Immerse yourself in the BIM 321 course, Introduction to Revit MEP, and learn how to name and place electrical panels and devices such as outlets. Obtain an understanding of the importance of assigning names to the panels, the process of placing devices, and the professional tactics to ensure such placements adhere to code.
Key Insights
- Assigning names to panels in Revit MEP is crucial as it aids in circuiting, helping identify if the loads are too small or too great, and allowing for necessary adjustments such as increasing the size of the panels.
- The placement of devices, including electrical outlets, data outlets, and communication outlets, must be done in a strategic manner considering factors such as power draw and adherence to code requirements such as having a wall outlet within six feet of a corner and every 12 feet.
- While placing devices, it is important to host to the correct elements and avoid hosting to the grid lines. Furthermore, detailing levels can be adjusted to provide a clearer view of the placements, and graphical annotations can be employed for easier interpretation on a plan.
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 placed our electrical equipment for our panels, but now we need to go ahead and actually name these panels. So I'm going to go ahead and zoom in up here, and I want to go ahead and I'm going to select this panel, and I'm going to go ahead, scroll down, and this is going to be my single phase panel, which will be for power.
So I'm going to go down, scroll down the properties, and change this panel name to PP3 for power panel 3. This one here will be PP2. This one here will be PP1. And then I'm going to go ahead, this will be LP1 for lighting panel 1. So panel name LP1.
Here, lighting panel 2. And here, lighting panel 3. And there we go, so we've named those panels.
The reason why we named the panels is because as we're going to go through and do circuiting, we have to append those circuits to specific panels, and then that will let us know if the loads are too small, too great, or what else we need to do if we need to increase the size of the panels or anything like that. So I want to go ahead and let's start placing some devices. Devices refers to the items that are like electrical outlets, data outlets, communication outlets.
We're going to go ahead and start placing some outlets. So I'm going to go ahead up here to device, and I'm going to choose electrical fixture. It tells me right now I have no electrical fixtures, so I want to go ahead and load them in.
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I'm going to hit yes. There we are. I'm going to go ahead now, go to my electrical, go to MEP, go to electric power.
I'm going to go to terminals, and I'm going to go ahead and choose the duplex receptacle here. I'm going to go ahead and hit open, and it's going to go ahead and load that in. So this is your standard duplex receptacle.
One thing you'll notice here is if we look at our type properties, we're using a GFCI. GFCI stands for ground fault circuit interrupter, and what that means is these are ones that are typically put by water, so you have these like in your bathroom or your kitchen. We don't want to use that one.
I just want to go ahead and use the standard duplex receptacle. So I'm going to choose standard, and here we go. I'm going to go ahead.
We want to place on vertical face. Elevation of one foot six is perfectly fine. I want to go ahead here.
I'm going to pop in. Let's go ahead. I'm going to pop in one on this wall here.
I'm actually going to pop in two here, and I'm just going to kind of make a general layout. I'm not really going to pick anything super, super specific. I'm just going to go ahead and pop these in, and remember to host.
You don't want to host to the grid lines. I want to host here on the wall, and there's that for that there. Now, the thing is, though, is that a lot of people may think that we want to group these together and then model, you know, like we did with the furniture and everything in Revit 1. Well, the problem with that is that it does not want to host to the specific items, so unfortunately we do have to go through and actually place all of them.
So I'm going to go ahead and place one here, and I'm not being perfectly specific with it. I'm pretty much just kind of picking in locations that I think outlets would be good to have in, obviously placing a couple more under the desk because of the fact that would be maybe where the heaviest power draw is specifically for, say, computers, chargers, that kind of thing. So go ahead.
I'm just going to go through my offices and populate these in here. So just work your way around, and I'm just kind of choosing a basic layout for myself. There we are.
Putting about five per office. And the one thing about electrical plans is that they tend to be more diagrammatic because these have to – how these are mounted is they have to use studs. So I'm going to go ahead and put a couple in here specifically for the use of the janitor and even put one or two in the actual electrical room itself because you never know what kind of things you may need to put in there.
I'm going to go ahead. I'm going to go down to my conference rooms. Now, the one thing that we do have to remember is building code requirements.
Code states that we must have a wall outlet within 6 feet of a corner and also every 12 feet. We can go ahead and place those, and as you can see, I accidentally misplaced that one. I'm just going to hit Control-Z and then just go back and replace it.
And make sure that you're hosting to the correct elements. Sometimes it may take a little bit. And that one was obviously hosted to the incorrect element.
So I just do a Control-Z back. There we go. And I'm just going to go ahead and work my way around.
This conference room, who knows, we want to go ahead and have quite a few outlets in there just because of the fact that maybe there is a specific thing going on in that room that we may need to have a lot of outlets happening. I want to go ahead, place one here, here, place one here and here, and also here and here. So what you may notice is that these look kind of weird to be actual outlets.
The reason why they're showing up this way is because our detail level is set to medium. If I were to change my detail level to fine, you would see that I could now see every single outlet as it actually is. The problem with that is, though, is that it's hard to see on a plan.
We have come up with these graphical annotations that will allow us to do that. I want to go ahead. I'm going to change over from the standard duplex receptacle to the GFCI.
You can see my elevation is 4 feet. So I'm going to go ahead and put one both here and here. Maybe there needs to be something in there specifically for people to use certain things.
I'm actually going to go ahead and place one here and here. Also, if I needed to move one, I could just slide it over, and there we go. Perfect.
I've got all of my electrical power outlets in. Let's go ahead and put in some data devices. So I'm going to go Device, and I'm going to go here to Data.
I'm going to hit Yes because it's a different type. So I'm going to go to Electrical, MEP, Information and Communication. Let's go to Communication, and I'm going to choose a data outlet here.
I'm going to hit Open, and there we go. One foot six would be fine. I'm going to go ahead and pop one into each of the offices.
There we go. Here we are. Almost there.
Just go ahead and pop data devices into each office. Again, they probably need these in the offices for their connections for their computers. Don't need any in the electrical room or in the janitor closet.
Maybe you don't need any here. And actually, let's say maybe this is also a server room. So let's go ahead and actually pop a couple into here.
There we go. I'm going to go ahead, place a couple in my conference rooms because obviously we may want to have access to the internet or the server in the conference rooms. If for some reason it's kind of hard to actually get the right correct host, you can hit Spacebar to change it.
And there we go. I'm going to go ahead and hit Escape, zoom extents, and CTRL+S and save the file. The really easy thing about the power outlets, one thing you need to understand about the devices is they're very easy to place.
It's the same for any of the devices listed here, depending on whether it's placed on a vertical surface or on a horizontal face. We could put fire alarm devices, lighting devices, and we may go through and put in some switches here soon, a nurse call, security, telephone, so on, and everything else. So I'm going to go ahead and stop this video here, and we'll come back, place some switches and other items, and I'll see you then.
