AutoCAD Architecture/MEP

AutoCAD Architecture & MEP Spaces

Simon Jones S4-2
Course Summary:
This session will explain how to leverage the space object in AutoCAD Architecture and AutoCAD MEP. Topics will include basic space planning, locating objects according to their room and determining room air flow requirements.

Instructor:
I joined Autodesk Ltd in London in 1985, and started on product support for AutoCAD 2.1. Subsequently I have had a number of roles including AutoCAD AEC and AutoCAD Architectural Desktop development. My current role is the AEC Technical Sales Manager for the Northern Europe and with my background in development, I still find myself "fiddling" with the software in order to implement local solutions, and thus provide additional local support through utilities such as the AutoCAD Architecture UK Content Tools and the AutoCAD MEP Utilities.

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Introduction
Spaces are 2-dimensional or 3-dimensional style-based objects that contain spatial information about a building, including floor area, wall area, volume, surface information and more. Spaces can be used for organizing reports such as statements of probable construction cost, energy requirements and analysis, leasing documents, operating costs and fixtures, and lists of furniture and equipment. The space object used by AutoCAD Architecture and AutoCAD MEP is extremely powerful graphical and design feature. Spaces are a powerful tool to create any type of room-based object, schedule it and create calculations for it. The following sections outline some main features associated with spaces in AutoCAD Architecture and AutoCAD MEP: A better hatched polyline Associative behaviour Tags Display representations Zones Schedule data o Location properties o Occupancy calculation o Air flow calculations Standards Manual boundaries Links to analysis applications o Load analysis o Lighting analysis

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A better hatched polyline

Perhaps, you are already defining rooms in drawings by outlining the room with a polyline and then hatching it. Now lets consider how we might edit the hatched polylines. Assuming the hatch was made associative, we can grip edit (or stretch) the vertices of the polyline and the hatch pattern will update.

However, should we want to make further edits on the polyline which adds or removes vertices then we are stuck with the Polyline Edit Vertex command line options:

No lets see how we can do this with the space object using the AEC Modify Tools and the Subtract and Merge options in combination with other objects such as polylines, circles or other spaces:

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Check out the additional AEC Modify Tools such as Divide, Trim, Crop to slice up the space with ease. Plus if you need to remove a hole in the space, you can use the Remove Void option on the right-click menu of the space. A simple way to add a hole to allow for void areas such as columns and stairwells, is to use an Interference this can be a polyline or another AEC object such as a column. As illustrated earlier, when you grip edit a polyline, you can adjust individual vertices, however, when you grip edit a space you get some more powerful grips. The most obvious is the ability to drag an edge of the space, but you can toggle through additional grip behaviour with the control key for Offset, Add Vertex, Convert to Arc and Offset All:

And if you select a vertex, you can toggle between, Move, Remove and Offset Edge.
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If you spend your life editing hatched polylines then consider how much time you could save if you replaced these with 2D spaces.

Associative behaviour
So far we can see how spaces can be used to define a hatched area more efficiently than a polyline and a separate hatch pattern, but the benefits dont stop there. Like hatch patterns, spaces will automatically fill an enclosed area (e.g. a room), but with the space generation, you can simply set which objects are considered room bounding and you also set a Maximum Gap Size to cope with door openings. This setting is set in the Options dialog:

Associative spaces are generated from boundary objects in the drawing and are updated as the building geometry changes. Updates can be triggered automatically or manually.

Tags
Information about this space can be displayed in a dynamic tag that updates as the information changes. The tag can display any property data attached to the space and typically this could include the name, its area or volume in a variety of units. The example below displays the name of the room (Men) and its area in square feet:

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Display representations
By leveraging the AutoCAD Architecture display system you can choose how the spaces should be displayed. For example, a simple outline may suffice or alternatively you can use hatching or a colour fill, as illustrated here with High Detail and Presentation display configurations:

Zones
In AutoCAD Architecture, a zone is a container in which you can group spaces and other zones. With zones, you structure spaces into various groups, according to different schemes. For example, you can have functional zones (construction, traffic and so on) or zones for building units (Apartment 1 Ground Floor, Apartment 2 Ground Floor, and so on.). In the example below, there is a zone for the Ground Floor and this is split into three other zones, Circulation, Office Space and Toilets. The schedule table reports the area of each zone and the total for the floor:

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Spaces can be contained in more than one zone. For example, you can attach a balcony space to both the Construction Spaces group and the Apartment 1 Ground Floor group. You can set up a restriction in the zone style, so that a space can only be attached to one zone of a specific style. You can setup zone templates to match your standard requirements for consistent re-use in future projects:

Once a zone template is defined, you can then setup a standard hierarchy of zones to which you could attached your spaces to.

