Room Data Auditor user manual

Introduction

BA.TIVA Room Data Auditor finds the room-data problems in your Revit model before they reach your schedules and drawings, then takes you to the rooms so you can fix them.

One click on Scan Model checks every room in the model you have open, in every phase and design option, with nine checks: missing or duplicate numbers, missing names, unplaced or not-enclosed rooms, area anomalies, Departments, required parameters and completeness. The summary counts the rooms with Errors, with Warnings, and those that Passed. Select in Revit opens a floor plan of the rooms and selects them, and Export PDF Report shares the results.

Who it is for: BIM managers and coordinators, project architects, and anyone who issues room schedules or drawings from Revit.

It never changes your model. Room Data Auditor is read-only. It never renumbers, renames, places, deletes or edits rooms, and it saves nothing in your project. Select in Revit only opens an existing floor plan, zooms and selects, so nothing is added to Revit's Undo list. The only files it writes are the PDF reports you choose to save, and a support log on your PC.

Room Data Auditor is product RVT-002. This manual describes version 1.0.1. For system requirements, installing, signing in and your licence, see Installing and licensing BA.TIVA Revit plugins.

Quick start

Your first scan. Any project with rooms will do.

1. Open a Revit project that has rooms. Family documents aren't scanned.
2. Open the panel. On the BA.TIVA ribbon tab, click Room Data Auditor. The panel opens docked on the right. You can move, float or dock it like any Revit panel; if you close it, click the button again.
3. Sign in and start your trial on the licence bar at the top of the panel (first time only, see Licensing).
4. Click Scan Model. When it's done, the line under the buttons says Scanned n rooms at <time>.
5. Read the summary. The Errors, Warnings and Passed tiles count the rooms.
6. Click a check to list its rooms under Affected rooms, each with a message saying what's wrong. Room Data Completeness, the last check, lists every room with any problem: a good to-do list.
7. Click Select in Revit to go to the rooms. Fix them with Revit's own tools, then click Scan Model again.

The panel at a glance

Scanning and reading the results

Click Scan Model at any time. It checks every room in the model you have open. A scan never changes the model, so you can scan as often as you like.

• While it runs, the status line says Scanning… and the cursor shows Revit is busy. There's no progress bar and no cancel. Room Data Auditor has been tested on a model with 8,203 rooms.
• When it's done, the status line says Scanned n rooms at <time>. The first check that found something is chosen for you.

The summary

Each room is counted once, in the tile for its most serious problem, so Errors + Warnings + Passed always equals the number of rooms scanned. A room that appears under several checks is still counted once.

The checks list

Affected rooms

Click a check to list its rooms. The heading names the check, for example Affected rooms — Duplicate Room Numbers. The columns are Number, Name, Level and Message; an empty Number or Name shows as a dash. Rooms are sorted by level, then by number in natural order (so 2 comes before 10), then by name.

When the list is empty, it says why:

• before a scan: Run Scan Model to audit rooms.
• when the check found nothing: No issues found.
• when the model has no rooms: No rooms in this model.
• for Departments, in a model that doesn't use them: Department is not used in this model, so it is not checked.

Results are a snapshot

• The results show the model when you scanned it. They don't update by themselves: scan again after making changes.
• Switching to another model, or closing it, clears the results. Save As keeps them.
• If a scan fails, earlier results are cleared, so they're never shown next to the error.

The nine checks

What each check looks for, the message it shows, and how to fix it in Revit. Most fixes are made in the Properties palette: select the room in a plan or a Room schedule, then edit its Identity Data (Number, Name, Department). If Properties isn't showing, press Ctrl+1.

Unplaced rooms are reported once. A room that isn't placed has no location, so it's reported only by Unplaced Rooms (and counted as incomplete by Room Data Completeness). Every other check looks at placed rooms only.

RDA-001 Missing Room Numbers

Error. Placed rooms whose Number is empty, or only spaces. Message: Room has no Number.

To fix: type a Number in Properties › Identity Data › Number, or in a Room schedule.

RDA-002 Duplicate Room Numbers

Error. Placed rooms that share a Number with another room. Every room in the group is listed, not only the second one, and each message names the others, for example Number also used by Office (id 412907). When many rooms share a number, it names five, then says how many others there are.

