Precise and Flexible Custom Room Finishes QTO In Revit – YES, it is Possible!

PRESENTER: Good afternoon, everybody. So we're here about this presentation for Revit room finishes and especially about quantity take off. So I'd like to introduce the two speakers-- Merri Lawan, who works for Vinci Construction in France--

MERRI LAWAN: So Vinci Construction is a general contracting company in the construction field. And I [AUDIO OUT] civil engineer [AUDIO OUT] responsible for the beam implementation in Vinci.

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: OK, and my name is Miroslav Schonauer, shortly Miro. So I've been working with Autodesk for 18 years, last 11 as solution architect in consulting. I usually work on the projects that involve heavy API involvement. And I've been working with Merri's team for the last two years, roughly 50% of my time on this project. And this is only one aspect of the things that we've done for them, but my [INAUDIBLE] that Merri will present probably 80%, and I will just explain some background technical details depending on how many of you want to know which API details so Merri, you can start, please.

PRESENTER: Yeah, so just one thing is-- I'm sorry the microphone is a bit bad. So [AUDIO OUT] from yours. It's OK.

So I think the key message here, what we'd like to first introduce, is about the API. It's how Vinci has been developing specific plugins for helping them to develop and to design faster. Merri, can I let you drop the [INAUDIBLE]

MERRI LAWAN: Yeah, OK so this class-- so the target audience of this class is mostly Revit users who want to quickly model entire room finishes-- I mean quickly model in large models-- and at the same time get a very precise QTO. So let me do a quick survey just to have a little bit insight of what you are doing. So how many of you are architects?

OK, working in the construction company? OK, quantity surveyor? OK, interior designer? OK.

And another question is are you actually doing room finishes in Revit and did you originally attempt to extract QTO in Revit, or are you using another tool? So who is doing this in Revit already? OK, and who is doing this in another tool or has struggled with getting QTO? OK, and yeah, last question-- is there any API developer in this room? OK, so--

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: OK, so they're all users. So nobody is a hands-on API developer. OK, so we'll just [AUDIO OUT] rather than any [INAUDIBLE] questions.

MERRI LAWAN: OK. So the objectives of this class is to go through all the out-of-the-box techniques that Revit offers to model room finishes. Going through [INAUDIBLE], we will talk about the pros and the cons of each techniques.

And talking about the pros and the cons is also try to find the right balance between the amount of effort to model room finishes versus the benefits we can get. So the benefit you get is to be able to visualize the finishes and also to get a very precise quantity takeoff.

And in our context, time and human factors are really big constraints. So I will explain you later why. So we have to consider this also. And in part two of this class is to talk about our custom solution to quickly motel room finishes and extract very precise quantity take off.

And just to point out that it's important to, when you try to develop a custom solution, to make good specifications. So what I mean is it's important to have an in-depth knowledge of the software you are trying to customize and also have a good understanding of user needs and the company workflow. And also, it's important to have the right consultants around the table. So we have a partnership with Autodesk, and that's what leads to the success of this custom solution.

So the context-- in my company-- so room finishes in my company, we model room finishes to forecast estimating and planning. Our job is to pour the concrete. We are a construction company.

But we also manage subtrades. And managing subtrades means get overall cost of the architectural interior works. And also, we need to manage the logistic operations.

So that's why we want to model the room finishes and extract quantity take-off. Also, our engineering tool in Vinci is Revit. We massively deployed Revit two years ago in our company.

So we want to use the same tool to manage also the room finishes. So I think you are here-- it's because you know room finishes in Revit is tricky. We see why.

Also the human factor-- so in fact, we are in our company a cost estimating team. Its objective is to get the overall cost of the project and values to subcontract the quantity takeoff to quantity surveyors because we have only-- on an average project in our company, we have only one employee for two workings, two working with. So it's very shot.

And so we have to deal with these constraints. And also because our cost estimating team, we are not used to CAD tools. So we're not used to model complicated things into CAD tools. So they need a very, very simple tool to use in order to model room finishes.

