Learn how to add receptacles to a plan in Revit, an essential task for electrical engineering. This comprehensive guide gives you step-by-step instructions on how to adjust view properties, effectively add receptacles, adapt to specific architectural aspects, and even modify Revit families to meet specific project needs.
Key Insights
- The article provides a detailed explanation of how to add receptacles to a plan in Revit. The process begins with cleaning up unused view tags, zooming in on specific areas in the plan, and adjusting view properties to display specific objects such as plumbing fixtures.
- It also explains how to place receptacles in different parts of a room considering the specific architectural aspects such as sinks, windows, and walls. It is important to adjust receptacle types and elevations depending on the location, for example, using a GFCI receptacle and adjusting its elevation to 42 inches when placing it near a sink.
- Moreover, the guide highlights how to edit Revit families when they do not connect to a circuit by default. It explains how to add an electrical connector, set the voltage and apparent power phase, and load it back into the project. This ensures all outlets, including floor outlets, can be connected to a circuit.
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All right, who's excited to add some receptacles to our plan? I know I am. A couple of housekeeping items first. Number one, we have a couple of unused view tags out here.
Let's select those and click delete on our keyboard. I see two of them and they're gone. We can feel better they're not hanging out there anymore.
Now let's zoom in. We're on level one power plan and we want to look at the top left corner of the building. We'll zoom right there.
We see classroom 1510 and classroom 1509 right here. What's missing is a sink. I don't have the sink that I know is here in the located here in this counter.
So what I'm going to do is go back to my view properties here and find identity data, view template, electrical power plan, and I want to go to visibility graphics overrides and I want to do the Revit links. Click edit. I'm in the Revit links tab and where it says display settings custom, I want to go into the model categories, scroll down to plumbing fixtures and turn those on.
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Plumbing fixtures and say okay and okay. Let's click apply and see what happens. Now we have the sinks but they are in a dark black color which kind of indicates that they're new or part of this electrical set and we don't want that.
We want them to fade to the background so we can go back to the Revit links override and simply check the halftone for architectural and we might as well check the HVAC halftone as well while we're here and click okay and okay. Perfect. So all of that fades back and if we zoom in we can place receptacles for these two classrooms.
To do that let's go up to our systems tab, go all the way across and there is this drop down in that menu. It might be set to lighting or something else. What we want is we want to change that to electrical fixture and it kind of looks like a receptacle.
So electrical fixture and that's the symbol there and right off the bat I have a motor which we don't want. I want to change the type I'm going to place and if we scroll to the top of our list we'll notice this duplex receptacle and it comes in two flavors GFCI or standard. Let's start with the standard.
So I've got duplex receptacle standard. Now if I scroll to the top let's notice a few things. Number one it's on level one.
That's perfect. That's where we're working level one power plan. Elevation from level we want that 18 inches above the finish floor so one foot six is perfect and we don't want an offset.
Across the top we want to place on vertical face. We're going to place these on the architectural walls and so it looks like we're all set up. We want to place a couple of outlets around the classroom walls.
So I'll place one here in 1510 and I'll place one near the window and I'm getting all four walls so I'll go to the right wall and then down to this bottom wall. So that puts four outlets in classroom 1510. Now I'm going to go to 1509 and I'll place one on three of the walls left top and right but if I put a 15 an 18 inch outlet right here in the sink it would be kind of under the sink under that countertop so I need to move it up.
So before I click anywhere I want to move it up. I also don't want just a regular old outlet. I want the GFCI variety because I'm in a wet near a wet area the sink.
So let's drop our options window down here and I've got duplex receptacle GFCI. So I'll click that and notice that it changed the default elevation. I want to put these at 42 inches so we'll type in 42 inches and enter locks that in so three foot six and now I can place a GFI outlet next to the sink.
If it's hard to place it's okay to zoom in until it's a little bit easier to place on that wall face. Now both of these classrooms have four receptacles each but one has a GFCI outlet. Let's notch it up.
We want to also add in a floor outlet so that somebody can plug in right there in the middle of the classroom. Let's go back to our drop down again our menu here and we're going to type in the word floor f-l-o-o-r and we're looking for outlet floor duplex and there's a single floor duplex outlet. We'll click on that and as we hover over we'll notice that it is set to level one and the elevation is zero which is perfect.
We want this on the ground so we'll click somewhere in the middle of each classroom to place that floor outlet and we'll click the modify to be done. Awesome so each classroom has five outlets now. Now we want to add these to a circuit so if I click on the first outlet I'll notice that I get the power button.
If I hold CTRL and grab another receptacle another and the GFCI I still have the power button. I can assign these to a circuit but while holding CTRL if I also click on that floor outlet it goes away it no longer works. So why is that? It's a good question.
Some of these Revit families don't come ready to connect to a circuit and the floor outlet is one of those examples. It's the basic out-of-the-box Revit family. It does not connect to a circuit.
We have to edit this family. So let's click on it and click edit family and I see nothing in the original view of the family. That's okay.
I want to double click under floor plans ref level. That brings up the outlet. I can see it here now and what it needs is an electrical connector.
So I go to the create tab. I go across until I see the connectors area. I want electrical connector and by default it wants to place on a face but I don't want that.
I want to click work plane work plane and that will bring up the work plane menu and you notice I had to click it a couple times. Sometimes it's a little bit slow but it will come up and the work plane I want to pick is a named work plane and it's the ref level and I simply click okay and it places it right there for me. I'm all set but it still wouldn't connect without voltage.
So let's select that connector. It's green. It turns blue to let us know we selected it and I've got voltage and apparent power phase one.
I need to set those. Luckily this family does already have a couple of parameters. So under voltage I can click the little tiny button that says associate family parameter and I can set this to the switch voltage and click okay and then apparent power I can click that little box again and change that to load.
Perfect. Now it will have some parameters. All I need to do is load it back into our project and to do that I will click load into project and close.
Do I want to save my changes? No. And what I want to do is override the existing version and its parameter values. So I will click that.
Override the existing version and parameter values. So there it is. It just blinks to let us know it updated.
That's about all Revit does to let us know it updated. So let's click on it and investigate. I'll select it and I'll look at properties.
Everything looks fine here. I do have some electrical data right there at the bottom now and if I click edit type I'll notice that I have a voltage 120 volt so I can connect it to a 120 volt circuit and there's a load there. So it's perfect.
Now I can try that same trial again where I'm clicking all these outlets. I'll click hold control go around and if I include that floor box, power button's still there. We're good to go.
I want to continue to move around and select all of the outlets. There are 10 in total. Five in each classroom and if it's all working right we still have this power button.
We will click it and the panel is set currently to none. We want PB3. Connection type is breaker and if we look over at the left we see some of the information about it.
Right now there's a load name is blank. If we pull that down we'll see some of the basic options. We used lighting previously but now we can give this a name and sometimes it can just be simply outlets or receptacles.
Let's give this a more specific name so we will call this classroom receptacles or what's probably better for Revit is receptacles classroom. Why is that? That's because Revit puts everything in alphabetical order. We start with the main category of receptacles and we can add the subcategory classroom and it will look a little bit better in our schedules.
With that we'll click apply and click the modify button and we're all set. We've created our first little circuit here of classroom receptacles.
