Room-by-room wall surface area schedules

[alexliz]

I am stumped - it seems that no matter which way I have thought of or looked up online, it runs into either massive errors or plain-impossible to organize. I have tried using Zone schedules tracking the Walls Surface Area for the Zone but it is full of bizarre calculation errors.

I am about to resort to manual calculations (measuring XxY for each wall of each room) but surely this can be done in Archicad 29.

What do you guys do to cost wallpaper / wall paint / wall PVC sheets etc when refurbishing a building?

[Laszlo Nagy]

Maybe we could do it this way: please post a few screenshots that show your settings and the resulting schedule, what is not giving the expected results and what is the expected output/result. It may be easier and faster to troubleshoot that.

[alexliz]

Hi Laszlo, I was busy editing my original post with these screenshots when you did something to it - did you move it? and it failed to update 😂

I see that this should be a straight-forward move, as described in AC29 Help (also in previous versions): https://help.graphisoft.com/AC/27/INT/index.htm?rhcsh=1&rhnewwnd=0&_gl=1*lndt20*_gcl_aw*R0NMLjE3NjUz...

  

I will now post screenshots from my beleaguered project, give me a sec...

[alexliz]

Here is a simple room I have:

 

The Zone stamp correctly calculates Gross Internal Area (GIA), Perimeter (P), Ceiling Height (CH) and Zone Volume (ZV)

When it comes to wall surface areas, though, which I need to track for decorating costings etc, it all goes haywire:

See how the Walls Perimeter (3rd column) and Zone Gross Perimeter (5th column) correctly show 16.40m; and Height is correct in column 2, 3.50m.

What a mess, though, in Walls Surface Area! I would expect the correct value, 16.40 x 3.50 = 57.40m² - not that weird 56.61.

And no, there is no error with Z values - everything (i.e. walls, zone) start at Z 0.0000 and end at 3.5000. No zone subfloor thickness, either (you can see it's zero).

Another weird thing is that if I change all the walls' thickness to, say, 0.30, then 'Wall Surface Area" becomes 56.35, without any change to the walls' surface areas - at least not the ones facing into the specific zone, as per the explanation of how this parameter works in Archicad Help.

If I make the walls 0.10m thick, then I get 57.05m².

If I make the walls 0.35m thick, then I get 56.17m².

If I make the walls 0.40m thick, then I get 56.00m².

If I make them 0.50m thick, then I get the correct "Wall Surface Area" reading: 57.40m².

The correct sum seems to stay on after that; I changed the walls to 1m thick and it didn't change.

It's like voodoo.

What do you guys do to make things work?

[Laszlo Nagy]

Yes, I moved it and modified the Labels because schedule-related questions belong to the Project Data & BIM forum. Sorry about that.

[Ricardo Lopez]

Hi @alexliz 

To obtain a fairly accurate QTO for the wall interior finish area, I model each part and paint (overwrite) it with the desired surface (paint, wallpaper, laminate, etc.). I then create a list of surfaces with a criterion to show only painted surfaces and the Exposed Area parameter, as seen in the example below. If desired, you can summarize it by zone and surface. I have made this sample without windows or doors to simplify it, but those areas should also be subtracted if necessary.

[alexliz]

Thank you Ricardo, much appreciated.

One problem I have with this method is that a single wall can be long enough to separate multiple rooms on each side; and each of these rooms may have different finishes applied to the interior wall surfaces. In a situation like this, how do I tackle the different paint colors/wallpapers/other cladding that may be required?

In this example I show a long corridor with residential rooms either side of it. The long walls on either side of the corridor are decorated in a single manner on the corridor's side, but the decoration may change from room to WC to another room/WC etc on the other side of the wall. If I use the wall schedule instead of a zone one, how do I extract those different surface areas?

 

One solution might be to segment the long wall to many shorter ones, all lining up to form the 'single' longer wall. But even that may be problematic: room segmentation may occur at different points along the length of the wall on its two sides. The way I am thinking about it, that could end up with a much more complex model (because of the multiple shorter walls versus the ideal, single, longer wall).

Isn't it a pity that the Wall Surface Area parameter produces unpredictable results? If only I could understand its logic, then perhaps I could still use the Zone schedule to get the list of wall surfaces per room.

I watched a tutorial by Shoegnome (Archicad Tutorial #94: Area Calculations for Wall Area by Zone) where Jared does precisely what I want to do - only it works in his case. Why is it not in mine?

Here's Jared's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWyUnDTBtG4

[Barry Kelly]

I just tried with your zone dimensions in version 25.

Perfect.

I copied this across to 28 29 and there is definitely a difference that I don't think should be there.

 

My walls were 230mm thick.

Adjusting the wall thickness does make a difference in 29, 25 remains perfect.

It appears to be deducting the thickness of one wall by the height from the total surface area when it should not be doing this.

In my case 0.805.

56.6 + 0.80 = 57.4

I would report this to your local support people and ask them to investigate.

I will also report this as a bug, as it is important, people are trusting these figures.

Barry,

 

[alexliz]

Thank you Barry. It is good to know you can confirm the issue.

One clarification if you could - you mention v28 and v29. Did you try on both? Neither 28 nor 29 work reliably at my end. I will try 25 / 26 / 27 today and report back here.

[Barry Kelly]

Sorry, typo.

I meant 29 and not 28.

I haven't tried in 28 but I am pretty sure it will be the same.

It is odd that it works as expected in 25 because the way the walls all trim together is the same in 25 & 29.

The mitering / trimming of the walls changed back around version 18 I think.

I can see the error.

It is subtracting one end wall surface area when it shouldn't be.

 

Barry.