03 Revit Occupancy Load Schedule Using Rooms and Area Plans

Introduction

In this tutorial, we will create an occupancy load schedule in Revit by generating an area plan and utilizing room areas. This process involves setting up an area plan and adding a project parameter that will allow us to interact with Dynamo for effective data integration into our room schedules.

Step 1: Create an Area Plan

1. Open Revit and navigate to the Architecture tab.
2. Select Area and then choose Area Plan.
3. Choose Gross Building for Level 1 and click OK.
4. When prompted, select No for automatically creating boundary lines.
5. To view the area plan in your working environment, recategorize it if necessary.
6. Use the Area Boundary tool to draw a rectangle around the designated office areas, combining them into one area.
7. Go back to the Architecture tab, click on Area, and load a tag for the area.
8. Click inside the boundary to place the area tag, then left-click to select it and hit escape twice.
9. Rename the area to Office Gross.

Step 2: Add a Project Parameter

1. Navigate to the Manage tab.
2. Click on Project Parameters and then select Add.
3. Name the new parameter Gross Area.
   • Set the type to Area.
   • Ensure it is an Instance parameter.
   • Assign it to Rooms.
4. Click OK to create the parameter.

Step 3: Update the Room Schedule

1. Open your Room Schedule.
2. Click on Fields and locate the Gross Area parameter you just added.
3. Add the Gross Area parameter to your schedule.
4. Optionally, you can remove any existing filters to view all data clearly by selecting None for filtering.

Step 4: Use Dynamo to Integrate Data

1. Prepare to use Dynamo to combine the area data from the area plan with the room schedule.
2. Open Dynamo within Revit.
3. Extract the area data from your area plan.
4. Push this data into the room schedule to reflect the area values.

Conclusion

By following these steps, you have successfully created an occupancy load schedule in Revit using an area plan and room areas. The integration with Dynamo enhances your workflow by automating the data transfer into the room schedule. As a next step, consider exploring more advanced uses of Dynamo for further automation and data manipulation within your projects.