After the model is constructed, we can retrieve quantity information from the model. In this session, I am going to use two examples to show you how to access quantity information from the Revit BIM model. First, let us open the basic sample project provided by Revit. If you forgot to install that project, we have prepared a copy on the course website. After the project is opened, scroll down the Project Browser in the left bottom corner and find the category called “Schedule/Quantities”. Click on the plus sign in front of the category name so we can see all of the schedules under this branch. Open the “Planting Schedule” sheet and click on the “View” tab, then, the “Close Hidden Windows” button on the “Windows” Panel. Now, we have closed all the windows except the Planting Schedule one. Next, click on the “3D House icon’’ in the Quick Access Toolbar to open the 3D view. Click on the “View” tab, then the “Tile Windows” button on the “Windows” panel to display the schedule and 3D view side by side. Now, let us pick a cell in the schedule to click, and we would see some elements in the 3D view turned blue. This means that those blue elements are associated with the row of the cell we have picked. Then, move the mouse to the 3D view and select one of the elements to delete. Here, we can see the total number of the elements in the row decrease. Also, if there isn’t any element of the same type left in the model, the whole row for that element type will be automatically deleted. This tells us that schedules in Revit are not independent of their corresponding elements in the BIM model. Instead, they are synchronized with each other. Let us move to our next example and I am going to show you how to sort a schedule according to the desired order. Close the current project and open the MEP example provided by Revit. This example is also available on the course website. Just like our previous example, after opening the project, we can find the Schedule/Quantities category in the Project Browser. Click on the “Level 2 HVAC Zone schedule” sheet to see an unsorted schedule with three columns. Their names are “Level”, “Name”, and “Calculated Cooling”. In the "Property" palette, under “Other” category, we can find the “Edit” button for the “Sorting/Grouping” property. Click on the button, and the “Schedule Properties” window would pop up. Now, in the “Sort By” drop-down menu, we can choose the sorting field we want to apply. Also, we can apply multiple sorting fields to one schedule by choosing all sorting fields in the order we prefer. We can see there are three options in the drop-down menu now, including “Level,” “Name,” and “Calculated Cool Load,” which are the column names of the schedule. We can go to "Fields" tab to select additional fields for sorting the schedule. Here we only need to click on the right arrow icon to add these selected fields to Scheduled Fields. Then Click OK to finish adding them. Once we have added needed fields to our schedule, the whole schedule can be sorted according to these fields. Revit can also help us to merge the instances in the schedule when we sort them. Let us open the "Schedule Properties" window now. In the “Sorting/Grouping" tab, assume that we want to sort by “Level”. So, we select the option “Level” in the drop-down menu and uncheck the “itemize every instance” checkbox. After clicking OK, you will see only one row in the schedule because all the instances are now merged to the same row. If you want to see all the instances in the schedule, just click the checkbox “itemize every instance.” There are three more check boxes under the text “sort by”. There are Header, Footer, and Blank Line. If you check the Header, a title would be added to every group. As you can see, there is an extra “Level 2” text in front of the group for the instances in the level 2. If you want to add a blank line between every group, then you can check the Blank Line box. Moreover, Revit has some default calculation functions that can be applied to the model data in the schedules. To add this calculated row in the schedule, we need to click on the “Formatting Tab.” Then, we can select a field and change the column format for that field. Let us choose “Calculated Cooling Load” from the fields and leave the other format settings in their default values; then select “Calculate totals” in the drop-down menu to add up all the values in that field. To show the totals, it is necessary to open the "Schedule Properties" window and check the Footer in the “Sorting/Grouping” tab. The totals will appear at the bottom of each group in the schedule. We can choose the footer type in the drop-down menu on the right side of the footer check box. For this case, we select “Totals only” to get just the totals. Revit provides us a filter option to filter the instances in the schedule. First, we click on the "Edit" button in the row called “Filter.” Choose “is at or above” option in the drop-down menu and you will get all the elements “at or above” level 2. Of course, we can choose any option in the drop-down menu to serve our need; we can also add more than one filter condition. It is possible to change the cell color in the schedule by using the conditional format option. To do this, open the "Schedule Properties" window and click on the “Formatting” tab. Here let us use "Calculated Cooling Load" as an example. After the field is selected, click on the “Conditional Format” button. Here we select the “Greater Than” option in the drop-down menu below the text “Test,” and replace the value with 5,000 watts and set the background color to Red. So now we can see the backgrounds of some cells in the “Calculated Cooling Load” field turn into red. The values in these red cells are higher than 5,000 watts. We can export the schedules in a format compatible with Microsoft Excel to help us generate our report quickly. To export the schedules, click on the application menu in the left top corner, select Export, Report, and Schedule. Then, choose a path and save the text file. We can then use Excel to open the file for data processing. We can then save the file into other formats for other applications.
