AECOsim Building Designer Quick Start Guide Chapter A08 Space Planning 2012 Bentley Systems, Incorporated www.bentley.com/aecosim
Table of Contents Space Planning...3 Sketches... 3 SpacePlanner... 4 Create Space... 7 Working with Space Data... 8 DataGroup Explorer... 8 Searching Data... 9 Modifying Data... 10 Presentation Drawings... 10 Rendered Spaces... 11 Thematic Maps... 12 www.bentley.com/aecosim Page 2 of 13 v2.0
SPACE PLANNING One of the most important activities of a design project is to gather and track information about spaces and their attributes, such as room finishes, paint, wallpaper, carpet, ceiling material, the number of occupants, and the types of equipment or other building assets. While that information is valuable, equally important is tracking room names, departments, floors, ID numbers, and square footage. The other AECOsim Building Designer disciplines take advantage of the Space information for Mechanical and Electrical calculations. AECOsim Building Designer supports two types of space planning workflows. The SpacePlanner feature is a set of Space Planning tools that support the schematic architectural workflow involving lists of programmed space requirements being imported and then used for initial design layout studies, prior to any walls being placed in the model. The Create Space tool that was used in A-Chapter 2 Making the Model Intelligent allows the creation of spaces after walls have been initially laid out and placed in the model by flooding the area bounded by the walls. In both cases the walls can be associated with the spaces so that modifications to the walls or other bounding objects will update the space areas. For this reason it is beneficial to model Spaces in the same model as the interior walls, although not required as the Space associations can be maintained through reference files. SKETCHES The initial layout of a space plan will often be completed by hand in the form of sketches. Digital sketches (a sketch that was created on paper and digitized by photographing or scanning) are easily attached to model files using the Raster Manager. Attaching digital images is similar to attaching references (other model file types, such as DGN, DWG and others), except that a digital image is attached to the DGN. www.bentley.com/aecosim Page 3 of 13 v2.0
SPACEPLANNER In order to access the SpacePlanner tools they must be loaded from the Building Designer pull down on the top menu bar. Once loaded, there will be a Space Planner task on the Building Designer Task Bar. The tools for Creating Spaces, Creating Labels, Searching the data, Creating Thematic Maps, and Configuring the Schema for the Spaces are available on this menu. The Create Space Using Space Planning Dialog is used to access the Space Planning dialog for importing and placing spaces in the model. In the Space Planning dialog the Import Spaces icon will start up the Import Wizard for importing a list of room names or spaces from a delimited text, CSV file, or an Excel file. Typically when the Space Planning dialog box is opened for the first time the Programmed Spaces list is empty. The Import Wizard is the start point for Bentley SpacePlanner's space planning functionality. www.bentley.com/aecosim Page 4 of 13 v2.0
Once the Import Wizard is started up, simply browse to the delimited text file, CSV file or the Excel file and the data will be imported and listed in the wizard. Checking the First row contains field names option will allow column headers in Excel to be used as attribute fields in SpacePlanner. On the Next tab use the Best Match option to match the column headers to similar attribute fields for Space datagroup properties. If matches are not found the attributes can manually be matched using the Properties pull-down next to each Attribute. www.bentley.com/aecosim Page 5 of 13 v2.0
Once the wizard is finished the spaces and all their attributes will be listed in the Space Planning dialog ready for placement. Use the Start Placing icon to select a Space and place it in the design file. As spaces are placed they will be crossed off the list ensuring that each space will only be placed once in the design file. Prior to placement, set the family to Space and select the appropriate part for the space being placed. www.bentley.com/aecosim Page 6 of 13 v2.0
The lock icon can be used to lock the programmed area to insure that the shape placed meets the programmed area. If either the Length or the Width is modified in the dialog prior to placement the other dimension will be adjusted to maintain the programmed area. Use the Attachment point to determine the origin of the shape. Once all the Spaces have been placed from the list the shapes of the spaces can be modified using basic modification tools such as Move, Rotate, Modify, Insert Vertex, and Delete Vertex. Alternatively, the space can be selected and the handles on the space can be modified. As the space shape is modified the Actual Area will be updated and tracked against the static Programmed Area. CREATE SPACE As illustrated in AECOsimBD-A02-Making the Mass Model Intelligent, the Create Space tool can also be used to add spaces to the model after walls or other bounding objects have already been placed in the model. www.bentley.com/aecosim Page 7 of 13 v2.0
