Creating and Applying Area-Based Load Tags and Filters in Electrical Floor Plan Views

Now that we have our area-based loads and an electrical distribution system, let's check out how to display this information directly on the floor plan. To do that, we will use an annotation tag. We will start by clicking File, New, Family.

This will be an annotation, so we'll open the annotation folder. We will go to the Generic Annotation, and we will click Open. When this opens, we can zoom right into the note.

The note says to change the family category to set the appropriate annotation type. We will delete this note and do what it says. We'll go up to Modify, find that folder.

Right here, we will filter the list to Electrical, and at the very top, we find Area-Based Load Tags. We'll click OK. Now we can click the Create button and start the label.

Click one time in the family, and because we select Area-Based Load for our tag type, all of this information populates here, and we will start at the top. First, we want the name. Add that in and click OK.

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There's the name. Click again for another label, and this time we want the area, that's the square footage. Click a third time for another label.

We can show the current, and we'll click a fourth time for a final label. This time, we'll talk about where the power comes from. We'll jump down to Supply From.

Add that in, click OK. Now we want to consolidate this information into one tag. I will start by clicking the name.

It's set to 3/32 inches. I will hit Edit Type, Duplicate. I want to set a larger text size.

I'll do 5/32 inches. Click OK. Make the actual text size 5/32 inches, and click the bold option.

Now I'll say OK. Now I can move this into place. I want to center it on that line as best as I can and move it down slightly with my arrow keys.

I'll line up the 150 square foot, and the current, and the supply from right below it. Now I need to give this annotation family a name. To do that, I will say File, Save.

You can save this anywhere you'd like to on your computer. For me, I'll save this for now in Families and References. I'm going to call it ABL for Area-Based Load, dash tag, and save.

Once it's saved, I will click Load into Project and Close. Once the project opens, I do not want to click anywhere, but I can hover over and see that that tag is sniffing out the information from the areas. I want to be more efficient than just clicking around, so I'm going to go back to Annotate, and instead of Tag by Category, I will click Tag All.

Now, I want All Objects in Current View, and I want the category "Area-Based Load Tags." I do not want a leader, and now I can click OK.

It places all of the area tags. There's one outside of the building. That's the corridor tag.

That's because the corridor has a U-shape. I'll drag that to the corridor, and once I click it into the corridor, I can zoom in and see all the information. It's pulling that the area is called L1 Corridor.

It has 7,400 square feet. It's a load of 31 amps, and it's supplied by Panel Board 1. Perfect. We can jump over to Level 2 now and repeat that same process.

We'll go to Annotate, Tag All, and we want All Objects in Current View, Area-Based Load Tags, no leader, OK. And again, that corridor pops out of the building, but we'll put it in, zoom in, and verify that we're pulling the information, the name, square footage, the current, and the panel board it's pulling from. Excellent.

Now we can see all of that wonderful analytical data on the floor plan, but all of the rooms, excuse me, all of the areas are still blue. We want to differentiate what the load types are visually. So let's go back to Level 1. We can do this with a view filter.

So let's hit VV on our keyboard to initiate visibility and graphics. VV, visibility and graphics. The second to last tab is called Filters.

I'll click on that. There is one filter currently set up. It says Views Working.

We want to add more, but first we need to edit the filters. So right down here, there's a box. All document filters are defined and modified here.

Let's click Edit New. We'll scroll to the top, and we'll see for our convenience, we've already added in some filters, but we want to create one of our own and modify these so that they all work. Let's start by deleting the ones we don't need.

There's one called General Power. We didn't use that, so we'll delete that one. Yes, we're sure about that.

We'll also select General Lighting. We didn't use that one, so we'll delete that one. And we did use the Cafeteria, but I want us to create one from scratch together.

Now, we’ll create a new one from scratch. First off, we give it a name, ABL. That's just us saying Area-Based Load. And we're going to call it General and Cafeteria.

We're going to define some rules and click OK. Now we want to filter this list of categories by Electrical. And then we want to find Electrical Analytical Loads.

We check that box, and you’ll see what happens up here. That populates here.

Now we have all of those properties. And the property we want is the Area-Based Load Type. Then we have some modifiers, and we will say equals.

We want it to be equal to. And we pull this down. Like magic, Revit has pulled in all of the load types we defined.

However we typed them in, that's how they'll show up here. We want General Cafeteria. Now I will click Apply, and it's set.

ABL General Cafeteria now works. We'll say OK. I want to move this Visibility and Graphics off to the side if I can, maybe to the left.

We're kind of focused on the Cafeteria area up here. And we want to add a filter now, that one that we just created. A rule-based filter for ABL Cafeteria.

We'll click OK. And where it says Projection Surface, we want to override the pattern. We click right there under Pattern Override.

And the foreground pattern, we want it to be Solid Fill. And we'll pick a color. I recommend sticking with one row because it will make the next step easier.

