Organizing and Assigning Lights and Switches into Circuits Using Revit

We've got lights and we've got switches. Let's get them all organized into circuits. To kick that off, we're gonna do some housekeeping.

Let's go to the project browser. We want to rename our electrical ceiling plans. If they're just set to L1 for level one, we wanna add in the words lighting plan.

So it's clear to understand which plan we're looking at. We don't need to rename any corresponding views. We can click no if prompted and make sure we rename both the level one and the level two views.

With that out of the way, we can start to create our circuits. In our PDF handouts folder, we have the BIM 323 classroom area light locations. We can use this as a guide to help us arrange our lights for the classrooms into circuits.

We notice a thick black line connecting these lights. We're going to assume efficient lights. We can connect several onto each circuit.

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Let's begin by selecting the first four classrooms. Going to zoom in to the top left and grab four classrooms worth of lights. One, two, three, and four.

I also want to make that box large enough to grab the four corresponding light switches. When I'm done, I'll click the filter button and uncheck room tags. With that done, Revit is smart.

It knows that we have light selected as well as switches and it brings up this create systems power button. If we click that, we can set a panel and we will select PB1 or panel board one. The connection type is breaker.

And if we look at the properties, we'll notice it's a 20 amp circuit and the load name is lighting. And that's all perfect. Down on our plan, we'll notice a dashed line stringing the lights and the switches together and a large box showing that this all connects back to the electrical room where panel board one is.

Let's click the modify button to finish that. And we can now go to our user interface and turn on our system browser. We'll notice if we start to drill down on the electrical systems, power, and the main distribution board, that we're starting to load up this number one.

The number one contains panel board one. And if I click that, I'll notice I have circuit one now. I select that circuit and it highlights that whole circuit.

If I hit the little plus in my project browser, I can see and select every light and every switch on that circuit. Well, that was a lot of fun. So let's keep going and add some more.

I'm gonna zoom down to the bottom left three classes in this upper wing. So I'm gonna select one, two, three rooms worth of lights and the three light switches. Click the filter and uncheck room tags.

I'll notice that in the project browser, I'm selecting unassigned items. There's 334 currently. I've selected several of those.

Now I'm gonna click the power button and it's going to default now to PB1 because that is the last panel board we selected. And all I have to do is click the modify button to wrap that up. Notice how my unassigned number drops from 334 to 313.

So I've assigned 30 items essentially. And I now have a second circuit. If I open that up, there are all those lights and switches that we just assigned to circuit number two.

Okay, we're on a roll. Let's create another circuit. I'm gonna grab these four classrooms and the nurse's office and their three switches.

Then I'm gonna go across the hall, hold control and grab these two classrooms and their light switches. And I'll place these all in a circuit. I'm noticing though that where's my power button? It didn't show up.

I forgot to filter. I need to click the filter button, turn off room tags and click okay. Now that power button pops up.

I'll click it and it creates that third circuit. Panel board one, everything looks good. I'll click the modify button.

Let's jump down and do the classrooms on the lower wing now. We'll start with the first four classrooms or first three. One, two, three classrooms and three light switches.

I'll filter out the room tags, click okay. Power these up. We want panel board one and we'll click the modify button.

Now I want to go to the bottom left and there are four classrooms here to select. One, two, three, four, four light switches. Filter out the room tags and power these up.

Also panel board one with a breaker. Now I want these classrooms here. So I've got these classrooms across the hall from each other.

One, two classrooms and their switches. Holding control on my keyboard, I can grab the two across the hall and filter out the room tags. Now we'll add power.

Panel board one and I'm good to go. Click back on the modify button. That was fun.

Let's do some tougher ones. So I'm going to go back and I want to create a circuit out of these hallway lights and the storage and vestibule lights. I'm going to start with this storage room.

I'm going to click on that light. And this time, instead of drawing a box, I'm going to hold control on my keyboard and click this light switch. While I'm holding control, I will continue to select lights, light switches in the storage room, vestibule and down the hall.

When I get to this first hallway light, I'll notice it's part of a model group and I can't add a model group to a circuit. What I have to do is hold click tab on my keyboard while I'm hovering over the light, then hold control and click. And now I've added that to my selection.

I'll do that all the way down the hallway. Tab, control, click. Tab, control, click.