So the outline of the class-- so first, we will see the different out-of-the-box techniques. We will see an overview because we won't have time during the session to go in details. But I'll writes a very detailed handout about each of these techniques. So how many of you have already read the handout? So it's already on the [INAUDIBLE].

PRESENTER: Just, we may have [INAUDIBLE] time to make it simple. I'm told [INAUDIBLE] have more details. We try to [INAUDIBLE]

MERRI LAWAN: And this again, half of the presentation, we will demo you our unique solution. So it will be like demo and a mix of slides. And I would prefer, if you have some question, please maybe wait until the end of the presentation because there will be a lot to demo.

So I prefer go through all the presentation. And then if you have a question, you can ask at the end. And also, we will stay until 6:00 in this room if you want to know more about [INAUDIBLE].

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: So maybe if I could just-- because we are the last lesson, we may overrun 5 or 10 minutes because what I suspect is there will be some of you who are very interested in this. So we can follow up these details question after-- and I think if you stay after from 10 to 5, you know, we can finish earlier. But we will stay in the room for any questions or follow ups.

MERRI LAWAN: Yeah, so first [INAUDIBLE] the different out-of-the-box room finishes techniques-- so as I say, I wrote a very detailed handout on a different room finishes techniques. In the handout, I put some plus and minus markers just to outline if it's a strength or a weakness in our workflow. And I also put lots of tips and tricks you can use maybe later in your own workflow. So it's useful for that.

And I also quote two very great sources. It's coming from AU online. And these are resources that inspired me to create this class and also what inspired me to make this specification in order to develop our custom tool. So exact links are in the handout, and they are very detailed. And one of the presentation is really step by step clicking for each technique.

So this is another view table of the different, out-of-the-box techniques in Revit. So in columns are the different features in Revit you can use to model room finishes. So I split it in three main categories.

So there's the room object which is [INAUDIBLE] presentation of the room in Revit. There's the 3D Revit components. So you can use real physical Revit components to model room finishes.

I decided to group all of them because they have the same pros and cons. And because it's real 3D graphics, it's not the same as a room object. And then there's a third feature called the pen, tool, which is kind of in between. It's not really real 3D, but it's not related to the room object.

So here on each line is our requirements, our Vinci requirements regarding room finishes. So don't pay too much attention because we will go through all these requirements as I'm going through each of these techniques. So first, the room feature-- so we go through each of this features and just quickly summarize the pros and cons of each feature.

So the pros for the room feature is the automatic room bounding detection. So as you may know, if I simply click on the property, if we allow room bounding on the property of the elements, the room object will automatically recognize the interface of the room. So this is good for this.

And we could expect that because it's recognizing the interface of the room, we can get very precise and accurate metrics from this. But we see that is not the case. A good thing with the room feature is it is linked to the key schedule.

So we can quickly create template definitions. My title template definitions are related to the rule. So using the key schedule-- sorry.

And using this, we can quickly assign room finishes. But it will be standard room finishes-- so room finishes related to the floor, the wall, and the ceiling and the print. And we can also use some tools available in Autodesk App Store to quickly generate the room template, the conditions. So this is good for this because in our typical project, we deal with hundreds of rooms. So we don't want to do it manually.

Also, another good feature on the room objectives we can use the color scheme tool, which enables us to quickly have a 2D visual layout of the different finishes of the room. And we can also get for free a legend, an automatic legend. So it's good for our quantity estimator to quickly justify the cost estimation and discuss the program with the client.

So the cost of the room feature-- so as you may know, room feature doesn't-- we can't get very precise metrics. It's very poor metrics. Why? Because of the parameter we have on the room object.

So there's only a few and, for example, if you want to calculate the wall painting of the room, we will create a calculated field with the perimeter and times the height of the room. But we cannot deduce the openings from this formula. Also, we have height parameter on the room called unbounded height.

