Explore the process of implementing lighting switches and creating appropriate circuits as part of the BIM 321 course, Introduction to Revit MEP. Learn how to correctly load in lighting switches, adjust switch types, and distribute power through different panels across a designed space.
Key Insights
- In BIM 321, students learn how to load in and implement different types of lighting switches, such as single pole and three-way switches, into a designed space via Revit MEP.
- The content provides a detailed guide on creating circuits, choosing distribution systems, and tying them to panels, a necessary process to successfully calculate electrical loads in Revit.
- Although the course content shows how to allocate power through different panels, it emphasizes the importance of real-life practices where a designer will guide the exact placement of these panels in an office setting.
Welcome back to the CAD Teacher VDCI video course content for the BIM 321 course, Introduction to Revit MEP. In the previous video, we went ahead and actually got all of our power outlets and data outlets in. In the next video, I want to go ahead and start putting in some switches for our light fixtures.
They're very similar to the devices, so I want to go ahead and pull this down here and choose lighting device. So please go ahead and pull it down and choose lighting device. And right now we have them loaded in.
If you do not have them loaded in, just go ahead. It's going to give you a little warning that says you do not have any lighting devices loaded in. Just go ahead, hit okay, and it's going to take you to your load family here.
You'd want to go to electrical, MEP, electric power, terminals, and then choose the lighting switches. The normal switches are not on the lighting device category, so it will not allow you to load those. We want to go ahead and load in the lighting switches.
You would hit open and load those in, and there you are. You'll notice up here under lighting switches, there's a lot of different ones. We have a circuit breaker, a dimmer, a door, four-way, key operated, low voltage, pilot lighted, single pole, three-way, and timer.
%20(1).png)
Learn Revit MEP
- Nationally accredited
- Create your own portfolio
- Free student software
- Learn at your convenience
- Authorized Autodesk training center
For this one, I want to go ahead and use my single pole. So please go ahead in your type selector, pull down and select single pole. So I selected that there, and there they are.
I have my offset of four feet. Everything else is good. I'm going to go ahead, let's pop a single pole into each office.
There we are. Pop one in there. I'm going to go ahead and pop one in here also, even though we don't have a light in here yet, but that's okay.
I can go ahead. I'm going to pop in two for the bathroom. Here in this room here, I'm just going to go ahead and pop in one.
And then once we get to this office, I want to be able to turn the lights on from both sides. So I'm going to go ahead and change my to three-way. I want to change my switch to a three-way.
I'm going to go ahead and put in two here and two here. And there we are. Again, if I need to space these out a little bit, that's perfectly fine.
Again, these are just graphical annotations. We have all of our switches in. Now, how Revit works is that it is able to calculate your electrical loads and all those different kinds of things.
We have to go through and actually create circuits. If I go ahead and I'm going to zoom in here, I'm going to go ahead and actually just drag this out just a little bit. So I can see both my outlets here.
And if I select these two, I can go to create power system. So I'm going to go power and it's going to create a circuit. Then what I could do is I can go to select panel.
Then I could choose a panel, but as you can see, it's none. And I could pick here on the PP1 for the power panel one. But as you'll notice, it'll say cannot assign or add PP1 to circuit.
There are no assigned distribution systems for PP1. So I'm going to go ahead and hit back off and then hit escape a couple of times. What I have to do is I'm going to select this guy.
I'm going to scroll down to the bottom, find the distribution system, and let's go ahead and make it the 120-240 single. I'm going to select here, same thing, 120-240 single. Here, distribution system, 120-240 single.
I'm going to select here and then the 120-208Y and just choose a distribution system for all these because we're going to eventually tie the lights into this information also. Now I can take those and they already have a circuit combined. So another tab pops up.
I go here. I'm going to go to select panel. I'm going to choose PP1 and it's tied those now to PP1.
I'm going to select these four here, holding control, power. I'm going to select my panel here. I'm going to pull down PP1.
There we go. I'm going to select all of my devices there, power, select panel, PP1. There we go.
And again, I'm just going to work my way through selecting the different devices and creating the circuits. So power, select panel, PP1, here, here, here, here, and here. Power, select panel, PP1, and just keep working my way around.
Power, select panel, PP1, here, here, here, here, and here. Power, select panel, PP1. I'm going to go ahead and take all of these guys here.
I'm going to break the circuit in half. So I'm going to create a circuit of just these five and then a circuit of those four. So I'm going to go power, select panel, and let's go ahead and make this on PP2.
There we go. Select here, here, here, and here. Power, select panel, PP2.
And obviously, whenever you'd be doing this in an office, you'd be having a designer go ahead and tell you exactly where to put these. Select here, here, here, and here. I'm going to go ahead, power, select panel, and I'm going to choose PP2.
Here, here, here, and here. Power, select panel, PP2. And then the bathroom ones, I'm going to put them all in the same circuit.
Power, and select panel, and let's go ahead and put this on PP3, Power Panel 3. And there we go. We've successfully created all of the circuits that we need. We'll eventually need to do that for the actual lighting fixtures too, but this power plan is pretty much done.
We've tied it all into circuits. We've tied it all to the panels so we can schedule these items and do those other kind of things that we need to. I'm going to go ahead and pause this video here or stop this video here and we'll come back and we'll keep continuing to work on this.
See you then.