ARCHIBUS Smart Client Extension for Revit

Preparing Suite Area Plans and a Suite Inventory

If you are performing lease and real estate business functions, you typically do not need a space inventory at a room level of detail, since you are not performing the day-to-day operational functions around the room. You may, however, need a suite-level inventory; for example, if you intend to perform chargeback to tenants based on suite area, you will need to develop a suite inventory.

Prerequisite:

Create an Internal Gross Area Plan and Area Boundaries (External Chargeback)

To generate a suite-level inventory of your building, you will need to return to the use of Area Plans and Area objects – not rooms. To do this, you will need to:

Step 1: Create a Suite Area Scheme and Area Plan

To generate a new Suite Area Scheme and Suite Area Plan:

From the Ribbon, select Home, click on the drop-down arrow next to Room & Area, and select “Area and Volume Computations.”
Click the Area Schemes tab of the dialog box that appears, and then the “New” button in the upper right corner to create a new Area Scheme.
Rename this Scheme “Suites.”
From the Ribbon, create a new Area Plan by selecting Home/Area button and then Area Plan. These Suite Area Plans will appear in their own “Area Plans (Suites)” section of the Revit Project Browser.
In the New Area Plan dialog, select “Suites” from the top drop down list, and then select the level that you want this Suite Area Plan to be associated to.

Step 2: Create Area Boundary Lines

As with Internal Gross Areas, when working in these types of Area Plans, there are a number of additional Area Types that become available. For the purposes of generating Suite Areas, any area type other than Exterior Area or Store Area may be used. A detailed breakdown of how the different Area Types associate with each other follows.

How Different Rentable Area Types Are Measured Depending on their Bordering Area Type

Note: These rules apply only to boundary lines that were automatically placed by Revit or by creating boundary lines from the “pick lines” option in the Draw panel. If you manually sketch Area Boundary Lines, the associations listed below no longer apply.

Rentable Area Scheme Types
Area Type	Selected Bordering Area Type	Measurement Rule
Building Common Area
Building Common Area	Building Common Area, Office, Store	Area Boundary measured from wall centerline.
Building Common Area	Exterior, Major Vertical Penetration	Area Boundary measured from wall face bordering Building Common Area.
Office Area
Office Area	Building Common Area, Office, Store	Area Boundary measured from wall centerline.
Office Area	Exterior, Major Vertical Penetration	Area Boundary measured from wall face bordering the office area.
Exterior Area
Exterior Area	Exterior	Area Boundary measured from wall centerline.
Exterior Area	Store	Area Boundary measured from wall face bordering Exterior Area.
Exterior Area	Any other areas	Area Boundary measured from the wall face bordering the other area.
Floor Area
Floor Area	Office, Store or Building Common Area	Area Boundary measured from wall face bordering other area.
Floor Area	Exterior, Major Vertical Penetration	Area Boundary measured from the wall face bordering the floor area.
Floor Area	Floor Area	Area Boundary measured from the wall centerline.
Major Vertical Penetration
Major Vertical Penetration	Major Vertical Penetration	Area Boundary measured from the wall centerline.
Major Vertical Penetration	Exterior	Area Boundary measured from the wall face bordering the Major Vertical Penetration area.
Major Vertical Penetration	Any other area (except Exterior)	Area Boundary measured from the wall face bordering the other area.
Store Area
Store Area	Major Vertical Penetration, Floor	Area Boundary measured from the wall face bordering the Store area.
Store Area	Exterior	Area Boundary measured from the wall face bordering the Exterior area.
Store Area	Building Common Area, Office, Store	Area Boundary measured from the wall centerline.

Note: Area Boundary Lines can cross over each other as needed, but they should not be drawn one on top of the other. If you do this, you will receive a warning from Revit that your boundary conditions might not behave correctly.

Step 3: Add Suite Areas Objects to the Model.

Once all Area Boundary Lines have been placed, you can start to add Areas to the model.

From the Ribbon, select Home/Area button.
As with the Gross Building areas discussed above, it is recommended that the “Floor Area” Area Type be used with Suites, “Building Common” be used for the ARCHIBUS SERV table, and “Major Vertical Penetration” be used with the VERT table.

Note: As Areas are placed (or at any time during the lifecycle of the model), you will have an option of going to an Area’s properties and changing the Area Type, so that Revit can start automatically manipulating the Area Boundary Lines that were generated from the “Pick Lines” option with walls.

Next Step

The next step ti to create chargebacks based on the suite you are leasing to tenants.

See Creating Chargeback Based on Revit Suite Areas.