Floor Areas and Volumes

Activity tab in model data at zone and building levels only

When viewed at zone level the data on this tab refers to the current zone and when viewed at building level the data refers to the whole building. With one unusual exception, all data under this heading is read-only.

Building Level

Building rotation

This is the rotation of the building relative to the site in degrees. It is available at building level only and will be zero in most cases.

Occupied floor area

The floor area of occupied zones (in m2 or ft2). This is the sum of the floor areas for zones having 1-Standard Zone type.

Occupied volume

The volume of occupied zones (in m3 or ft3). This is the sum of the zone volumes for zones having 1-Standard Zone type.

Unoccupied floor area

The floor area of unoccupied zones (in m2 or ft2). This is the sum of the floor areas for zones not having 1-Standard Zone type.

Unoccupied volume

The volume of unoccupied zones (in m3 or ft3). This is the sum of the volume of zones not having 1-Standard Zone type.

Note: The zone floor areas are calculated based on the selected Zone floor area calculation method. They are not necessarily simply the sum of the floor surface areas listed in the Navigator. Likewise zone volumes are based on the Zone volume calculation method.

Tip: To ensure you are viewing the most up to date building areas and volumes you can refresh the navigator using the rightmost icon at the top of the navigator panel.

Zone Level

Floor area

The floor area of the zone (in m2 or ft2). It cannot be edited.

Zone volume

The volume of the zone (in m3 or ft3). For normal closed manifold zones the zone volume is calculated from the zone geometry based on the Zone volume calculation method. For open manifold zones the zone volume data comes initially from the BIM software but it can be overwritten here if required.

Inner surface mode

The Inner surface mode is a read-only value, visible at zone level only, indicating how the zone inner surfaces, and hence the zone floor area and volume, have been derived. It can have one of 4 values:

• Deflation, where finite thicknesses have been defined for at least one element surrounding the zone and the inner volume has been successfully created by deflating the parent zone. Volumes and surface areas are obtained from the inner zone geometry. This is the most accurate method.
• Approximate, the same as Deflation above but the inner volume fails to be created for one of a number of technical reasons (vertices having more than three surfaces associated with them etc.). In this case zone volume and surface areas are calculated using approximate methods.
• Coincident where all zone surfaces have zero thickness and so the inner volume coincides with the parent zone. In this case volumes and surface areas are obtained from the outer zone geometry.

• Open manifold for zones in open manifold blocks loaded from gbXML. In this case all zone surfaces have zero thickness and the surface areas are calculated from the parent zone surfaces. Because the zones are open-manifold their volumes cannot be calculated from the surface geometry and instead are read directly from the gbXML file and stored with the zone data. Open-manifold Zone volume settings can be overwritten by the user if required as described above.