestingly I think when you use the 'Fit Top of Space to Objects' command the Spaces will take into account other objects, not just Roofs/Slabs: so for example if you have big exposed roof beams (modelled as extrudes) that you want included as part of the Space you have to make sure you select the specific objects the Space is constrained to + exclude the beam objects.

I think

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I tried the space object and found it can work for this. Here is thread:

Here are a few of the pitfalls I encountered.  Your mileage may vary:

  • Got some vwx crashes when running the Fit Top of Space command, so save before fitting.
  • My constraining object was a Roof with Dormers to start. That sort of worked, but left voids in the Space.
  • Per suggestion from @Wes Gardner - Ungroup the Roof object.  Then no voids.
  • Note: part of the fail might be that my Roof was set to Layer Height (=0) then moved up.  But not sure this was problem with the 3d space creation, only did partial tests with roof set to Layer Wall Height.  Stories not present, either.
  • Default OIP for a new Space leaves the "Show 3d" option unchecked.
  • If the Space OIP "Show 3d" was not checked, the Fit Top of Space command did not create a volume at all.
  • If 2nd Fit attempted after checking the Show 3d, box still no volume.
  • Successful workflow required 1)Create new 2d Space, 2)Check the Show 3d box, 3)then apply the Fit Top of Space command.  FYI, the Fit command is in the AEC>Space Planning menu, and has some options to sort out.
  • Tried all the above on another, more complex roof system and ended up always in Force Quit. Ungroup, double ungroup, etc - never did get it to work.
  • Smaller spaces, eg rooms rather than whole floor/story may be more successful.
  • The number of facets to which Top of Space can fit may be limited. 27 was mentioned, but I don't think it is documented.  Smaller spaces would probably help if this limit exists.
  • A custom worksheet or the built in Space Planning Report can show volume of each space and total volume.

 

OK hope your experience is less fraught.

 

-B

 

 

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Thanks guys. Great tips. I've got it mostly working but it did require a fair bit of fiddling, similar to @Benson Shaw's comments : It didn't recognize the velux roof windows but the space just shot through that and saw it as a hole in the roof, so I just added some extrudes over the window. That worked. Then had to split the volume in a few different ones to make sure it works. One location I couldn't get to to work at all : One of the roofs in the model stops about a meter above its bottom point, and the last meter is just modelled with an extrude (Had to do that originally due to the roof geometry as there are different eaves heights either side and a sloping ridge line in the middle). So at the point where the space hits the extrude, it just didnt' recognise the volume under the extrude - it saw it in plan and had the plan go out all the way, but with zero height underneath that. So we ended up just modelling a little triangular extrude into that missing space, reading the volume from the extrude, and manually adding that to the space volume. But we got there in the end, so thanks everyone 🙂

 

 

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