Wall area for a particular zone?

[Anonymous]

hi all,

i've been reading up on schedules/element info and zones but can't seem to get a particular set of data without some major workarounds.

there is a lot of info on this but i'm still not sure whether what i want to do is possible or not - apologies in advance if this has already been discussed.

i would like to do the following (please see attachment): for the highlighted zone (shown green) i select Element Information. The info is set up so it displays the Wall Surface (yellow highlight). I assumed that this number would be the area of the walls 'touching' (surrounding) the zone (based on zone level and height) less the area of all the openings, but after calculating the actual surface area, the result is very different. I also notice that if i change the Zone Height, the Zone Volume updates but there is no change in Zone Wall Surface.

So my questions are:

can i determine the surface area of the walls surrounding the zone (based on the level and height of the zone)?

how does Element Information calculate the Wall Surface area?

TIA

[Erika Epstein]

You are right. I was using examples that had wall heights and zones trimmed to same height. When walls are higher, trimmed or not, than the zone, we can't get a direct figure of zone side surface area.
Compounded as noted by Karl that on the imperial side we have to watch out for many parameters are in meters, not feet.

[Anonymous]

Erika wrote:
Yes. Create a schedule based on zones, not walls. The wall surface parameter will give you the surface of zone abutting a wall less openings.
In my example I created a simple box. I dragged a copy. To one I added doors and windows. The schedule shows the actual wall area less the openings.

Erika,
Reference to my post about zone surface calculations to which you have posted a reply.
Did you try adding columns and beams to the the simple box and some empty Doors and windows openings and some windows and doors and tried to find surfaces? and compared values returned by Zone List / Element List and actual calculation?

[Anonymous]

We're struggling with the same thing now (zone height not equal to wall height thus not yielding correct wall area), did graphisoft ever present a solution to this?

Regards Bjorn Heggelund

[Anonymous]

After noticing first inconsistencies in Walls Surface calculations I found this topic. Walls Surfaces in this light is totally useless criteria in schedules. But I managed to set up few workarounds and for different situations there are different solution.

From the Additional Parameters window (search for Zone template) you can find parameter Boundary Surface that is calculated based on the side area of the zone body itself. It doesn't take into account different wall materials, window and door area (you can subtract these manually, look for Doors Surface and Windows Surface parameters) unless the zone is formed with doors and windows(sill height 0) recesses. Also it doesn't recognize if zone boundary is not wall (line with zone boundary). Of course if using this method one should trim (with roofs, stairs, slabs etc) the zone beforehand.

Other workaround contains Google SketchUp (absurd, I know). After displaying only the zone volumes in the 3D, import them into SketchUp using .3ds and selecting multiple faces one can get the summed area form the Entity Info. This method is preferred when one is calculating incline ceilings etc.