How to make consultants' lights hide our ceiling grid?

[patricks]

We have been linking in our MEP engineers' Revit files into our projects lately, and so far it's working well for the most part. One problem is that our electrical engineer's lights do not cut our ceilings, so the ceiling grid is still visible through the lights. While I know they can't make their lights actually cut our ceilings, we were hoping a masking region in the light family would at least mask our ceiling grid. It doesn't. We have tried solids, we have tried making the light sit above the ceiling, below, through the ceiling, tried masking regions, but nothing seems to work. The RCP views in RAC, RMEP, and in the family are all set to hidden line.

Anyone have an idea?

[cporter.207875]

Patrick,
In our experience, as long as the linked fixtures sit a little below the face of the ceiling, say 1/8", it should mask the grid in RCP. One thing you should verify is that the light family from the RME file doesn't have the 3D geometry set to be visible only in 3D views. It also needs to have a solid underside face in order to hide your ceiling grid. I attached a screen shot of an RCP with linked in lights from the engineer's model.

[patricks]

I'm not sure if our engineer is using the OOTB RME light fixtures or not, but it appears that it is face-based with the solid geometry aligned with and extending into the face, so it doesn't mask our ceiling grid.

I opened the RME family and moved the face of the light geometry 1/8" outside of the host face, reloaded, and it works now. The problem is that I got an error that the light source is inside solid geometry and won't emit any light. I'm sure that won't matter since I won't be using the engineer's lights for any interior rendering, but is there a way to move the light source away from the host plane?

[cporter.207875]

It sounds like the light source is aligned and locked to the ref level, instead of to the face of the fixture (or ref plane controlling the face). You should be able to unlock this constraint, then align and lock the light source to the face of the "lens."