Adding and Configuring Light Fixtures in Revit Electrical Ceiling Plans

Now that we have our electrical distribution system in place, we can start adding light fixtures to our panel boards. Let's start by creating some new views. We'll go to View, Plan Views, and we want a reflected ceiling plan to show all of our light fixtures in the ceiling.

We will select Reflected Ceiling Plan. The default might be Architectural. We'll swap that out for Electrical, and we want L2 and L1.

We'll hold Shift on the keyboard, select both, and click OK. That's going to go through and create the two views, and we'll find them in our project browser. If I scroll down here, I now have a ceiling plans electrical plan.

I'll open that up, and I have Level 1 and Level 2. I'll start here with Level 1 by double-clicking, and here it is, my Level 1 plan. Now a few things of note. It's not looking quite how I'd like.

I have these architectural lights are kind of dark and in the foreground, and I want to change some of the settings. For example, I don't see any doors. And let's go ahead and start updating those settings now.

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We'll go right to the ceiling plan electrical plan details here in the Properties window. If I scroll all the way down to Identity Data, I can see the View Template is set to None. I'll click that, and I can start with the electrical ceiling plan template.

And that is a great starting point, but I need to make a few extra edits. Here in the Model Overrides, I will click Edit, and I will scroll down and find Rooms. I want to turn Rooms on because I want to add some tags.

Additionally, I want to change my filter, and let's swap over to Mechanical for a moment. And I notice at the very top, Air Terminals is turned off, and I want to make sure I don't place any lights over Air Terminals, so I'll check that on. Let's go back to Electrical, and I want to find those lighting fixtures.

They are turned on, but I want to accentuate the lighting fixtures that we are placing. And so we will override the lines, and we will set the weight to 6, and click OK. That's going to give us a nice bold line around all of our new light fixtures.

Now we go to the Annotation Categories, and we will jump right down here, scroll on down, find the Match Line, and turn that off. We don't need that for this view. Now we're going to jump all the way across to Revit Links.

Over here in Revit Links, we want the background to fade back, so we'll click Half Tone, and we'll do the same for the HVAC background, both Half Tone. Now we'll click OK. More than that, we want to now scroll down and find View Range, and click Edit.

Right now we can see the Cut Plane is set to 7'6". That's why we don't see the doors there. We're cutting way above the doors, so I want to change that down to 3'6".

Why so low? That's because I want to show my light switches, and those will be at about 4'. So I'm going to cut below that, and we're looking up towards the ceiling. 3'6 will be about perfect.

We'll click OK here. I think that's it for now, so let's click OK. Watch the magic happen as Revit makes those changes that we wanted, and we've got a nice faded plan here now.

We can see all of the doors. We can see the architectural lights and the existing HVAC air terminals, and this is looking really good. All I need to do now is jump over to the Level 2 ceiling plan and apply those same filters.

It's easy to do now. I go to the View Template where it says None. I click Architectural Ceiling and OK, and all those settings will come here to Level 2 as well.

If you'll notice, there are some dark light fixtures here. Some of the light fixtures are already modeled, but we are going to model all the light fixtures in this classroom area. So you'll hear me say classroom area.

I mean this classroom wing and this classroom wing on Levels 1 and 2. We're going to place light fixtures in, and I will show you how to place a few, and you will continue on and create all the remaining light fixtures in this area. Feel free to use your artistic license or Design Eye, but we also have a handout. If you look in the handout section of our downloads, there is a BIM 323 Classroom Area Light Locations PDF.

It has both Level 1 and Level 2. There's a legend here. It shows which color is which fixture. The long text here is the exact name of the Revit family and type, so it's easy to figure out which light is which.

You can place the lights as shown for Level 1 and Level 2, but you'll be doing that on your own. Let me show you a few tricks to get started creating these light fixtures. I'm going to zoom in to Level 1 up in the top left corner and start placing some lights.

To do that, I'm going to go up to Systems, and I want to come across to find Lighting Fixtures, so I click Lighting Fixture. Now, by default, this might be set to Vertical Face, Place on Work Plane, Place on Face. If it's stuck on Place on Work Plane, you might be presented with this window, and you might wonder, how do I get out of that? It's okay to click on Pick a Plane, PK.

Click OK. Pick any of these ceiling planes, and now you can switch this over to Place on Face. Place on Face is just one way to place lights here in our model.

You're placing it on the architectural ceiling face, and the downside of that is if the architect makes changes to their ceiling, your lights might become dissociated. The nice thing is they won't delete or anything like that, but you might get some warnings saying, hey, your lights have become dissociated, and you can re-associate them, which can maybe cause some pain later. We'll get into some other ways to place lights, but for now, let's practice this method.

