ACA: Spaces & room tags Video Lecture | Become a Pro: Autocad Architecture Tutorial - Design Softwares

in this video I'm going to teach spaces
and room tags spaces are important not
only because they allow you to tag the
rooms but because they work with
finished schedules to where you can show
which finishes belong in which rooms and
also because they're very useful for
calculating areas volumes and perimeters
of spaces that's very important when it
comes to leasable space and also for
finished takeoffs for owners to
understand how much space they have in
the various rooms in their project and
for many other useful reasons you have
several options in how you create spaces
you can use the ribbon which has a space
tool a space generate tool and also a
zone tool and on your tool palette on
the design tab you have the same tools
in addition to a space separator marking
get into the zone tool in this video but
in general that allows you to group
spaces together for example if you were
doing a project that had different
tenants you could group certain tenants
together in there were to show total
areas or do usable versus non usable
spaces and things like that normally I
use the space generate tool because it
automatically searches for boundaries of
the rooms the space tool is kind of a
more generic rectangular shaped space
which might work fine but it wouldn't be
very useful then in calculating areas
and things like that so I'm gonna hit
space generate on my ribbon or on my
tool palette obviously you have to have
all of your walls and doors already
completed I also generally suggest that
you get the spaces that you want a name
or tag fully in your visible monitor or
the your drawing area so that you can
see them all at one time usually it
works easier that way after you start
your tool start with the kind of smaller
simpler spaces and just simply hover
your mouse cursor over the room and
you'll see a red outline so that's the
space that AutoCAD architecture is kind
of proposing for that particular room
obviously it's found this room pretty
well so I'm going to go ahead and click
my mouse and then it does a
crosshatch or that diagonal line had to
cross the space so I can just simply
move my mouse down to the next room
because the command does stay active so
if I like that perimeter I'll click and
then move on so again I'm doing all the
simple easy rooms first and clicking in
each one based upon the red outline that
it's offering so that's pretty much all
the simple rooms on this floor so I'm
gonna right click to exit the command
and now let's talk about how to
subdivide this large open area
theoretically you could label it as one
space but most of the time a floor plan
would label this says for example living
room and dining room or living room and
kitchen maybe a foyer etc so we can
subdivide this however we want I'm gonna
subdivide it kind of matching this PDF
plan that I'm using as a go by which has
a dining room living room kitchen and
foyer labeled obviously you could label
this kind of stair vestibule area as one
as well if you want it so I'm gonna use
that to kind of dictate where I
subdivide so this space separator tool
on your tool palette is an easy way for
you to subdivide a larger space into
smaller regions so I can hit that space
separator and then basically just draw a
line with my Oh snaps across where I
want to subdivide I'm not too concerned
about the angle or anything because this
is kind of a the spaces are generally
just an internal tool that you use in
cat it's not like you show leads on a
floor plant so it's not critical of
where one space stops in another starts
the only time that would be a little
more important is if you are going to do
area calculations obviously then you
want to be a little more precise so that
your area calculation makes sense so
there's my a sub divider between the
foyer and then maybe this all becomes
kitchen let's say so I'm going to do
another space separator tool from here
across to that corner and now it is also
possible to select regular lines in your
drawing and allow them to divide spaces
you just have to kind of
tell them to do so you can do that in
the properties palette so I have that
line selected and maybe this line as
well and then I'll go to the properties
palette and then you can see how at the
bottom I have the advanced field
expanded with a little arrow and then
where it says bound spaces is set to yes
that by the default is normally no so I
change that ahead of time so you can
just change that so those lines now
understand that they are allowed to or
you want them to bound spaces as well
now I'm going to add one more space
separator to kind of subdivide my a
dining room away from the living room
obviously I want to kind of completely
enclose so I just have to go over to the
wall and then the wall will continue the
job all right so now let me finish my
generate so there's my kitchen living
and dining rooms oh and I forgot the
foyer so let's add that as well there it
goes
alright so now I have all of my spaces
so like I said earlier the space is just
a tool really to use in CAD it goes on
its own layer because it does work with
layer keys like other intelligent
objects and it's going on the a area
space layer so later on if you get ready
to print your drawing you're gonna want
to either turn this layer off or you can
make it an on plotting layer personally
I like to just turn it off because then
it's easier to see what's going on but
if you would prefer to you can make any
layer non-printing by changing the
clicking on the little printer in your
layer manager if you're working with
external references you would want to do
your layer management in terms of
printing and on/off color and all that
from the sheet file where you're
actually going to do your printing from
ok the other thing that I wanted to
remind everyone is that the separator
lines are regular real polyline so we
don't really want those to print either
so I'm gonna move those two beyond my
space layer so that when I turn that off
or make it non printing later on they
will not be an issue obviously I don't
want the random lines showing up on my
print that's it for making the spaces
now your next step is to assign the data
and then
we will tag the rooms so to assign the
data you can select a space you can
actually select all of them at once if
you want if you go to the properties
palette you can see on the extended data
tab that you don't have any property set
definitions assigned by default and
remember the property set definition is
Canada the data fields that attach the
object to whatever tags your annotation
you're going to use including schedules
so we need to attach the property sets
first so I'm going to select all these