• Capitals, and spaces at the start or end, are ignored: A-101, a-101 and " A-101 " are the same number. Spaces inside a number count: A 101 and A101 are different.
• Only rooms in the same phase, and in the same design option, are compared, because phased projects and design options often reuse numbers on purpose. Rooms in the main model are compared with each other.
• Rooms with no Number are reported by RDA-001 instead.

To fix: renumber all but one of the rooms in each group.

RDA-003 Missing Room Names

Error. Placed rooms whose Name is empty, or only spaces. Message: Room has no Name.

To fix: type a Name in Properties › Identity Data › Name, or in a Room schedule.

RDA-004 Unplaced Rooms

Warning. Rooms that exist in the model but aren't placed in any plan. This usually happens when a room is deleted from a plan view: Revit keeps the room, with its Number and Name, but it no longer has a location. Room schedules show these rooms as Not Placed. Message: Room is not placed.

Unplaced rooms can't be shown in a view, so Select in Revit is greyed out for this check, with the tip Unplaced rooms are not visible in views — use a Room schedule to locate them.

To fix, either place it again (Architecture › Room, choose the room from the Room list on the Options Bar, then click inside the space in a plan), or, if it isn't needed, delete it (in a Room schedule, click its row, then Delete on the ribbon).

RDA-005 Not-Enclosed Rooms

Error. Placed rooms that Revit couldn't calculate a boundary for. Message: Not enclosed or redundant (Revit could not calculate a boundary). There are two common causes:

• Not enclosed: the walls or room separation lines around the room don't form a closed loop. Room schedules show these rooms as Not Enclosed.
• Redundant: another room is already placed in the same enclosed space, so Revit gives this one no boundary of its own.

To fix: click Select in Revit to go to the room. If it's not enclosed, close the gap with a wall or a Room Separator (Architecture › Room & Area › Room Separator), and check that the surrounding walls have Room Bounding ticked. If it's redundant, delete one of the two rooms, or split the space with a Room Separator. Revit's own warnings list (Manage › Inquiry › Warnings) can help you find the gap.

RDA-006 Area Anomalies

Error. Placed, enclosed rooms whose area isn't a positive number. Messages: Area is zero or negative., Area is unavailable. or Area is not a valid number. It's a safeguard: Revit normally gives every enclosed room an area, so this check rarely finds anything. No size limits are applied: any area above zero passes.

To fix: check the room's boundary in a floor plan. If its area is still zero, delete the room and place it again.

RDA-007 Department / Category Checks

Warning. Placed rooms with no Department, in models that use Departments. Message: Room has no Department.

Many projects classify rooms by Name and never fill in Department. So if no placed room has a Department, this check is skipped: its row shows Not used. As soon as one placed room has a Department, every placed room without one is reported. Only Revit's built-in Department parameter is checked, not Occupancy or your own shared parameters.

To fix: type a Department in Properties › Identity Data › Department, or in a Room schedule.

RDA-008 Required Parameter Checks

Error or Warning. Placed rooms missing any of the fields every room needs, all listed in one message, for example Missing or empty: Number, Department.

A room missing several fields gets the most serious result among them. This check overlaps with the ones above on purpose, so it gives one list of every room missing required data. A room still counts once in the summary.

To fix: fill in each field the message names.

RDA-009 Room Data Completeness

Complete or Incomplete. A room is complete when it's placed and none of the checks above found a problem with it. The row shows how many rooms are incomplete, for example 8 incomplete, or Passed when every room is complete. The number of complete rooms always equals the Passed tile.

The list shows every incomplete room and says what's wrong in plain words, in check order, for example Incomplete: no Number, no Department.

Select in Revit

Choose a check, then click Select in Revit. Room Data Auditor:

1. opens a floor plan of the rooms' level that shows them. If you're already in one, it stays there;
2. zooms to the rooms;
3. selects them, replacing whatever was selected before.

The status line then says what it did, for example Selected n rooms, shown in "<view name>".

