Master the practical aspects of the Revit MEP module, including creating a comprehensive electrical plan and managing complex project browser organization. The course provides hands-on exercises to organize project browsers, create new views, adjust disciplines, and employ view templates to streamline workflow.
Key Insights
- The course provides detailed instructions on how to set up an electrical plan in the Revit MEP module, including creating and editing views in the project browser, and adjusting disciplines to accommodate electrical elements.
- Students learn how to streamline their workflow by employing view templates, which can be quickly applied to various views in large-scale projects.
- Practical exercises include loading light fixtures into the project and understanding how to select the correct lights based on specific settings, thereby allowing for precise control over voltages, light intensity, and electrical loads.
Welcome back to the CAD Teacher VDCI video course content for the BIM 321 course, Introduction to Revit MEP. In the previous videos, we went ahead and actually got our entire plumbing system dialed in, ready to go. We've connected all of the fixtures, run all the pipe, and we're good to go with that.
We could always go back and make some adjustments, but I'm liking how it is right now. What I want to go ahead and do is start on the electrical portion of the class. Now, typically, electrical is a separate file, but in this course, I'm really concerned more so with you guys being able to model, or you being able to model the actual specific elements, so we're going to go ahead and just keep everything in one file.
Most MEP firms, you know, mechanical and plumbing will tend to go together because mechanical systems will also have piping, and then electrical is typically handled by a different contractor, but we're going to go ahead and put it into the same model here. But it's also going to provide us a great exercise on how to organize our project browser. If you look in your project browser, you'll notice we have our mechanical, and we're going to have a plumbing section.
The next piece that I want to go ahead and have is we need to have an electrical, but we need to go ahead and create some new views. So let's go ahead and do that. I want to go up to View, up here at the top, the View tab, and I want to go ahead and let's go to Plan Views, and let's go Reflected Ceiling Plan.
The first plans that we're going to start with will be the Reflected Ceiling Plans for the actual lighting fixtures, and that's going to be the first items that we're going to be putting in. So I'm going to go Reflected Ceiling Plan, and I do want to go ahead and uncheck Do Not Duplicate Existing Views. And I want to go ahead and select Level 1, Level 2, because we need to go ahead and duplicate them to create these new views.
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So Level 1, Level 2, and hit OK. Now, we need to go ahead and figure out where these are being held. If I go ahead and scroll through my project browser, you can see that they're under the Mechanical area here.
So, as you can see, it goes Mechanical, and then it has the three dots because we do not have a sub-discipline, and then we have Ceiling Plans, Level 1 and Level 2. So I'm going to go ahead and select the Level 2 plan, and go to my Properties. The first thing I want to go ahead and change is the Discipline. So I'm going to go ahead and change that, and please change it to Electrical.
And then it's going to go ahead and automatically create our Electrical area here. I'm going to go ahead and give a sub-discipline, and let's go ahead and make it Lighting. Now if I expand the Electrical here in my project browser, I have Electrical, Lighting, Ceiling Plans, Level 2. Let's go ahead and make sure that we select our Level 1 Ceiling Plan for our Electrical.
And I want to go ahead, and I'm going to change the Sub-Discipline, or the Discipline, to Electrical. And I want to go ahead and make my Sub-Discipline be Lighting. Perfect.
Now you can see that we have Electrical, Lighting, Ceiling Plans, Level 1 and Level 2. In each of these, I want to go ahead and start to turn off some specific items. So I'm going to go ahead, and let's go VV, and we want to go ahead and turn off some specific things. I do want to leave the Air Registers on, so I don't place my lights over those.
So I'm going to go ahead, and I want to undo everything that says Duct. So I'm going to select all the Duct items there. I'm going to go to Plumbing, and I'm going to turn off Pipes, Pipe Placeholders, Pipe Installation, Pipe Fittings, and Pipe Accessories.
And there we are. We're good to go there. Let's go ahead and take a look at how that looks.
I think everything else is fine. I'm going to hit Apply and hit OK. We forgot Flex Ducts and Mechanical Equipment, so I'm just going to go back into VV.
I'm going to scroll down and find Flex Ducts, and also turn off Flex Pipes. And then let's go ahead and turn off Mechanical Equipment, Apply, and hit OK. So this is what I want my Electrical Plan to start looking like.
But to get this to actually, I want to be able to apply this to my other Electrical View, I want to go ahead and save this as a View Template, so I can just quickly apply it without having to go back to VV. Say you had a building that was 5, 6, 7 stories tall, you may want to go ahead and create that View Template, so you can apply it to all the different views. So, I'm going to go ahead, I'm going to, Level 1, I'm going to do a right click.
I'm going to Create View Template from View. And let's go ahead and name that Lighting Plan, and hit OK. There we are.
I want to go ahead, leave that as that, and hit OK. Now, under Level 2, I'm going to double click into that. Let me go ahead and zoom extents, so we see everything.
I'm going to select that, Apply Template Properties, and I'm going to select my Lighting Plan, Apply Properties, and hit OK. And so that's quickly and effectively created our View Template for us. So it's going to be really nice so that we can keep working.
Let's go ahead and hop down to our Level 1 Plan. Now, make sure you're on that Level 1 ceiling plan, and we're going to go ahead and start adding some light fixtures. So, we're going to kind of look at both areas.
We're going to go ahead and put some light fixtures in the hallway, in the different offices, and in here. So, under Systems up here, I'm just going to go ahead, and let's find the light fixture, which will be here. I'm going to go Light Fixture, and what it's saying is that there's no light fixtures loaded into the project.
So, would we like to load one now? I'm going to go ahead and hit Yes. I'm going to scroll down, and under the Lighting Panel here, or the Lighting Folder, I'm going to double-click in. I'm going to go ahead, let's go to our MEP lights.
Let's choose our Internal. So, we have a few different lights. I want to go ahead and select the Downlight Recessed Can.
These will be the lights that we're going to be using in our bathroom. Let's go ahead and bring in some wall washers also. We'll use those maybe in the corridors.
We want to go ahead now, and I also want to bring in some Troffer Lights 2x4 and 2x2s. So, Troffer Light 2x4, Troffer Light 2x2s. I'm going to go ahead and hit Open, and load all four of those into the different areas.
So, we've loaded all of those into our lighting fixtures here. So, let's take a look at these families real quick. So, we have a Downlight Recessed Can, a Downlight Wall Washer, we have a Troffer Light, and we have a 2x2 Troffer Light, and a 2x4 Troffer Light.
So, as you can see, there's a couple different things. So, each of these have specific settings to them, so you'll want to check with the designer and make sure that we're using the correct lights. Again, Revit MEP is this program that will allow us to control everything, so we can go ahead and actually have the right voltages and calculate our foot candles and lighting loads as we need to, and it will also calculate our electrical loads.
So, I'm going to go ahead and stop this video here. We've gotten quite a bit of work done in getting these views set up. We've loaded in the families.
In the next video, we're actually going to go ahead and place in our specific items. See you then.