Revit Lighting Fixtures

[ThinkRevit]

We are building Lighting Families for several major manufactures and need some feedback from both architects and engineers.

Roughly, 50% of the Families currently available from lighting manufactures contain Electrical Connectors. For architects these Parameters are useless, but for engineers they save time if set up properly. Since ceiling grids and lights usually move around a lot during the design process, maybe it would more valuable to keep these Families separate forcing Manufacturers to offer a Symbol/ Electrical based Families for Engineers and Solid/ Photometric based Families for Architects.

Another missed opportunity is regarding Catalogs. Most Lights have an Alpha Numeric Order number correlating to all the options available for that fixture. This translates into over a thousand Family Types for most commercial fixtures. By offering every possible order number minus multiple options, would this not help manufactures with orders for large projects? It only takes second to filter out a Light from a Catalog of thousands.

[Scott Womack]

Catalog files are definately the way to go. All of the manufacturer info needs to feed into either the pre-defined system paramters, or shared parameters for ease of scheduling. Go ahead and place the connectors in the family. My guess is this will actually be helpful in the next release, or the one after that.

[mthurnauer]

One of the biggest issues with the use of light fixtures that we have encountered with our MEP consultants is that they don't want to use ceiling or wall-hosted components. They say that if they host fixtures to a ceiling and the architect erases the ceiling and recreates in in lieu of editing the existing ceiling, then all of the fixtures get blown away and they have to redo it all and recreate the circuiting, etc. This was in 2009 and I don't know if it has changed in 2010, but they always wanted to use components that they could host on a work plane. The would prefer that they need to coordinate to make sure their work plane is aligned with our ceilings, but not actually use our ceiling as the host.

[cliff collins]

You might also want to consider using a "face-based" family template instead of a "hosted" family template when creating new light fixture families--this way they will
"stick" to the RAC Ceilings, RMEP Linked model Ceilings, etc.

Same for wall hosted sconces--make them "face-based" instead of "wall-hosted"

This will provide the best flexibility for teams where Arch and MEP need families
common to both models.

cheers.......

[ThinkRevit]

All of our Lights start from the Generic Model faced based.rft. The issue involves the act of coping lights back and forth from MEP to Arch and vice versa and so on. Would it not create better quality control if we eliminate the need to copy Families back and forth? The procedure would involve

1. Initial Copy/ Paste from Arch to MEP
2. Select all and change the Arch Lights to the Loaded MEP Lights (see description in initial thread)
3. Run your circuits
4. Periodically monitor approximate Arch Light locations

[mruehr]

I use Face based Light Families only with no Geometry only a nested Symbol. All we want to show is Design indent.
Specific information gets pushed into it via Key schedule
During design there are too many changes happening and different manufactures considered, so it moves from Generic to Specific. I would be happy with just a Key schedule from the manufacturers with the Order number as Key or something similar. It would be of course great if Autodesk would work out a way to make Key schedules work with shared parameters.

[SCShell]

I use Face based Light Families only with no Geometry only a nested Symbol. All we want to show is Design indent..

Hey there,
I assume that you have an earlier Idesign" model with standard Revit lights for rendering and 3d views?
Thanks
Steve

[ThinkRevit]

Keys Schedules are for Project Parameters (Room Schedules, etc). Is there a particular reason you are using them for Lights. Why not just turn off the 'itemize every instance' option in the 'Sorting/ Grouping' tab of the 'Schedule Properties'. In other words, why are you not scheduling them as Building Components?

[mruehr]

Well don't really agree with you first statement,
Key-schedules are great for Pushing Information into the Model and they are Instance.
So it allows me to attach different Model Information to the Same Generic Family.
For Instance we have 3 Interior Schemes for the same Apartment Type, they can change
all the time the buyer changes his mind or the Interior Guys change the scheme a certain Light Fixture is not available anymore.In a Project with 120 or more different Lighting Fixtures I find it much easier to handle this via Key schedules.The Interiore Folks can make changes via Shedules and Keyshedules without having to go into the Model an me having to worry about Revision Control.

[mruehr]

Hey there,
I assume that you have an earlier Idesign" model with standard Revit lights for rendering and 3d views?
Thanks
Steve

Hi Steve
No we have a 3D Visualisation Department an they think the Revit Lights suck.
so all they want to know is the location and what type.
We may rethink this for Lighting calculations in revit,but at the moment this is easier done in 3d Max with Max Lights and attached Manufactures IES Files.

Cheers
Michael