It does work, especially if we know the architectural ceilings are pretty much done, and we're placing lights in those ceilings. This can be a good way to go. So I want to start with going to the Plane light fixture.

It's just called Plane. It's kind of a Revit default, and there's a 2 foot by 4 foot 120 volt fixture that I want to select. If I happen to click Edit Type, I'll notice that this is a light fixture that's already used in the project because it already has a type mark filled out, so I know I've got the right one.

So I'll say OK, and I'm hovering over Place on Face. So right here, it's trying to attach the light to the ceiling, which is what I want, but I want to hit Spacebar to orient it vertically. Then I can click in the corner of each of the architect's lights and place our electric lights.

It's not a problem. This is pretty common. The architect will place lights in their model, but we will need to place our own in the electrical model to create our own circuits.

So those are those four lights. I will create six more here. I just click on each corner.

One, two, three, four, five, six, and pretty quickly, I've got that classroom full of lights. I go to the Modify tab, and I will click and hold Control to select all six lights, and now I can use some of my ninja tools in Revit to quickly add lights to the rest of the classroom. For example, I can use the Mirror command, which is on my keyboard, or Mirror, and I can mirror these across.

Mirror, and I can keep doing that down the row. Mirror and mirror them all the way across, and very quickly, I will have my light fixtures simply because the classrooms themselves were mirrored, and so it's easy enough to mirror those light fixtures in. All right, so that's one light type, and you can continue modeling those in all the classrooms.

There are some other light examples here. For the hallway, if I click on the Modify and select this light, I notice that it is a recessed direct indirect light symmetrical, and I can find that here and place it, or because I already have one in the hallway, I can right click, and I can say Create Similar. I'm going to place it right here in the hallway.

I'm going to use that lucky space bar again to rotate it to horizontal. I want to line it up about in the center of those doors and somewhere right here. I will click.

That places one, and now I can use some of those extra Revit tools. For example, I can select this light fixture and select the Array command, and it's AR on the keyboard, or Array, and I want to change the number of lights. There are six in the hallway.

I'll switch that to six, move it to last position. I'll click once and drag that down the hallway to the end. Click again, and I've got my six hallway lights.

Hit ENTER, and I'm good to go. Now there is a pendant light right here in the vestibule, so I want to go ahead and go to Systems, Light Fixture, and let's find that pendant light. If we pull this down and look through our light options, we'll find it.

There's a pendant light, linear one lamp, 48 inch, 120 volt. And again, if I click on Edit Type, I'll notice this is a light that has been used in this project because it's already got a type mark. So I will click here, hit the space bar, center it on that other light fixture right in that vestibule, and now I've got a pendant light set.

All right, last but not least, let's place another light type. We have these 2x2 lights. If I select one, I can right click and say Create Similar, and I can place those in this room up here.

Again, I've got the place on face turned on, and I can create those four lights. They're 2x2s. Sometimes I have to zoom in to get it to snap on the ceiling grid right where I want it to be, and so just simply zooming in can make it easier to snap.

And I'm avoiding those HVAC air terminals. If you do overlap one, that's okay. We are going to clash detect at the very end.

So there we go. I think that's off to a good start, so keep placing those lights. Now, the other way we can dress up these floor plans is to add in room tags.

So let's go to Annotate, right across the top, Annotate button, and I'm looking for a room tag. So Room Tag, and I'm going to pick some of the options I want. I can click and drag those in individually, and that could be a nice way to do it.

Or a faster way is to go back to Annotate, and then I can do Tag All. Tag All, and I want all objects in current view. I want to include elements from linked files because this file, all of the rooms are in that architectural model.

So that's a linked model. I want all elements from linked files. I can scroll down and select Room Tags, and make sure there's no leader, and click OK.

And that will go through and place room tags on that entire L1. I can then jump down to my, or upstairs, to my L2, and do the same process. Annotate, Tag All, all objects in view, linked files, and I want room tags, no leader, and click OK.

And now I'll have all of these room tags in Level 2 as well. One little trick I can do to make the lights look a little better and less cluttered, is for the small rooms, I can pull those tags out of the room, and Revit automatically makes a leader for those tags. Super convenient.

I can also take these tags that show up, and center them as needed, so that they don't conflict with the lights. Alright, so the time is yours to jump in, model the light fixtures in the classroom areas on Level 1, Level 2, and set these room tags, and we will meet back again soon.