But we cannot trust to this parameter because when we activate the area and volume computation, it doesn't change. So for example, here the unbounded height is the base of set limit. But when we activate the volume computation tool, if we define a ceiling, it will be a top bounding for the room.

So the real height of the room won't be the unbounded height. And also if you have complicated case like this with a sloped roof, if we have only one height parameter, it's impossible to have the real wall painting. And another issue is the room separator tool. So it's a good tool to define different floor finishes or to have a kind of virtual separation between, for example, a living room and a kitchen with different finishes.

But the bad thing, if we want to calculate the wall paintings, it will-- if we take the perimeter of the room, it will take also the separator as a wall painting. So it won't be true. So [INAUDIBLE] of the room feature, we cannot create any special overrides. So for example, what I mean by special overrides, if we want to have a special feature wall like this with standard finishes and then a wall with a different finishes, we can't create linear finish excluding plinth because we can't define a plinth on the room object.

But if you want additional linear finishes, it's not possible to define it. So for example, linear cladding-- also, we can't create a complex formula. So what I mean by complex formula, for example, if I have different matter finishes along the height of the wall, it's not possible to define it on the room object. And it's not also possible to define specific ceramic coverage on top of the bath or sink, for example.

So the other bad thing with the room objects, it doesn't exist in 3D. So it's only 2D graphics. And I mean through the UI because through the API, if you are a little bit developer, you will see that there is a real volume, but it's not accessible through the UI. And also, we can't extract the room finishes we calculate into an IFC or to share, for example, 3D layout of our room finishes to other parties. So when we export a room object, we have the volume. But we don't have the refinishes attached to the subject because it's only virtual definition.

So now I will talk about the second category, 3D Revit components. So inside this category, we have different features we can leverage, for example, we can use multilayered walls and floors.

What I mean by that-- we can define on the wall type, for example, finish layer already. So it will be quick to model. We can also use the power tools in order to refine the multi-layered walls, for example. So we will see later how it works.

And so how many of you are using Paths-- just curious-- the Path tool to the room finishes? It's a great tool. So you should consider this if you are not using it already.

Then we have the additional wall and floor techniques. So it's about modeling additional walls on top of the core wall, for example. And we have four very special overrides, all kinds of hosted techniques, and phase based. We can create, for example, phase based family. We can use wall sweeps, slab edges which are components that are hosted on the core layer-- on the walls, for example.

So the good things with modeling with actual components, if we have very accurate metrics, all the techniques are schedulable. We can make use of the multi-layered wall definition to quickly create stand out finishes. So if you want, for example, to model the main layer finish, you can integrate these into the multi-layered wall definition. And it will come as you are modeling the wall.

But caution-- if you are using these techniques and you want to extract very precise QTO, just create parts from the multi-layered walls because if you do not this-- for example, here is an illustration. The inside layer, the inside painting, for example, the area will be less than the external layer. But if you are not creating parts, you will have the same area.

So it won't be true. And it's also the case with the [INAUDIBLE]. For example, if you want to have a very accurate [INAUDIBLE] on each layer, you have to create parts from the wall assembly. And you can also use the Parts tool to refine the height of the inside layer.

So for example, if you want to calculate the paint, so the paint won't be below the ceiling. So you can refine the height by activating the [INAUDIBLE] to do this. So it's a very, very interesting tool. And you can also use path tool to define different finish area on the floor layer, for example.

So you can do with these techniques all kind of special overrides. So for example, you can use wall sweep and slab edge techniques to quickly model linear finishes. You can use the power tools, as I say, to create a part division and assign different material inside the same face of the wall. You can also create specific faced base family to assign some specific ceramic coverage, for example. So there's all kinds of techniques you can use, and all of these techniques are well-described inside in the handout and on the additional resources.

