Floating Wires next to light fixtures

[cyriousn]

I've created some light fixtures for our company and some of the light fixtures when wired will have a gap at the perimeter while the others will show the wire all the up to the border of the light fixture. Maybee I'm just being picky but does anyone know what causes this or how to fix it? Thanks!

[CADastrophe]

Usually, when I see this happening it's due to hidden Model elements with the family that are larger than the Detail Lines representing it. I had experimented a little bit with this in the past (though this was in MEP 2013):

I created a 2' diameter Extrusion as the light fixture, and then a 1' diameter Detail Line to represent it. If I changed the Extrusion's V/G to be hidden in Plan/RCP Views, the newly created Wire connected to the Detail Lines as expected. However, if I only turned the extrusion off (unchecked the visibility box), it still registered as a valid boundary for the new Wire, creating that gap.

So, the bottom line is that if the Family has hidden Model Elements, make sure that they are specifically hidden on Plan/RCP Views. (Assuming that this is your case, of course!)

[neightyeight]

And it happens a lot with annotation families nested in the lighting fixture family. In your example, the recessed troffer has it's "annotation" lines at the actual geometry of the fixture, so the wire comes off nicely. With your sconce, you probably have a generic annotation family nested in there, which would not line up with the actual geometry of your fixture.

[cyriousn]

Thanks guys for the input. I'll have to dig around and see what exactly I messed up with the annotations and 3d elements.