Electrical PLans

[jwilhelm]

I am setting up an electrical plan. I have duplicated the floor plan and set visibility on everything but the electrical fixtures and the lighting fixtures. I placed a couple outlets on the electrical plan and they show up fine, then I placed a few light fixtures in the ceiling plan but they dont show up on the elctrical plan? I have tried changing the view range but to no avail. suggestions?

[Scott D Davis]

You are going to have to either:

Underlay the Ceiling plan and trace the lights with the linework tool.

or

Open the light families, and add a vertical invisible line from the fixture to the floor line. This causes the ceiling mounted fixtures to show up in all plans.

[archjake]

If you need an electrical plan to show lighting and electrical fixtures you should use a ceiling plan.

Personally, I don't like the vertical invisible line for a work around, and tracing a ceiling plan with the line work could get messy if you ever move or change anything and forget to update the fixture(s) that moved.

[beegee]

tracing a ceiling plan with the line work could get messy if you ever move or change anything and forget to update the fixture(s) that moved.

If you trace an object that has been underlayed, using the linework tool, you are effectively making a special " dynamic" copy of that object in your view. When you switch off the underlay, then move the object in the "parent" view, the traced linework moves also. Give it a try, its a powerful feature of Revit.

[Phil Read]

You can also overlay views on sheets, i.e., a ceiling plan (with only grid and lights turned on) placed on top of the floor plan of the same level. And when you place the second view on top of the first, they'll snap to an invisible reference - so you'll be sure the views are aligned. :)

All the best -

Phil

[adegnan]

OK-- can you guys advise me on some electrical plan standards for residential? I want to find out how others do this.

I don't usually have a RCP for the residential work I do. I typically show lighting, outlets, and switches in my electrical plan. And I typically show it all on one plan-- it can get quite busy with switching banks of recessed lights, ceiling fans & lights, and switched outlets all in the same room, not to mention rope lighting, sconces, and home theatre speaker runs.

The advantage of showing it on one view, I think, is that the switches all show up-- for both ceiling lights, sconces, and outets-- which might otherwise be split up into two views. That is, a "lower" electrical plan consisting of outlets (sometimes with switches) and an "upper" electrical plan consisting of sconces and ceiling lights and ceiling fans etc...

So if I split them up, I could conceivable have like a 4-gang switch box, 3 which run ceiling lights and 1 which runs the outlets. And then they show up on two different plans. THis might be a little more clear and less cluttered for the lighting and outlet plans. But a little less clear for switch locations-- it would look like a triple gang on one plan and a single gang on the other plan.

Which is the clearest and most common, in your opinions?

THanks!!

[Andre Baros]

For the projects complicated enough to even beg the question, we typically create seperate lighting/control plans and power plans. We have a special switched outlet type which shows up on both so that everything controlled can be on one plan. Low volatage gets a seperate plan as well (ie. audio, voice/data, security). On small projects everything gets squeezed onto one plan.

[dazza163968596]

The way I get my electrical layouts to work is add a symbol to a plain locked to say 50mm above the reference plain in the lighting fixture family. This also works for wall mounted electrical fixtures and other ceiling mounted fixtures such as Bell boxes, Key pads, electric showers, smoke alarms & PIR sensors.