But the bad things with modeling with actual components-- we have to undergo multiple type definitions. If, for example, you want to leverage the multi-layered wall techniques and define the inside finish onto the type definitions, you have to manually cut the wall if you have different room finishes-- if you have, for example, a wall which crosses different rooms. So you have to do this to accommodate different finish conditions.

And you have to manage lots of types with lots of names, [INAUDIBLE]. And it will overload your project. So it's very painful. Also slow modeling-- if you are using, for example, the additional wall techniques, you have to model basically twice the wall, for example. And you have also to join attach the geometry each time you have an opening because the opening won't cut through the wall if you don't do this.

And also, if you are using the path tool, you have to always switch from the part original graphic option. If you want to see the parts, you have to switch to the part graphic option. So it's very painful when you are doing this all the time.

And also, you have to switch between 2D the 3D just to be able to sketch very precisely. And also, if you are using the wall sweeps to the create a plinth inside the room, the wall sweep unfortunately won't recognize the room boundary. So you have to manually get back the sweep to be inside the room.

There's no consequences. There's all kinds of techniques. Each technique is good for a specific task. So you have to leverage all these kind of techniques.

So it's not good for our workflow because as I said, our end user will be our cost estimating team, and we are not used to model. It's not in that culture. So we want something very simple. So we can't expect them to leverage all these kind of techniques. And the learning curve is very important.

And also, you have [INAUDIBLE] model, you have to-- there's lots of-- you have to leverage lots of different kind of features and schedules because it's not the same components. And finally, I will talk about the pen tool.

So the good thing with the pen tool, there's no impact on the underlying structures. So when we paint with the pen tool, we don't touch the core layer. So we don't have to manage multiple types.

And also, it allows us to do complex sketches because it's like the Edit Profile on the wall or Edit Sketch on the floor. You can do whatever you want. And then you can apply your specific material on the split face.

But it's very difficult to use. I don't know if you ever tried this tool, but sketching is very picky. You have to-- here is an illustration that you have to not overlap the orange border of the selected face where you sketch. It's very hard to find the resulting split face after that. And it's hard to select also if you want to change the pen, for example.

Doesn't understand the room boundaries. So for example, here, there's a wall crossing two rooms. If you select the face of the wall to sketch, it will take the entire face of the wall, and you have to manually create the boundary by sketching.

And also, you can't paint every object. So when I talk about inconsistencies in Revit, you can actually leverage, for example, the face of the parts and the face of external families. So you can only paint system families. So it's not consistent.

And finally, there's no custom properties. You cannot attach any custom parameter on the resulting split face when you split the face of a wall, for example. So for example, if you want to further calculations, like attaching a thickness, if you want to do volume calculations, it's not possible.

So you cannot attach any phase or any thickness or additional parameters. So it's a very poor object. And also, it's not exportable.

So if you try to export a Revit model with paint faces, you won't see it on the IFC, for example. Or even in Navisworks, even if it's an Autodesk product, it won't recognize. So it's very difficult to share the result.

So conclusion on out-of-the-box techniques-- so the good point, it's really 3D. So you can render it. You can visualize it, and it's very accurate.

But the bad point is it's very slow to model. There's multiple techniques with no consistencies. So the learning curve is very important. And there's no connection between room and the 3D object.

So if you use the actual components to model room finishes, for example, you have no indication about where the room finishes is coming from or what is a room identity related to this room finishes. And we want to have the room identity because we manage the logistic operation. And so we are planning-- we have a due date for the room.

And so the finishes, the phasing of the finishes, should be attached to the face of the room. But we have no indication from using only 3D components. And you cannot leverage both feature, room and 3D components. So for example, we want to be able to have a quick 2D visual layout using the room feature but also have 3D graphics using actual components because we are not related, it's not possible.

A quick word about Roombook Extension-- so who has already tried this? Yeah, it's an extension for Revit subscribers. So it could have been interesting. So we did a try with his tool.

So it's a good point with this tool. It gives us a accurate metrics because it recognized the visible interface of the room. So I think in the background, it's leveraging the room object to be able to calculate this.