• Highlight rows first to go to only those rooms: Ctrl+click to highlight several, or Shift+click for a range. With no rows highlighted, every room in the list is selected.
• Rooms on several levels: all of them are selected, but only those on the first level in the list are shown, and the status line says so. To go to another level, highlight its rows and click Select in Revit again.
• No suitable floor plan: Room Data Auditor looks at up to five existing floor plans of the level, preferring ones in the rooms' phase. If none of them shows the rooms, they're still selected, and the status line asks you to open a plan of that level.
• Unplaced rooms can't be shown in any view, so they're left out, and the status line says how many. If every highlighted room is unplaced, your selection is left as it was.
• It never creates a view, changes a view's settings, or isolates or hides anything.

PDF report

Share the results with people who don't use Room Data Auditor, or keep them as a record, for example with a drawing issue.

1. Click Scan Model. The report always shows the most recent scan; Export PDF Report stays greyed out until a scan has run.
2. Click Export PDF Report, beside Scan Model (under it when the panel is narrow).
3. Choose where to save it. The first time, the dialog opens in your Documents folder; after that, in the folder you last used. The suggested name has the project and the scan time: Room Data Auditor - <project> - <date> <time>.pdf.

The status line says Report saved: … with the file's location, and the PDF opens in your PDF viewer. If you cancel, it says Report not saved. Exporting never changes the model.

What's in it

The report is A4 landscape, titled Room Data Auditor — Room Data Report.

Rooms are listed in the panel's order. Rooms that passed are counted but not listed, so the report stays short and shows what needs fixing. Every page has a footer with the product name, the project, the scan time and the page number.

The report uses standard PDF fonts. Characters they can't show, such as Chinese, Arabic or Cyrillic letters in a room name, appear as question marks.

What it doesn't do

• It doesn't fix anything. You fix rooms with Revit's own tools.
• Only the model you have open. Rooms in linked models aren't checked, and neither are Areas or Spaces.
• Department is the only classification field checked. Occupancy and your own shared parameters aren't.
• The checks are fixed. Room Data Auditor has no settings: the nine checks always run, and you can't add your own rules or required parameters.
• Redundant rooms are reported under Not-Enclosed Rooms, not by a check of their own.
• A duplicate number shared by a room in the main model and a room inside a design option isn't detected.
• No minimum or maximum area is applied: any area above zero passes.
• Results are a snapshot. They don't update by themselves, and there's no progress bar or cancel while scanning.
• Select in Revit shows only the first level's rooms when they're on several levels, and doesn't isolate them.
• The PDF report shows characters that standard PDF fonts can't, such as Chinese or Arabic letters, as question marks.

Troubleshooting

Messages are quoted exactly as Room Data Auditor shows them, most in the status line under its buttons, so you can search this page for the words you see.

The support log

Room Data Auditor keeps a log on your PC, so a problem can be investigated if you report it.

• Where: %LOCALAPPDATA%\BATIVA\Logs. Type that into File Explorer's address bar to open it. After a failed scan, Open log folder opens it for you.
• Files: one a day, named RoomDataAuditor-<date>.log, up to 5 MB each, kept for 14 days.
• What's in it: what the tool did and when, for example that a scan started, how many rooms it found, how long it took, and the details of any error. It's designed not to record room names or numbers, file paths or user names.
• Who sees it: nobody, unless you send it. It's never sent anywhere automatically.

Frequently asked questions

Does it change my model? No. It never renumbers, renames, places, deletes or edits rooms, and it saves nothing in your project.

Can it fix the problems it finds? No. It finds the rooms and takes you to them; you fix them with Revit's own tools. The nine checks say how.

Does it check rooms in linked models, or Areas and Spaces? No. It checks the rooms in the model you have open, in every phase and design option.

Why aren't two rooms with the same number reported as duplicates? Numbers are compared only within the same phase and the same design option. See RDA-002.

Can I choose which checks run, or add my own required parameters? No. The nine checks always run. Department is checked only in models that use it.

Will it cope with a large model? It has been tested on a model with 8,203 rooms. There's no progress bar: the cursor shows Revit is busy until the scan finishes.

Can I share the results with someone who doesn't have Room Data Auditor? Yes. Export a PDF report. It lists every room with a problem and what's wrong, without sending the model.

Does my team need it to open the project? No. Room Data Auditor saves nothing in the project, so nothing changes for anyone else.

Does it send my model anywhere? No. It goes online only to check your BA.TIVA licence. Nothing from your model leaves your PC.