Orthogonal path of travel

Dynamo Player
1

Hi guys!
I am new to dynamo, I need it to automate the path of travel in a life safety analysis of a building, here are some of the shortcomings in Revit built-in tool (Path of Travel):

  • The path is almost always diagonal, but the design must consider the worst scenario.
  • The tool can not deal with the common path cases, as per IBC, NFPA code this must be considered.
    So, I am asking experts of dynamo to check if my concept id gonna fix this or not.
  • Can we use the Path of Travel tool only within the room, so that with some preprocessing make the tool pick the farthest point from the door’s centre point, by getting the room’s vertices and then filter them so that we take the farthest point as input to the tool with the door point.
  • Then let dynamo get the point at the centre of the corridor, provided that being aligned with the room’s door centre.
  • And then, from that point draw orthogonal paths to exit stairs, and check if they are more than one, consider that point as the beginning of a common path, and pass it through the code conditions.
    My pain point at this moment is how to let dynamo make this, I appreciate your help.
2

First up: Codes vary by jurisdiction, and the requirement t for path of travel to be restricted to orthogonal paths isn’t stated in the IBC last I checked (please provide a link of that is no longer the case as I would love something to point at to get some consistency on this topic. Edit: the NFPA shows diagonal paths on their blog, so if they are involved one would imagine the tool Revit has would be sufficient). Next up: The common paths of travel can be identified with the tool as it currently stands via geometric intersection. Revit won’t do all of this for you automatically, but Revit isn’t a licensed engineer or architect practicing in the same jurisdiction as you after all. We need to use the tool to get the outcome we are after.

I have posted and helped to build a few graphs to get the furtherest path from a room to an exit - think there might be something in the samples actually for 2021.1 if I recall.

I do not recommend trying to get Dynamo to ‘lock the path to the center of a corridor’ as corridors aren’t anything near consistently shaped, and as a result the outcome can vary significantly. If you do need orthogonal paths (confirm it 100% of the time), then you can do so by manually drawing the center of the corridor first. This works 100% of the time and is part of what you must do as a design professional anyway, so why not utilize that produced data? Once you have your center path you can readily add points to the path and get the travel path you are after.

You can also get the orthogonal path of any diagonal line that makes up the path by getting the coordinate system of the room, transforming the line by the inverse coordinate system, converting the line to a vector, and then pulling the X and Y values of the line.

Lastly, if you’re after just analyzing the paths not documenting them, you can utilize the VASA package which has the added benefit of allowing travel analysis in 3 dimensions (so you can go up and down stairs/ramps on the same level or on multiple levels. This can also produce quick ‘follow the perimeter walls’ analysis (which is another ‘egress analysis must be measured like this’ which I often hear) by building a shell inside each room (leaving just a walkway around the perimeter voids) without modifications to the Revit model.

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