The Create Space tool is found on the Architectural design Task bar. There are three methods for creating Spaces: The Draw Space method is to trace out an outline shape for a Space. Select the Draw Space icon then select the shape type; either the Draw Rectangle, Multi-Point Shape, Circle, Ellipse or None. The None option will place a tag, but it does not have a square footage value, such as a Loading Dock or Courtyard. The Convert Shape to Space converts a 2D closed shape to a Space. Select the icon and then select the shape to be converted. The Flood Area to Create Space method is a powerful method for creating Spaces because it can have an associative behavior after placement, if desired. Any fully enclosed area can be flooded to create a shape. This area can either be defined by 2D geometry, 3D solids, or Walls and Compound wall assemblies. If Associate Flood Spaces is selected during Space creation, then the Space Flood will update when the boundaries change. Prior to creating a space, select a Space Type. Space Types are defined in the Datagroup Catalog Editor and are associated with a defined part in the Space family. Therefore, setting the Space Type will also set the correct Family and Part information. Depending on their definition the Space Type may also fill in default Values for the space attributes. Attribute values for spaces include not only areas, and program information, but also room finish information and can be defined prior to placement or by modification of the space after placement, later in the design process. WORKING WITH SPACE DATA Once spaces have been placed in the model from any of the methods outlined above they become a valuable container of information that can be extracted in a number of ways. DataGroup Explorer The data that has been placed on the spaces is tracked in the Datagroup System and is covered in AECOsimBD-A02-Making the Mass Model Intelligent. For information on using the space data to create Room Finish Schedules see AECOsimBD-A16-Schedules and Reports. www.bentley.com/aecosim Page 8 of 13 v2.0
Searching Data The data can also be queried using the Search dialog. The Search dialog is opened from the Open Search Dialog icon on the Space Planner task Bar. Define the catalog type that is being searched, Space, for example. Next, define the criteria by selecting an attribute of that catalog Type, Area Actual, for example, an operator and a value. Next use the Add to Search button to add that criteria to the search. To further define the search, additional criteria can be defined and added to the Search using either an AND or OR operator. Search Criteria can be saved for reuse later by selecting the Save icon and naming the criteria. Once the Search criteria is set, selecting the Search button will open the Search Results dialog. www.bentley.com/aecosim Page 9 of 13 v2.0
Use the Highlight icon to create a selection set of all the selected items in the Search Results list. Modifying Data Once a selection set is made, attributes on all the spaces in the selection set can be modified at one time. Use the Modify Properties tool to open the Edit Space dialog and edit the attributes of the selected spaces. Put a Check mark in the Apply/Edit column next to each value to be modified and change the value. A data point in the view will accept the changes. PRESENTATION DRAWINGS Another important use of the Spaces in the model is the ability to produce colored presentation drawings with labels and legends generated from the data on the spaces. www.bentley.com/aecosim Page 10 of 13 v2.0
Rendered Spaces In AECOsimBD-A02-Making the Mass Model Intelligent DataGroup Annotations were used to add labels to the spaces in the Sheet model. However, it is more efficient to use Architectural Drawing Rules to automatically add the Space labels to the Drawing Model. The color of rendered spaces will be determined by the family and part of the Space. Open the Dataset Explorer from the top menu bar Building Designer > Family & Parts > Single Parts Find the Space family. Select the Cut Patterns tab. The Cut Fill Toggle must be turned on. The Cut Fill Color will determine the Space color. In a floor plan Drawing Model use the Set Reference Presentation to open the View Attributes dialog for the referenced Building Dynamic View. Check the Filled Spaces box in order to have color fill on the spaces in the drawing. In order to turn on the Space labels check the Space Rule Name. By default, the Rule will use the DataGroup annotation cell set by the Annotate Tool Settings. The Space Labels, as well as other annotations placed with the Drawing Rules, can be moved and rotated once they are created. Individual annotations can also be hidden by right-clicking on the annotation and selecting Hide Annotation. www.bentley.com/aecosim Page 11 of 13 v2.0
Thematic Maps The Create Thematic Maps tool found on the Space Planner task bar is used to create colored overlays of the spaces, based not on the family and part symbology, but on criteria defined by the user. Click the New button. New Map appears in the maps list. Select an object class to search for. And click Add Search. The selected object class appears in the searches list. Use the Property, Operator and Value drop lists to define the search criteria. Define a color to display results. Use the options in the Legend builder pop up dialog box to create legend expressions. www.bentley.com/aecosim Page 12 of 13 v2.0
Repeat steps to add more search criteria. Click Place Legend to place a legend on the drawing or Click Save map to DGN to save the map in the DGN file. Click Save to save the map to an external file. Templates rather than Color can be used to define the display of the search results. Templates control various other properties such as Level, and Priority, in order to force the color fill below the line work. MOVIE: Space Planning This movie shows: 1. Importing a Program 2. Placing Spaces 3. Creating a Thematic Map www.bentley.com/aecosim Page 13 of 13 v2.0