When creating buildings with Autodesk Revit, capturing the spatial data is crucial for costing, analysis, and coordination across disciplines. Area data can be captured using three distinct conceptual elements: Rooms, Spaces, and Areas (which are managed via Area Plans). Although they sound similar, they are vastly different in their purpose and measurement methods.

The Area tool is primarily useful for calculating different macro-scale building areas such as the Gross Building Area (GBA) and Rentable Building Areas (RBA). This is crucial information for building owners, tenants, and code analysis.

By creating an Area Plan and defining an Area Scheme (e.g., GBA or RBA), designers can easily define the non-room-specific calculation boundaries using Area Boundary Lines. This allows for the straightforward generation of Area Schedules which is useful for overall building calculations and adhering to SAPOA Standards. Crucially, Areas are view-bound 2D elements, meaning you can have multiple different Area Plans on the same floor plate (e.g., Gross Area and Rentable Area) to analyze different calculation schemes simultaneously.

The Room tool functions at a smaller scale, focusing on each individual room, and is particularly useful for the architect for finish schedules and documentation. Rooms are defined by Room Bounding Elements like walls, floors, ceiling, and roofs.

Measurement is flexible here: Rooms use the Area and Volume Computations setting to define boundaries, allowing architects to calculate area to the Wall Finish Face (for net usable area) or to the Wall Centerline (for center-to-center reports). It is essential that the boundaries are fully enclosed; if a space is open, it is ideal to use the Room Separation Line to define the enclosure. Room Tags provide immediate information on area and volume, and the data is Phase-dependent, allowing for accurate tracking across Existing and New Construction phases.

The Spaces tool operates by using the same architectural boundaries, but it is geared toward analytical data and provides additional information essential for Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing (MEP) teams.

Primary Use: Performing heating and cooling load analysis for equipment sizing. Spaces contain critical analytical properties like Occupancy, Construction Type, and Airflow Data. The area calculation for Spaces is generally fixed to the Wall Finish Face, as the analysis must account for the air volume inside the finished surfaces. Furthermore, Spaces are placed not just in occupied rooms, but also in unconditioned or typically unseen volumes, such as above-ceiling plenums, chases, and shaft voids, which is vital for accurate system calculations. Like Rooms, Spaces are also Phase-dependent. MEP teams can efficiently manage this process by using the Space Naming Tool to automatically inherit the names and numbers from the associated architectural Rooms.

When determining the application of Area, Room, or Spaces tools, it comes down to who the information is intended for:

• If the information is for the Client or Building Owner, the high-level Area and detailed Room data would be applicable.
• When the Architect is compiling plan layouts and finish schedules, then Room data is the important factor.
• If the MEP teams want to perform their analysis calculations, then the analytically rich Space data would be the primary requirement.