So I'm going to start with the top row and go across. So I'm going to pick the top left color and say OK. OK.

And let's see if this filter worked. I will hit Apply. And Revit's going to think about it.

And like magic, if it all worked out, the cafeteria turns that pink color. Awesome. So let's add some more.

But we need to edit them to make sure they're going to work first. We'll go back to our Edit New. And we'll check the rules for all of these filters.

So Cafeteria, we're good. General Classroom, we can see the rules aren't set up for this one. We click here.

And we've got to select our Electrical Analytical Loads, which it is. We just need to select what it is. Pulling from, we want the area-based load type equals.

And we'll pull this down. Classroom and Apply. That one's good.

Now Corridor, we want this to be area-based load type equals. And General Corridor, Apply. Now General Gymnasium, area-based load type equals.

And we'll pull this down. Gymnasium, Apply. You get the idea.

We have just three more to go. General Kitchen. And we do Electrical, area-based load type equals.

General Kitchen, Apply. General Office, area-based load type equals. General Office, Apply.

Last one, General Restroom, area-based load type equals. And Restroom, awesome. Apply and OK.

Now all those filters are set up. They should be working. All we need to do now is add them.

We'll click the Add button. We already have Cafeteria, so it no longer appears in this list. We can grab all the others by selecting the first one, holding down Shift on the keyboard, the last one, and OK.

Now they all populate. Now, because I started with Cafeteria, it put it at the bottom. I don't love that.

So I'm going to go ahead and remove it. I know it's kind of annoying, but I'd rather have them be in order. So click the Remove button.

I'll add them back in. General Cafeteria through Restroom and say OK. Now they're all here.

I can override the pattern in alphabetical order, which I want to do. So I want the foreground pattern to be solid for all of these. I'm gonna pick the color left to right all the way down the line.

So Corridor, Under the Classroom, Solid Fill, Color, Left to Right. Again, pick whichever colors you'd like. If you pick it in order, that will help when we create our legend.

We want to have a logical method for picking these colors so they are easy to find later. General Kitchen, love these colors, super bright. Green is slightly different.

It is different though. So here we go. General Office, Solid Fill, Color, a nice bluish color.

General Restroom, we'll pick the Solid Fill and the color, darker blue. And last but not least, that Cafeteria. We're back to the Cafeteria here.

You know what, it did put it back at the bottom, but that's okay. We'll remember that. Solid Fill, Color, Pink.

All right, then we'll click OK and see the result. If it all works and the filter is pulled together, we'll have a different color for every part, every load type. And now it's easier to see what the load types are.

Let's jump to level two and we will add these filters again. We'll do VV on the keyboard, Victor, and we will go to Filters. We can add our filters in.

We will select all of these filters and click OK. And we'll repeat the same process. It brought them in the same order, so we can add the same colors in order.

So I'm going to go Solid Fill and do each color in order. Once I've assigned every color, I will click OK. Let that load and I'll see the different colors.

Awesome. Now we need a legend for this. Luckily, we've got a good start to one.

We're going to go to the Legends in our Project Browser, find Area-Based Load Legends, double-click on that. And we've got those same criteria here. We started with the Classroom, so we will start there again.

We've got a Diagonal Crosshatch right now. We want that to be Solid Black, Edit Type, Duplicate, and we'll create all of these colors. ABL Classroom is our first one.

Color, we started here with Classroom. Say OK. I'm going to double-check myself by clicking on Level 1. All the Classrooms are actually kind of started that yellow color, so we must have started Corridor.

So let's change this one to ABL Classroom. Edit Type, Duplicate, and this one is Corridor. And the Classroom actually wants to be that yellow color from the top row.

There we go. Gymnasium, we'll check on Level 1. It's that first green color. And so we'll swap this out to one of our ABLs, and then we'll edit it.

Duplicate, call it the name it belongs to, which is Gymnasium. Set it to that top row, first green color. Okay, that's looking good.

Now the General Kitchen, we'll click here. We'll set it to our ABL Gymnasium to start with. Edit Type, Duplicate it.

We'll call it Kitchen, and it's that next green color. Now the General Office, we want to go and swap it out to the Kitchen. Edit Type, Duplicate, and this one's called Office.

Change the color over to that light blue color. Click OK. Let's double-check that here on Level 2. Level 1, you have the Office light blue.

Now the General Restroom, we're getting close. We will change that type first to ABL Office to get all of its properties. All we have to do is say Edit Type, Duplicate, and change the color and the name to Restroom for the name, and the color will be the next blue.

We started at the top, worked our way around. Back to Cafeteria. So this guy can go back to any of these.

Edit Type, Duplicate. Call this Cafeteria. Click OK, and change the color to that pink color.

And we're good. We have an area-based load legend, and if we look at our plans, they have both colors, and they're pulling the data from the model to tell us the load, square footage, and where that load's coming from. Now that we have this analytical model set up, it's time to create physical electrical distribution components.