if you want to use quick select or layer
isolate or any of those options that
would work as well this is not that big
of a project so I'm just gonna click on
them manually and then go to my
properties palette at the extended data
tab at the very bottom there's a small
icon that says add property sets that
actually attaches those data fields so I
can hit that and then you have the
option of roof room finished objects or
space objects the room finished objects
is if you're really doing a finished
schedule it doesn't hurt to attach both
so I'm just gonna leave them both
checked and hit OK and now we can see
which data is assigned so the space
objects are more about the overall space
properties themselves and the room
finished objects are for doing a
finished schedule so again a finished
schedule normally lists all the rooms
along with the floor finished the wall
finished the ceiling finished base etc
alright so now I need to actually assign
the information that I want so I'm gonna
hit escape to unselect all my rooms and
select just one in order to assign the
name and number that I want for that
particular room so I'm gonna go by my
PDF here so the living room is 111 and
the dining room is 110 so let's do those
two as examples so I can have my space
selected go to the properties palette
the number is on my extended data table
so that was 111 you will notice that the
name is kind of grayed out I can't
change that here and that's actually
because it's on the design tab so I can
change my name on the design tab of the
properties palette to living room
turn on my caps lock and there's my name
so that's basically it what I like to do
sometimes is go through and do all the
numbers first and then go back and do
the names or vice versa
you can also change it to be either
associative or not just remember it when
it comes to hot commands associative
means that if the boundary changes that
that space or hatch would automatically
become enlarged or shrink depending on
what you did to the boundary in other
words it's kind of in trying to be
intelligent in that regard
so for hatch or for spaces that's what
associative means if you don't want it
to do that like if you're still
modifying the plan that actually can be
kind of annoying at times so you can
change this to no to not be associative
and that actually gives you very handy
grips so you can change the size of the
space add more vertex points etc using
the tool on the ribbon so a lot of times
I end up making my spaces too my space
is not associative because it allows me
to be a little more flexible and what I
do with them and then I can hit save and
I obviously you could continue your
naming and numbering process in the same
way I'm gonna switch files now because
I'm working with external references to
do the tags if you are not working with
xrefs then you would do your tags now
right here on your plant in my case I
have to switch files reload my xrefs so
that my spaces show up there they are
these old room tags in red are just
default generic non-intelligent blocks I
had done those earlier to get tags done
quickly for all the students so that
they would know what the names and
numbers needed to be now I can basically
do my smart tags and I can delete those
later normally I'd use the smart tags
first but I had to get the plan done
very quickly in this project so if you
wonder why I would do non-intelligent
tags when I say I need the plan to be
done quickly so if it's quicker do
non-intelligent tags what's the point in
doing the spaces well
point is your room finish schedule
becomes an automatic scheduling process
that's where you really pick up your
time savings because I can throw a
non-intelligent block in there quicker
than doing these spaces and adding the
tags but by the time you add the room
schedule now you're getting to see real
time savings in that regard so I gotta
make sure my annotation scale is correct
and then I will hit the room tag and do
the simple room tag for now rather than
the project-based or the boma one so
I'll hit room tag and then I'm gonna
select the space and then turn off my Oh
snaps and click to place that in the
center of my room you'll notice if you
scroll down that it's picked up the name
and the number from what I assigned in
the base file so you can hit OK and
there is your room tag you want to make
sure that you get your data fully
assigned in the base file before you do
your tags there are a few tricks to
getting the tags to update properly if
you update the space information in the
base doing the tags will be much easier
if you identify all the rooms and number
them in your base file first if you're
doing xrefs because if you do decide
that you need to revise a name name and
number such as this case I changed the
living room to room 108 now if I already
have a tag over here then the easiest
way to get it to update it doesn't
always update automatically it depends
on how the data sets are applied it's
kind of tricky that way you can erase
the tag and do a new tag select the
object click to drop it but if you
scroll down you'll see that it still
shows the ill number of 111 you can
force that to update by hitting the X at
the bottom to remove the property set
definitions and then hit OK on remove
then it actually forces it to basically
refresh the property set information
from the base file so now when you
scroll down it now shows the 108 which
it should because that's what I changed
it to in the base
and then hit okay so again try to do all
your name's numbers in the base first
and then get them right and then you
won't have to worry about that but if it
doesn't become an issue because you need
to revise a name or a number then you
can delete the tag bring in a new tag
and then you just hit that delete on the
bottom after you select the space the
tag is a little chunky it's really
larger than it should be normally I have
customized this tag in the past to fit
on the proper text size which is three
thirty-seconds because this is oversized
it's a little more than we have time to
get into in this video for editing the
block but you can also place it outside
of a space like if it's a small room
let's say a mechanical room place it
outside the room adjacent to it and then
you can add a leader that goes back and
attaches to the block it's a very common
method to label a room so you can do
something like this then I hit escape
without and typing any text in and I'm
left with a leader without a text
attached and then I can position the tag
next to that so that it is pointing at
the space just make sure that you put
the leader on the room tag layer which
is set up by your layer keys and you
will see that that is a area space ID n
for your room tags