Planning Slots and Openings

Learn how to plan slots and openings, coordinate with all project participants and find an optimal result for your slot and opening planning.

Slots and openings: Your definition and coordination

Slots or openings are recesses or holes in walls and ceilings to lead pipes or ducts through them. In order to guarantee the static integrity of a building and to manage efficient routing, coordination between the building disciplines and the technical trades is essential when planning slots and openings. LINEAR Solutions offers you interfaces for communication and coordination of void proposals.

In the mode in wall you can place void proposals in walls, columns, structural columns, frame constructions and ceilings (for IFC, where side covers of suspended ceilings are partially classified as such), and in the mode in ceiling/floor in storey ceilings, ceilings, roofs, stair landings and foundations.

The idea of the LINEAR solution

With our Void planning discipline, collisions can be checked and void proposals for solving them can be placed in a single step. The void proposals are initially provisions for voids. They are exported using the open standards BCF and/or IFC and can be communicated to the responsible persons. Those responsible for buildings can import the proposals with the free LINEAR Voids Add-In and classify them with Accept or Reject. The classified proposals are saved and sent back to the technical trades.

With the Coordinate ... function the updated BCF file is imported and all void proposals in the model are provided with the classification assigned by the person responsible for the building. A void proposal can assume one of three states at this point:
  • rejected (red)
  • pending (yellow)
  • accepted (green)

If necessary, alternative proposals are made for rejected proposals, exported as BCF files and communicated again to the responsible person. This strategy allows to iteratively find a compromise for all collisions. Accepted voids are implemented as provisions for voids in the model and marked accordingly in color. Rejected void proposals remain in the model for future traceability and planning, but can be hidden in view control.

The function can be used in floor plans or 3D views. For floor plans, the LINEAR project template contains a view template for void planning. It can be selected when creating a new floor plan view. For 3D views, the Wireframe or Shaded visual style with semi-transparent representation of the architecture can be useful.

Terminology

For a better understanding, the documentation speaks of void proposals instead of provisions as used in the program interface. Slots and recesses in casting and core drilling are generally implied. If slots are explicitly meant, they are also referred to as slots.