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Schedule data
As well as names and areas, the space object can hold all sorts of data that can be extracted into schedule tables or external programs like Autodesk Design Review, Autodesk NavisWorks, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access. This might include a room number, finish details or even facilities management data such as department name and cost centre information. Location properties One very useful property is the location property that will enable an object to extract property data of the space it is located in. For example, you may wish to number doors according to their floor level and room number and then differentiate them with a indexing letter (A, B, C, etc..):

Occupancy calculation Say for example you were laying out a new college and you are following the guidelines laid out in the New Metric Handbook, such as the ones listed below: Teaching space Total space provided Tutorial/seminar rooms Lecture rooms: General teaching rooms First 100 places Additional places

4.65m2/student 13.5m2/staff members 1.1 m2/student 0.9 m2/student 1.85 m2/student

Table source: New Metric Handbook Planning and Design Data

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We could replace calculations on scraps of papers or Excel spreadsheets by creating simple formula that determine the maximum occupancy from the type of space and its area:

This could be expanded further for other rooms types and combine this with zones you can assure that the design has the right mix of use (e.g. The percentage of teaching areas and staff workrooms). Air flow calculations As a building services consultant, you could use the volumes of the spaces and zones to determine air-flows. By default, the spaces in AutoCAD MEP have been set-up to calculate air flows based on room types and ASHRAE methods. However, this could be modified to match CIBSE methods.

Standards
Spaces can display up to four separate boundaries to represent Base, Usable, Net and Gross areas. You can calculate the offsets of space boundaries according to an area calculation standard defined for a drawing. Area calculation standards usually contain country or organization specific rules by which space boundaries must be set up. AutoCAD Architecture provides four predefined area calculation standards: BOMA standard (USA) DIN-277 standard (Germany) SIS standard (Sweden) Basic standard (Generic standard)

To utilise a standard there are a couple of steps to take: 1) In the Options dialog, on the AEC Object Settings tab, select the appropriate standard:

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2) Edit the space properties to set them to be Associative and assign Offset Boundaries to the standard:

3) Finally, ensure the space is classified either through the space style or for individual space objects on the Extended Data tab on the Properties Palette:

Space Style Classification

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Space Properties Classification

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Illustrated below is the BOMA standard and how it would set the Usable, Net and Gross boundaries:

In this example, MVP represents Major Vertical Penetration (e.g. Stairs, lift shafts, atria, etc.) and BCA represents Building Common Area (e.g. lobbies, conference rooms, day-care facilities, etc.). Notice how the polyline and column deduct from Base and Net areas. For more information on the rules of the standard refer to the help file (AutoCAD Architecture Users Guide > Documentation > Appendix 2: Predefined Area Calculation Area Calculation Standards).

Manual boundaries
Where there isnt an applicable built-in standard, you can also manually assign where the net, usable and gross boundaries lie. To do this, edit the properties of the space and set Associative to No and Offset boundaries to Manual:
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This then enables some extra grip edit controls for the space.You must first activate one of more boundaries through one or more of the Edit Boundary Grips:

Then when you select the space you have grips for boundary editing and you have full control over differentiating between usable, net and gross areas:

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Links to analysis applications

Load analysis You can use spaces and zones to aid in calculating the heating and cooling loads for a building plan. After you create spaces and zones, you can assign to them engineering data necessary for calculating loads and airflows. You export the engineering and building information in Green Building XML (gbXML) format. You can use gbXML files in external analysis tools. After you analyse the file, you can import the results into your drawing. You can view the calculated loads and airflows for the spaces and zones, and design your duct systems accordingly. The gbXML format can be read in by analysis applications such as: Arup EnergySave Cymap IES TAS For a full list of applications that support gbXML, refer to the website www.gbxml.org. For effective volume analysis, the AutoCAD Architecture spaces can represent the internal volumes of AEC objects such as walls, slabs and roofs and will even determine open locations as illustrated below:

AEC building objects

AEC volume

Lighting analysis
AutoCAD MEP also has a bi-directional link with the Dialux lighting analysis application. Dialux can be downloaded and used for free from www.dialux.com. Spaces in AutoCAD MEP can be exported out to Dialux and the named spaces are migrated over to named rooms in Dialux. Within Dialux you can add manufacturer specific lights and perform the
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appropriate lighting simulations. Finally, the Dialux lights can be exported back to AutoCAD MEP as devices and can be circuited and assigned to panels.

AutoCAD MEP Spaces

Dialux Analysis

AutoCAD MEP Devices

Summary
If you are using an AutoCAD based product and doing area or volume based calculations, then it is well worth considering how more efficiently you could be working by replacing hatched polylines with the space object to improve current workflow and to take advantage of a host of other benefits.

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