How do people typically model a volume of space which is reserved for something such as the movement of a piece of equipment or the clearance required for servicing a piece or equipment etc? Is this an example of what IfcSpatialZone RESERVATION is intended to do? How do i link it to the object that it relates to?
I would use IfcVirtualElement with PredefinedType = CLEARANCE for this in IFC4.3. To link it to the related equipment, IfcRelAssignsToProduct is a reasonable option because the clearance volume is not a physical part of the equipment, but a virtual object assigned to or associated with that product. Spatial containment can still be handled separately using IfcRelContainedInSpatialStructure.
I knew there must be something somewhere to do this - many thanks!
Hi, there is also other opportunity to model maintenance/clearance zone. Please see Support for HVAC maintenence zone export - Developers - buildingSMART Forums
@marko.ripatti So what was your preferred solution? The virtual element solution suggested above works for me although i havent yet found a simple way to achieve the IfcRelAssignsToProduct relationship with our authoring software (Revit).
@DanPeel Maintenance/clearance zones are modeled in our products (in certain way) and those zones are then exported to IFC as clearance geometry (standards.buildingsmart.org/IFC/RELEASE/IFC4/ADD2_TC1/HTML/link/clearance-geometry.htm) with our own (MagiCAD) IFC Exporter .
Just to check: are you coding IFC exporter to Revit or are you using Revit IFC export and try to configure families so that Revit would export them as spatial reservations?
Revit IFC Export with families set up to export as spatial reservations.
Your approach seems to achieve the same end result as that suggested by Yuefeng? I agree that it would be nice for some sort of consensus on how to do this though.
Yes, consensus would be nice. @angel.velez @pasi.paasiala what you say, should we make a official proposal how to deal with clearance/maintenance zones? Please see Support for HVAC maintenence zone export - Developers - buildingSMART Forums