Discover the process of modeling electrical equipment in a building using Revit. Learn how to connect the equipment so that Revit can understand how the power flows between each element, from the utility source to the switchboard and down to individual panel boards.
Key Insights
- The process of modeling electrical equipment in Revit involves creating a system wherein power flows from the utility (like a power company or a solar array) through a transformer, and then to a main switchboard. From the switchboard, power is distributed to individual panel boards.
- Revit includes a feature that allows for the visualization of these connections. By using the 'power plug' icon, users can connect panel boards to the main distribution board. An 'arc wire' button can also be used to visually represent these connections.
- For accurate modeling and calculations using Revit, attention should be focused from the switchboard down to the panel boards. This is because Revit assumes the power coming in from the outside is sufficient and is primarily concerned with what's happening inside the building.
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Now that we have electrical equipment modeled in our building, we can connect this equipment to each other so that Revit understands how the power flows between everything. So let's start by going to our electrical room floor plan. It's in floor plans, power plan, electrical room.
And on the right, we want to make sure we have our system browser. I'm going to expand it to make it a little bit bigger. If you don't have it, go to user interface and turn on system browser.
So here it is, and I'm still in the electrical analytical systems. And I'll notice that I have my utility, which is like the power company sending power to the building. I have a transformer, which would be outside the building, sending power to the main switchboard where I have some electrical equipment and my panel boards connected.
Now this is all analytical. It's not modeled anywhere. It's just to help us understand the design of our building.
Now we need to connect the actual equipment. We want to make a switch in our system browser over to systems. And there's a secondary tab here that can show us the systems for all disciplines, mechanical, piping, or electrical.
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And we want to do electrical. And right here where it says unassigned six items, I can click the little plus. I have electrical power, and I've got six items, which I can see right here.
A transformer, inside transformer, a switchboard. I've got four panel boards, and they're all here, but they're not connected. And it shows us they're simply unassigned.
I have a few other systems here because the building came with a few lights and switches already in place. We'll ignore those for now and go back to our electrical room equipment. Now this step, there is no need to follow along.
I want to simply illustrate something so you can watch me and I'll share again when to follow along. So right now I'm going to expand my view up to the north so I can see outside the building. And let's imagine for a moment that we have a utility serving the building.
This could be the local power company. It could be a solar array or a generator, any external power source that's powering the building. And that power might need to be converted through a transformer before it enters the building.
Well, let's place, actually I'm going to place, you don't have to, but I'm going to place a component. And I'm going to load a family and take a look at Revit under its MEP, electrical, and then electric power and generation and transformation. I will notice I have a couple of types of transformers.
I have a dry type transformer. Dry means it's inside the building, not exposed to the weather. Then I have a wet type transformer.
It doesn't mean it's wet or in the water. It means it's outside, exposed to the elements. So I will select that and open up a wet transformer.
And I will place it outside the building here. Now, typically a transformer outside the building would be farther away from the building, maybe out by the street, and then power would be trenched to the building. But I'm just illustrating right now, we have a utility coming in, then we have a wet transformer, and then from the wet transformer, power is sent to our switchboard inside the building.
And that is our power flow. And in our analytical systems, that's how we have it set up, electrical analytical systems. I have that utility coming from the power company, then I have a transformer outside the building, and then I send everything to the switchboard.
And the switchboard has everything connected to it. Now, for Revit modeling purposes, we only need to worry about the switchboard and in, or the switchboard and down. And that's because for all of our schedules and calculations, Revit's concerned about what's happening inside the building.
And we assume the power coming in from the outside is sufficient. We don't need to anything I just modeled. But I wanted to show it because it is in the analytical system.
And we will show it again on our one line diagram. But for now, we'll just stick with our systems, electrical and the equipment that we have. So I'm going to delete my little diagram for now and delete the wet transformer.
And we'll focus on the, we'll focus on the electrical room. So let's go back to where we were. And now it's time to follow along again.
We're going to work here in our electrical room. We have these panel boards, and they all connect to our switchboard. I'm going to click the switchboard and slow click on the name switchboard to edit the parameter.
And I'm going to call it the main distribution board. So there it is renamed the main distribution board. I see it here.
And I want to connect all of the panel boards to it. So I'll start by clicking on panel board one. And Revit has a really cool way of connecting it.
I simply click the board and up at the top, this power outlet appears. I can power the board. So I click on that power outlet or power plug, like I'm plugging it in.
And I'll select the panel I want it to go to. And it might start with none, but I can switch that over to the main distribution board. And now it's plugged in or connected to that main distribution board.
And let's see what happens if I click on this little plus. I can see minus that unnamed down here. I now at the very bottom see main distribution board.
And below that main distribution board, there's a number one. And that is our panel board one. It's all plugged in now.
Super cool, right? Let's do the next one. So I'll click on panel board two and I'll click the power button. And I will plug it in to that main distribution board.
And this time I want to show that connection. So before I click anything else, I can click this arc wire button. And that shows a little wire connecting to the main distribution board.
Now it's little, so I can drag this over and exaggerate that connection. I can also click one of these dots by zooming in and change the arc to give it more of a curve. And if I click away, I can now visually see that panel board two is connected to the main distribution board.
And you might ask yourself, well, we didn't do that for panel board one. I want to have that arc. We can still do it.
So let's hover over that panel board one and hit TAB. And that selects the connection. We can see there's kind of a box around the distribution board and our panel.
If we click, we've selected that connection and we can add an arc wire at that point after the fact. We can drag it over and adjust its curvature. Let's go to panel board three.
We'll select it, follow the same process, the power by plugging it in. If it's set to none, I want to change it to main distribution board. I can add a wire at that time and I can drag the wire across to visually show that it's connected and I can change the curvature.
Let's do that one more time for panel board four. I'm going to click panel board four, click the power, and I'm going to click arc wire and drag that across and show some curvature as well. Sometimes you have to zoom in quite a bit to grab the dot for the curvature, pull it out, and give some curve to that wire.
All right, so now all four are connected and we've got some beautiful lines showing that connection. If we jump down to power now, we will see our main distribution board and one, two, three, four, which is panel board one, two, three, and four. Now if yours doesn't look like this, the best option is to undo.
Go back to the beginning, make sure that we start by clicking on panel board one and plugging it into the main distribution board. The main distribution board itself gets plugged into nothing. If we accidentally do that, that will put it in its own kind of unnamed circuit and make it confusing.
If you get there, you want to undo and just start by plugging in each panel board and we'll be all set. Now that we've got these panel boards connected, let's have some fun and connect in an elevator.
