Creating Plenum Levels and Spaces in Revit

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SPEAKER: "Create Plenum Levels and Spaces in Revit."

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For accurate heating and cooling loads analysis,

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you must place spaces and plenums,

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the area between a ceiling and the next floor.

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In this video, we're going to add a plenum level,

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set up the plenum plan view, and place and fix

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a space in the plenum.

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I'm working in the small Medical Center building in the Space

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Section View.

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We've modified several of the spaces,

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so the volume is correct, but we still

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have the areas between the floors that

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do not have the spaces.

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For accurate heating and cooling analysis,

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we need to have these areas filled with spaces.

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I'm going to start in the middle part of the building

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in the health center and set up this plenum

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space between the ground floor ceiling and second floor.

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To place spaces in a plenum, we need

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to have a level set at the top of the ceiling that

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is bounding the plenum.

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I'm going to zoom in, so I can see that detail.

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Next, in the Architecture tab, Datum panel,

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I'm going to click Level.

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In the Type Selector, I'm going to make sure I

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have the level set to Plenum.

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I'm also going to check and make sure that Building Story is not

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selected.

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Then I go to the Modify Place Levels

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and select Pick Lines and select the top of my ceiling.

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I'm going to click Modify, and then I'm

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going to select my level again, drag it out a ways.

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And now I'm going to change the name

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and call it "Ground Floor Plenum."

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And I do want to rename the corresponding views.

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I click Escape, and then I'm going

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to double click on the level head

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to go to the Floor Plan view.

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Now that's not very useful yet, so in Properties, I'm

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going to scroll down and find my view template, which

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is preset to Mechanical Plan and change that to Space Plan.

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I happen to know that I'm going to need

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to change the View Range.

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So over here, by the View Range, I'm

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going to clear the check from Include.

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That way, the View Template won't override the View Range.

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Now I can click Edit on the View Range

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and make this work for my plenum.

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I'm going to set my Top to the Second Floor.

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I don't need any offset there.

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And my cut plane at

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so I'm going to set that to 1 foot.

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When I click OK, you can now see that my plenum

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space is available.

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And the walls that are showing here

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are only partial height walls that

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won't be impacted by the plenum space.

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So now, I'm ready to place the space.

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In the Analyze tab, click Space.

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Then I'm going to put the space in the general vicinity

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of the plenum.

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But, oh no, I have a problem.

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The space is not in a properly-enclosed region.

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There's probably an open area in the model

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that's missing a wall or other room bounding element.

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Typically, this can be fixed by adding a space separator.

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Finding the location is the hard part.

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Because I know that there are two different floor

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heights between the main Medical Center and the Outpatient

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Center, I'm going to go ahead and add a base separator

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line along this area.

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So I'm going to come in here and start my space separator,

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draw it on down.

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I know it needs to come around this corridor.

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A little bit of changing here, so let me just

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drag it around this point.

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So I'm adding space separators.

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And sure enough, the first thing that happened-- it did

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fill up my space, so I did correct

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that particular problem.

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But I saw that there were other problems as well.

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Let me go ahead and rename this to "Plenum"

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so we know what we're working in.

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And then, we need to take a look at what

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was the issue in this space.

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So I'm going to select the Space and click Show Related

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Warnings.

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There are two warnings telling me

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that the space volumes are overlapping--

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one's in the patient corridor and ones

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with the reception area.

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I happen to know the reception area is fairly simple to see.

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As you can see here, as I click between the two spaces,

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there's an overlap right in here.

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So I'm going to zoom in here.

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Can I see what the issue is?

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OK, something strange happening with the walls right and there,

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probably a place for a space separator.

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So I'm going to add my space separator,

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going to start with just a line across here.

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And that looks like it cleared it up.

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So next, I'm going to go back to my space here, my plenum space.

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I do see that there are still Related Warning,

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and that warning is with the patient corridor and the space

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here.

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This one isn't as easy to pick out.

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I tiled the ground floor plenum plan and the Space Section View

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and gradually moved the section line through the building

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to discover the issue.

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After a lot of work, there it was, a tiny little opening

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where the patient corridor extends through the plenum.

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Since the problem is with the ground floor space,

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I'm going to open that view and add the space separator there.

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Here's my ground floor plenum plan,

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and here's my ground floor space plan open to the same area,

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so I add my space separator around that corner.

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And that clears up the problem for both spaces.

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Now, this is the same process you

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need to do for each of the other plenum areas--

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add a plenum level with the Plan View, open the view,

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and place the spaces.

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Then fix any overlapping spaces using your space separator.

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Then you'll be ready to set up zones and perform

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heating and cooling analysis.