So here is an example. You can-- for example, if you have a wall crossing several rooms, it will recognize only the interface related to this room. And also, for the column, for example, the part inside the ceiling won't be paint. So it's very accurate.

Also, the QTO, the quantity take off, extracted by this tool is related to the room. So as I said, we need this because we want to be able to plan the room finishes delivery. So we want to be able to have a relation between the room and the room finishes. And we have also per the room finishes, if it's related to a wall finish or floor finish or ceiling finish.

But the bad points in this tool, there's no key scheduling. So the way to create the room template definition, for example-- so the way to create room template definition, you have to go through the UI of the Roombook Extension. So it's a manual process. Maybe it can be automatized, but it's a pity that it's not reality to standard keys room style schedule.

Also, you cannot do-- the special overrides are very limited because-- so there is a feature to override some face, select face, and select element. But it works only on room bounding elements when you select an element and in-place families. But it doesn't work on an external family, for example. It can't recognize the face of an external family loaded in the project. And I think it doesn't work with the face of the part also.

And also the results are not integrated to Revit. So it's a very separate tool. And if you want to see the results, for example, you have to open the UI and navigate through the tree node here and select the element to see the corresponding finishes.

But it's not integrated to Revit, so it doesn't generate early finishes in the Revit documents. And also when you want to, you cannot see the material graphics of each room finishes. So for example, if you have different material, you cannot see it.

So you see only highlight color, which corresponds to the selected elements on the tree node. Because there is no integration of the resulting Revit, you cannot leverage the result to connect it to our global quantity takeoff tool. So I will explain later we have developed partnering with Autodesk for a global codification tool, and we cannot connect the result because the results are not inside the Revit documents.

So now I will talk about Vinci's custom solution. So it will be live demo. So this is a typical project.

So I decided to choose a very typical project. It's about 250 rooms. It's 2,000 square meters. I don't remember in square feet. [INAUDIBLE] yeah.

So it's a typical project, and our cost estimating user has only two weeks, one person, two weeks, to extract the quantities of this kind of project. So in this project, we set up different schedules. So we have a room stage schedule.

So it's where we define different finishes type based on the room type. So for example, if you have offices, if you have bedroom, if you have a corridor, we have specific material style. So we define it here.

And we do differently. We attach real material parameters. We decided to do this because in the default template, Revit template, it's only text field.

But we want to attach real material in order to have regular fix when we generate the finishes. And when we have this room style schedule, so we can create a scheduler for the room in the project. So it's only definitions.

The room doesn't have to be already inserted in the project. So we can generate this type of schedule, room schedule definition, based on an Excel spreadsheet. And you can use some plugin to do that, available in the Autodesk store.

So when you deal with hundreds of rooms, it's very-- it's a good feature. And the way we assign the room finishes is we just group the room by their name-- so by their type. And then we can quickly assign the key which correspond to the site of finishes we defined previously in the room style schedule. So for example, if we have only 15 type of room in the project, it's only 15 clicks to do this.

So in our demo, we will only consider a current floor-- so this type of floor. So we have several apartments. And on each apartment, we have several room type, like a living room, kitchen, and bedroom and et cetera.

So I will quickly demo how it works and how we can quickly generate room finishes based on that. So going to an empty project, I will just show you how-- in 3D, we have no room finishes. So I'm not cheating. And I will go to a view plan.

So I will insert some few rooms in the project because the definitions are already set up. You're just about inserting from a list the different room. So maybe I will--

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: So yeah, so while Merri's--

MERRI LAWAN: While I'm doing this, I will let him Miro explain what's happening in the background.

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: Yeah, so while we let Merri concentrate on doing this-- we decided to do everything live. So we are not cheating. Merri is doing everything live. And what he's doing now is just standard feature of Revit.

