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For the latest Feasibility Study that I have been asked to produce at work, I wanted to use Revit’s excellent Colour Scheme feature to help analyse the spatial make up of an existing school.

The problem was that this Study had to be done is a very, very short space of time. And my starting point was a 2D AutoCAD survey of the existing buildings. I didn’t have time to put in any walls, doors, windows, etc. BUT, I still wanted to form Rooms, so that I could a) produce a Room Schedule and b) colour code the plan according to each room’s “Department”.

So the solution was to import the AutoCAD plan into Revit…..

And then form “room boundaries” by tracing around each room on the AutoCAD plan with the Room Separation tool.

Once each room is bounded on all sides by Room Separation lines it then behaves just as if it has Revit Walls around it- ie I can then define Revit “Rooms” within each of these spaces.

Once all the Rooms have been defined, it’s just a case of setting the “Department” parameter for each one…..

Which then allows us to create a Colour Scheme based on the “Department” parameter…..

This combined with a standard Room Schedule…..

....now communicates an great deal about the spaces of the existing building, all without drawing a single wall!