Revit as a Database Part 2

This is a follow-up to the video I created back in February. In response to a user request: "I wish I could reference the total from one schedule as a calculated value in another schedule." True, that is not doable in Revit. But it got me thinking, I bet I could do that in Access using Revit DB Link. Here are the results.

Keep in mind, this is a very simple example. I would like to hear feedback, especially other "real" uses you could find for this.

Comments

[Joshua Carrell]

Can you do the LEED EQ 8.1 day-lighting calculations? Daylight factor = (area of window/area of room)*(Tvis-actual/Tvis-min)*Window geometry factor. If I remember it right. The Tvis-actual and window area from windows properties, room area from the room properties, and the tvis min and Window geometry factor from the LEED reqs.

[Tom Vollaro]

Joshua, that is a great question. In theory, that sounds completely feasible with this method. As long as the data exports (and any shared param will), you will be able to query it and generate a report. I will leave it up to you to give this a try!

[Mathew Miler]

This sounds really interesting. I like the ability to start to use a revit model in a BIM way that is taking data and using it in other ways then just construction. I see that we could use this tool to help with building code analysis.

[Peter McCarthy]

I'm really interested in this but before now i never really knew how it worked, watching your video gave me a good understanding and i'm going to start taking a look. one idea i was thinking of is creating a list of wall types,buildups and there marks in excel file for the office standards, if it can be feed into all the exsiting models and get them up to date this would be great, as you know if you update the revit templete files the existing projects are not effected and it is time consumming transfer standards and change marks on existing wall type etc. This could be a BIM managers answers to a lot of long hours of work

[Robert]

Them demo is great, but I think you hit on the key point at the end. There is a learning curve, and while that is not a problem for some people that is not a problem, it would be nicer (and far more useful) if this functionality was native to Revit.

That said, couldn't you add a shared parameter to rooms (ex: Percent of Net), export the Revit database, then write the query data back to the shared parameter in the Room table, then update the DB to the Revit file with DBLink?

[Tom Vollaro]

Robert, that should work in theory. Unfortunately, Access is not letting me do it...something about not using an "updateable query." Any other database mavens out there want to chime in?