How do I add ceiling lights to the underside of a conc slab?

[cadkiller]

How do I add ceiling lights to the underside of a conc slab that doesn't have a ceiling?
Is the only way to create ceilings and have them like 1/256" thick and have them at the same level as the underside of slab? Or can I edit a light to be floor hosted? What would you do?

[DanielleAnderson]

You may need to make your own...or put in a ceiling maybe that you could turn off?

[cadkiller]

So you're saying to create all the ceilings and turn off the visiblity of ceilings in all views.
I hope I can easily select all the views at once and be able to turn off the ceilings.
Well I just tried it and you have to do them one by one. :(
Thanks for the suggestion.

[dpollard909366]

I would just make a floor hosted recessed light instead of the ceiling hosted.


start as a generic model - floor based, change the category to lighting fixtures, and make sure that 'always vertical' is unchecked in the category parameters.

[dpollard909366]

to turn off all the ceiling visibilities, make a view template and then you can apply it to all of the views that you need at once

[DanielleAnderson]

So you're saying to create all the ceilings and turn off the visiblity of ceilings in all views.
I hope I can easily select all the views at once and be able to turn off the ceilings.
Well I just tried it and you have to do them one by one. :(
Thanks for the suggestion.

Dave's got a good suggestion there. As for uniformly turning off ceilings, just create a view template, then you only have to do it once and just apply the view template to the views you want to turn the ceiling off in (although, hopefully there is other view customization you want to do, otherwise, the process will probably take you about the same amount of time). I have found in some situations, I like to use lights that are not hosted, so you could take the ceiling-hosted light and copy it into a light template that is not hosted, that would work too.

[sbrown]

You just need a non ceiling base light family.

[Dwane Lindsey]

I would have to agree with the others and make a non-ceiling hosted family.

Although, I've run across another solution by creating a very thin ceiling (I believe 1/16" was the thinest you could go) and lock it to the underside of the floor structure. This would be a separate ceiling type of course and just dont have any materials specified to it, unless you want the thin ceiling to act like the exposed "finish" of the floor. When you view this in section, it's not really visible when printed because of the small thickness. If you get into large scale detail, then you could turn the ceiling off for that view. Again, maybe not the best solution, but it's an alternative.

[cadkiller]

Does anyone have a non ceiling hosted light fixture?
(Ceiling - Flat Round.rfa)
It would be greatly appreciated.

[bowlingbrad]

Use the 'basic ceiling'. It's just a plane. No thickness. It will host lights.

[Andre Baros]

What Brad said. I think that's the only reason that the basic ceiling exists.

[bowlingbrad]

I still wish Revit had a Basic Wall, a Basic Floor and a Basic Roof.

[cadkiller]

That's what I ended up doing. Putting in basic ceilings to add the lights.
Thanks for the suggestion. I probably could have just as easily created a non hosted light like Scott suggested; but it seemed easier for me to just add the ceilings. If it was a high rise building then I would have created one; but I only had three levels to work on.

[archjake]

As I recall we can also have reference plane hosted families, but the quick workaround is to put in the basic ceiling with no thickness.

[Andre Baros]

It's hard enough to keep track of families in "the list" as is without having to keep track of ceiling hosted and un-hosted lights. Wall based, and non-based families, etc. etc. The basic ceiling, saves you from having one more family in your project.