Now the thing that you see here, the name of the room, that's not the room inserted. He just put 3D letters there to remind him what to do in a demo. But he's inserting these rooms live because he created room finishes that we'll talk about a little bit later how they work. And he's now adding rooms from his schedule-- so from unplaced place rooms into the model. And for these about 10 or 15 rooms, we will demonstrate how with one click, we can generate room finishes. So we wanted first to generate to explain what it is, and then we'll go backwards and explain a bit more detail what is behind it.

So as I say, what he's doing now is he's just adding those unplaced rooms that are in the schedule. But also to reemphasize what Merri did, they also do the schedule keys so that for each type of the room, they automatically care what is the finish of the floor, what is the finish of the wall and the ceiling, and what is the plinth. And what they do is they use the same name as the strings that are native Revit parameters. But we also have custom shared parameters which are really pointing to real materials because we are going to use real materials to create what is our room finish object, which in the second, you will see what it is, and we'll explain a little bit more about--

MERRI LAWAN: So now thank you, Miro. Now I finished. So when I select the room I just insert-- so as you can see, all the standard material are attached to the room thanks to the key schedule. So it's there.

So when we launch our plug-in-- so I will just go to a 3D view-- launch our custom plug-in. So it's called Room Finishes Manager. So when I launch it, it we read all the rooms inserted in the project. So you can-- you have an option also to not read the unplaced room.

Because sometimes, you can have only room definitions, but it's not already inserted in the project. And we have a specific classification so we can classify the room by their key. And we will see later we have another tool on a big project. We can classify you also by level and zone, the room. So it's good to navigate.

And then-- so I will just quickly update all the room finishes. Oh no, it's a global update. OK.

And as you can see-- I don't know if you see here. The tool will read for each room the standout finishes based on the key schedule. So all the standout finishes like the wall finish, the bottom finish, and the ceiling finish will be read in this tool. So that's why it's read only.

And it will read also the print option, the print material. So it will generate the room finishes based on all this information. So we really leverage the key scheduler feature. We don't want to reinvent another tool to define the room style. And so we just read this information and quickly generate the finishes.

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: Yeah, so at the bottom, you can see progress bar because we are doing lots of rooms at once. Merri will demonstrate later room by room. And also at the moment, what he's doing, he's just using the default option-- So no overrides, no special overrides. That he will demo later.

And for the rooms of this complexity, we'll see later there is a lot of complex calculations that go in the background because what we will do is we will really create generative adaptive components and use them as room finishes. You will see the result in a second. So for average for these kind of rooms with maybe six, seven walls, one door, a couple of windows, it takes about four or five seconds-- depends on your computer-- which is relatively quick because when we started prototyping the idea, we thought it may be slower. And even for curved walls, you can generate things for curved walls. It takes longer, but just to give you the order of magnitude, I would say for [INAUDIBLE] room, four seconds.

MERRI LAWAN: Yeah, and for the project the overall project, for example, it was about 20 minutes to generate all the room finishes. So--

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: Yeah, we can maybe take one question. [INAUDIBLE]

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: Oh, that's a custom box. So that's a completely custom module.

MERRI LAWAN: Yeah.

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: So that's a custom module that we developed that we are going to explain to you in the next 20 minutes what we've done.

MERRI LAWAN: Yeah, it's our custom solution. So it's an add-on. It's a plug-in, Revit plug-in.

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: It's a plug-in. It's not a default Revit feature. You can't do that in Revit. Yeah.

MERRI LAWAN: It's like Room Book but--

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: --but running in Revit.

MERRI LAWAN: --our custom Room Book, yeah.

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: [INAUDIBLE]

MERRI LAWAN: So as you see here, it generates a triangle based on the room finishes definitions so for example, if I'm selecting this triangle, I will see that there is the right material applied on this triangle. And there's also other property attached to this triangle. So for example, I have the room information, where it is, the room finish's location.

Is it on the side of the room or bottom or top? And so we have all of this kind of information attached to this. I can quickly show you when I did this triangle. So as Miro explained, it's an adaptive component with three points which allow us to two place it and adapt to all kind of situations.

