FM PLACEHOLDER.

A Revit plugin for creating 3D placeholder objects for all rooms and spaces in a model.

ROOM CODING.

When projects implement an asset coding system each room will be considered as an asset and given a geo-referenced asset code. Other assets in the room use the code as the pre-fix to a fuller asset code description that provides system, type and identifier information.

To make this possible in BIM we need a 3D placeholder object to which the asset code can be applied as a Revit parameter.

3D FM PLACEHOLDERS.

Revit models are generally constructed with single or multiple 3D floor slabs on each level. Rooms and spaces are defined in floor plan views using 2D room separators. Although these can be visualised as 3D spaces in most viewing applications, they are not suitable for asset coding or other processes dealing with additional information.

BIM asset coding applications require intelligent 3D objects that can be used as information placeholders. But because its time consuming to manually model these objects for every room in the building, they are generally omitted from most BIM models. The FM Placeholder has been developed to address this issue by rapidly creating intelligent objects for every room inside the building and all spaces on the building estate.

Floor slabs in Revit

2D room definitions in Revit floor plans

3D FM Placeholders in Revit

FM PLACEHOLDER - AUTOMATICALLY CREATE 3D FLOOR OBJECTS IN REVIT.

The FM Placeholder is a Revit plugin for automating the creation of 3D floor objects. It converts the room definitions on the floor plans into 10mm thick 3D objects positioned 10mm above the floor slabs.

There are two modes; Express and Custom. When express mode is used all the 3D floor objects will be created coloured grey. It takes less than one minute to generate the 200+ rooms in the example shown above. The custom mode allows you to apply different colours to the floor objects and is particularly useful when working with external spaces on the site.

INTELLIGENT OBJECTS.

During the conversion process the room name and numbers from the floor plans are written as new Revit parameters under the heading ‘SmartFloors’. This way the floor objects can be used for all kinds of analysis and will be included in a COBie export.

EXTERNAL SPACES.

Most BIM projects choose to detail the spaces outside a building such as car parking, access roads, pavements, forecourts, service yards and areas set to grass or planting as 2D drawings instead of including them into the 3D model. This is generally because of the additional cost/time it takes to create them as 3D objects.

The FM Placeholder will convert these 2D spaces automatically into 3D floor objects, which results in a far more realistic 3D visualisation of the site and provides other advantages when the model is used during construction and operations.

The additional workflow to accomplish this is minimal; the Revit modeller simply uses room separation lines instead of 2D drafting lines when constructing the layout in the floor plan views and gives each space a room name and number, so the 3D objects have intelligence.

DOCUMENTATION PLACEHOLDERS.

When the model is used as an information resource during construction and operations, relevant documentation can be linked to the room objects to provide intuitive point and click document retrieval.

PLACEHOLDERS FOR ROOM DATA.

These objects are used as placeholders for room data in Revit models to hold information about the finishes, fittings, mechanical components and the room’s specifications. When the information is imported through the eRDS Manager it’s written as new Revit parameters on the floor objects.

There are 16 x assets modelled in 3D in the example shown here. Whilst useful for BIM coordination, these assets in no way describe the entire FFE in the room. The non-modelled information coming from eRDS Cloud completes the picture and provides chapter and verse information for fit-out, operations and FM.

All non-modelled fittings and mechanical components can be given asset codes according to the projects protocol, and the entirety can be imported into professional FM systems such as Maximo and YouBIM either direct or through COBie.