By Garry Stockton
During a recent Revit training course MEP engineers asked why Revit names Spaces differ for Architects?
Within Revit, it is standard procedure for Architects to use Rooms and MEP Engineers to use Spaces to define areas of the building. This is due to how Revit utilises each of these two categories, so each have their place, depending on Building Design or Services Design. An issue with this procedure is that Spaces and Rooms for the same area should have the same name, but this does not happen automatically. This can cause problems with consistency between the Architect’s and the Engineer’s models.
If you are running Pre-2017 platform, be aware that users have to rely on either Naming the Spaces manually or utilising one of the 3rd party tools in Autodesk’s App Store (some of these incur a fee). From the 2017 platform, Revit has given us a tool to help keep Room names and Space names consistent. With this command, we can update all the Spaces in the entire model to be the same as the named Room.
To use the Space Naming, select the Analyse Tab, Space & Zones Panel and pick Space Naming.
Ensure that there are Spaces in the Services Engineering model and Rooms in the Architect’s model.
Select the Space Naming command to initiate it.
The Space Naming dialog box includes the following options for matching names and numbers:
- Names and Numbers – Makes MEP model Spaces match both the Name and the Number of the linked files.
- Names Only.
- Numbers Only.
- You also have the option to select spaces on all levels or just specific levels.
Pick the OK button and Spaces update automatically.
Below shows the Space properties before and after running the Space Naming tool.
The whole process only takes seconds to complete, so this is something that can be done each time an updated or federated Architectural model is received. If the architectural model had a Room name or number change in any way, it will also update the Space information in the Service Engineer’s model.