So this is a Revit API who is doing this in the background. So now it's generated. So now we have to do a special override because it's not done. Sometimes we have-- for example, we have to create some specific ceramic coverage, et cetera.

So I will talk about how we implement this. Just going back to presentation. OK, So I talk already about this. Yeah, we quickly-- so we quickly generate all the room finishes triangle when we have already explained this.

So yeah, so now just before going to the specific overrides, just to explain what the benefit we get already from this finishes generation, so we have now the net area from the wall bounding because the triangle recognizes the different openings. We will get also the net length for the plinth because it would recognize the door.

Because it's a triangle, we can also attach some specific properties. And in this example, it's a triangle with one millimeter thickness. So we take this as a standout the thickness but we can-- if we want, we can-- to calculate some volumes. We can define automatically a specific thickness, and it will calculate automatically the corresponding volume.

So we suppose that one millimeter-- because we wanted to get only, for the moment, the area in the linear, we don't pay attention to the volume. But later, if you want to calculate the volume, it's possible because it's a real 3D geometry with a thickness. So because it's slow leveraging in the background the room bounding, so it will understand the complex 3D room bounding.

For example-- so a few examples. For example, it will understand the curved wall. It will understand the slope wall. If you have a slope roof, it will also understand this as soon as you activate the area and volume computation.

So here is the-- if you remember, when I was talking about the room feature, there's a room separator tool which enabled us, for example, to define in the same area an enclosed area a kitchen and a living room. So it's good, but when we wanted to calculate the wall paintings, we don't want to create finishes on the boundary here. So we demonstrate that we have a specific option to not create this.

So I can go here. And I will also show you a good thing with this tool. I don't have to go back to a 2D view to select the room. I will show you. I'm just selecting the corresponding triangle here because I know that it will be in this room. And because we write the room ID on the triangle, so there's a link between the room and the room finishes. So we are able through our tool to select the room on the list based on the finished triangle.

So now that the corresponding room is selected on the tree node, I can quickly change the option. So now it will generate room finishes on the room separator. So if I update only this room, so we have all kinds of updates.

We can update only room visible or only selected room or all the rooms of the project. Just for performance issue, we wanted to be able to decide what we want to generate. So now I select this option, as you can see. We can generate room finishes on room separator, but we don't want to do this.

So that's why we created this option. So if I'm going back-- it will go back--

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: [INAUDIBLE] there are some little [INAUDIBLE] the 3D version of the room. Some wall parts is telling you it's coming from [INAUDIBLE]. It's not telling it's coming form the wall. The wall basically is correct. So we use that as a kind of temporary trick to fix it, but we found a much better way to find this Revit API, [INAUDIBLE].

MERRI LAWAN: Yeah.

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: Very quick question here because we can have questions at the end, yeah.

AUDIENCE: All right. For the wall, so normally you would have a floor to ceiling [INAUDIBLE] certain portions that--

MERRI LAWAN: Yeah--

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: You will see--

MERRI LAWAN: I think you can see--

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: --overrides. So at the moment, it's exactly what you define as a room. It's a floor to ceiling.

But you will see later how you can define formula as different overrides and different--

MERRI LAWAN: Yeah, and I don't know if it's your question, but here, you can see that there's-- we don't paint the portion inside the ceiling because it's recognizing only the room boundings. So if you have a ceiling, we don't paint above the ceilings. And this is what we want.

So I don't know if your work flow is the case, but we don't want the room finishes inside the ceiling. And here it's just in the plane view. We create a separation between the kitchen and the living room with the separator tool in Revit.

So as I said, 3D finishes are linked to the room. So we write the room information on the room finishes triangle. So we can get best of both worlds.

So we have now room finishes for-- we can average a room feature for the inner finishes and the room style definition. And we can leverage 3D components for accuracy and for visualization. So it's also easy to select a room in 3D.

