Create and Review Floor Plans
Now that you understand the export settings, it is time to export your first level as a snapshot.
In step 2, you see the list of levels in the Revit model. Note that not every Revit level includes rooms, spaces, or areas. Check the Rooms, Spaces, and Areas columns to get a quick sense of which levels are the ones with the data that you need.
The Revit advanced sample model includes 3 levels with Rooms:
01 - Entry Level
02 - Floor, and
03 - Floor
For each of those levels, you need to:
Create and review the floor plans
Set the extrusion height.
Creating and Reviewing Floor Plans
To create the floor plans, click on the small (+) icon on the right side and select "Create Floor Plan". This will create a new floor plan for this level and open it up in Revit.
If the plan already exists, you will see the options to "Open Floor Plan" and "Delete Floor Plan".
Pollination floor plans are standard Revit views with customized visibility and graphics to make it easy to only see the relevant information. In particular, the Pollination floor plan views highlight walls, windows, rooms, areas, and spaces in addition to separation lines.
Placing rooms
After creating the floor plans, ensure there are no missing rooms with exterior walls in the model. This is an important step to ensure you won't miss any exterior windows and doors in the export process. Even though you can place rooms in the Model Editor, you cannot add windows to those rooms.
In the Revit sample model, there is a missing room on the third floor that must be placed before exporting the rooms from Revit. There are also smaller missing rooms on the south side between the bathrooms.
You can place a room in Revit by selecting the "Room" button under the "Architecture" tab. For more information about creating rooms, see the Revit documentation.
Setting up the Extrusion Height
After reviewing the plans and placing rooms, you should set the extrusion height for each level. You can do this either by typing the number manually or by right-clicking in the cell and selecting the top level. The plugin calculates the extrusion height based on the difference between the level elevations of the current level and the top level.
If the extrusion height is left empty, Pollination tries to guess the room height based on the Revit geometry, which is unlikely to be what you would want in an energy model.
After placing the missing rooms and setting up the extrusion height, you're ready to review and export the rooms. We will do this process one level at a time.
Frequently Asked Questions
I don't see any rooms, spaces, or areas in the generated plan. What should I do?
Most Revit Architecture models include Rooms or Areas. The Revit Mechanical models include Spaces. If you don't see any Rooms, Spaces, or Areas, ensure you have selected the correct Phase(s) in the Export Settings.
If you still see the count of all the rooms, spaces, and areas being 0, you need to place the rooms yourself. See above for more information.
When I click to place a room, it doesn't create the room. Instead, I see a small blue box. What do I need to do?
Revit calculates the perimeter of the rooms based on the room bounding elements in the plan. If you can't place the room, it usually means that some parts of the room elements are not Room Bounding. Use the Pollination "Show Bounding" button to highlight the Room Bounding elements in the plan view and identify the leak.
Once you find the leak, you can either change the element properties to be Room Bounding or use a Revit Room Separation Line to stop the leak. You can find the Room Separation line under the "Architecture" tab and next to the "Room" button.
Can I only export the building perimeter to create a core and perimeter model?
Yes. Export the rooms to the Model Editor. There, you can combine the rooms to include the exterior walls and then use the "Split Core and Perimeter" command.
Can I merge the rooms with similar program types and orientation into spaces?
Yes. Export the rooms to the Model Editor, and then use the "Merge Rooms" command to merge them.
Should I build a separate level for plenums in Revit? What's the best practice for modeling floor and ceiling plenums?
We don't recommend building a separate level for plenums in Revit. You can easily add the plenums to the rooms inside the Model Editor. See here for more information.
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