So I've already said that. And we can leverage the new section box tool in Revit to just quickly isolate a room by just selecting a triangle. So just to quick demo-- so if, for example, if I select this, I can launch the plug-in select the room based on the triangle. And then we have a specific option if you check on the property here.

So this is a triangle, but I can select the real room associated to the triangle. And then I can use the section box tool to just isolate quickly the room. So it's a very-- we didn't plan to have this kind of feature, but it comes [INAUDIBLE] with--

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: Something's come up-- you know, if you design all the option in UI, some things you work out later that comes for free or comes out of the bushes, as you say.

MERRI LAWAN: So as I said, this is a special room finishes triangle. Good things, a good point-- we have a good separation of responsibilities. So because it's a triangle on top of the core layers, so we don't touch the underlying suture. So we don't have to manage multiple types.

It's also independent. So the visibility graphics are independent. So we create a specific subcategory inside the family just to be able to switch on and off the room finishes. We also decided to pin the room finishes because we don't want to have unwanted displacement and because it's automatically drawn in the Revit document.

So we don't want to use it to displace this. And we can leverage special features-- name selecting elements. So if we uncheck this, we are sure to not select the room finishes. So it's a good feature.

And because it's an independent object, we can independently face the room finishes. So that's a good point. And we plan to later automatically apply-- the user will apply face on the room object. And with the plug-in, we will automatically apply the corresponding phase in the room finishes. So we will be able to face the room finishes based on the face of the room. And for--

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: --we have about 10 minutes to [INAUDIBLE] regular session [INAUDIBLE] won't be offended [INAUDIBLE]. But there are still quite a few [INAUDIBLE].

MERRI LAWAN: So it works also with the copy-monitor tool. So we can, for example, have our structural engineering team which works in a separate Revit file. And just by copy monitoring and create room on the house file, we can generate the room finishes on the house file so it won't overload the structural file.

And we plan to support later the specific feature. I don't know if-- you can create room based on the linked file, in fact. So we will avoid the painful process of copy monitoring all the room bounding objects on the house file in order to create a room. We will be able to create directly room finishes based on the linked file.

So as I said, it's been connected. So we have a special update, a setup update button. And for example, if you move the colon, it will automatically update the room finishes. And if we delete a room, we have a specific cleanup button which will delete automatically the [INAUDIBLE] room finishes.

So I will demo this. But I will go to the special override because these are really interesting. So the first demos, we can change, for example, the plinth height.

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: Yeah, so in a nutshell, what Merri has shown is the default things. It's probably 80-20 principle. With 20% of effort, you get 80% immediately.

But now all the special overrides case, which are not possible through the native features, like changing the plane, adding additional linear elements, he will show how, through the tool, we can achieve all these things. I'm not sure if he'll have time to demo live everything, but he's got nice pictures and examples of each one. So maybe if you demo a few, Merri--

MERRI LAWAN: Yeah.

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: [INAUDIBLE] yeah.

MERRI LAWAN: So we can also override-- so that specific option to have a different-- override the finishes for column if it's very different from the wall. So just by-- if I'm selecting the room here, I can have an option just to override the column, the inside column. So I can specify a different matter here. So that's why you have the column with specific material here.

So I can change this to another material update. So we have a-- so as you can see, the color changed the material. We have another kind of override. It's Add Array override.

So this is very interesting because we can add face by UI selection, and it will understand the face on the external family. So for example, if I can create some ceramic coverage on the bath, add another face here-- the same material-- and also add this face here and just quickly update. So we can leverage lots of things.

We have also an add linear tool where we can select reference edge in the model-- So all kind of edge coming from the 3D components. So here, you can see the Add Array override. So we just quickly demonstrate how we can select here lines.

MIROSLAV SCHONAUER: Yeah, so in this case there is a kind of kitchen corner. So kitchen element is not part of the room boundary. So because plinth was created only on the wall, which are room boundary, Merri wants to extend the plinth over that family.