Tab, control, click all the way down to that last light fixture in the hallway. And now for this light switch, I can simply hold control, click, and they're all selected. I've got all the hallway lights and down into the storage room.

Now I can power these up and I will place these on panel board one, breaker and modify to be done. Okay, now let's do the other hallway. This one's even trickier.

I'm gonna go over to this section and what has happened is this light was previously modeled and is assigned to an unnamed circuit. That circuit is very small. It has this light and this switch and nothing else.

Well, it's set to no panel. I'm gonna click that circuit. Right now it says unnamed.

And another way to get to it if you're having a hard time selecting it is hover over this light fixture and hit TAB and then click. That selects this circuit. And now I can assign panel board one and it will jump down and have its own circuit down here.

But it's a very small circuit, only one light and one light switch. So what do I wanna do? I wanna add in the rest of the hallway lights or corridor lights. Revit gives us tools to do this.

Under the modify electrical circuits with the circuit selected, I can click the edit circuit button. And now I can click the add to circuit. And I can go down the hallway adding all of these lights to that circuit.

You can also add the light switch at the end of the hallway, the vestibule light along with its switch. And notice how they are turning to a darker color as I click on them to let us know I'm adding all of these lights to this circuit. You can zoom out to see the result and click the green finish edit circuit to be done.

And now I'll notice that that circuit has all of the hallway lights. I can click on that circuit and I'll see the string connecting all the lights and switches on that hallway, storage areas and vestibule. I think we're on a roll, so let's keep going.

Another scenario, we have several lights modeled and some are more recent than others. If I hover over this workroom and hover over one of the lights and hit TAB and click, I've selected another unnamed circuit. So there it is.

I can assign it a circuit or panel board, panel board one. It jumps down here to panel board one. And now I can again, click the edit circuit button and add to circuit.

And I wanna add the four lights in the bookroom. One, two, three, four, as well as the bookroom light switch. With that, I can click finish.

I've created a circuit, but let's double check. I'm gonna hover over any of the lights in that circuit, hit TAB, click, and I'll see that they are all now connected as well as their light switches. What other lights do we have that aren't yet connected? Right here in this main corridor, I'm gonna hover over one of the lights and click tab and click.

Another unnamed circuit. So I want to assign a panel and the panel I want to assign is PB1. And now it's assigned.

Let's zoom in really close to the electrical room. It's a little hard to see these lights and select them, but there are three lights in this room. I can hold control and grab these lights.

If I click on this unnamed circuit, that's another way to grab the lights and make sure they're all selected. Now I want to add this to a panel. We'll say PB1.

And now those are on their own circuit. Let's double check this reception area. If I hover over one of the lights and click tab, I can select that circuit.

It's currently set to unnamed. I will assign it to PB1. And there we go.

Our PB1 is getting pretty full now. Let's see if we can add more lights to it. Let's come up to the cafeteria.

I'm gonna click on this lower left light in the cafeteria and click tab. Now I will click once to select. We can see it's an unnamed circuit and I'll try placing it on PB1.

And I get this error. It says you can't connect PB1 because there aren't enough slots and feed through lugs is unchecked. Well, we don't want feed through lugs.

That is like a direct wire connection. We want all of our circuits to be on circuit breakers. We need to click cancel.

We can't load this onto panel board one. We need to pick a different panel board. Let's try another one.

Let's do PB3. Now PB3, if we open that in our system browser, we'll see it now has a circuit. That circuit has these cafeteria lights.

Perfect, PB3 is empty. So it's fine to add more lights to that circuit or to that panel board. Let's come up and click the top left light in the cafeteria.

Actually hover over it, click tab, and then click. It's another unnamed circuit. Let's put this on PB3.

And there we go. PB3 now has two circuits. And let's continue with doing that for all of the cafeteria and kitchen lights.

So I will hover, tab, click. Panel is PB3. Do that in the kitchen lights here.

I'll hover over light, tab, click. Panel is PB3. These lights here, hover, tab, click, and make this PB3.

And now that I have all of these lights on circuits, I can double check to make sure I didn't miss anything. To do that, I can come to my system browser and under power, I have these unnamed circuits. I'll click on the first one and hold shift on my keyboard and then select the last one.

And do I see anything highlight in the plan? I actually do. Down here, I see one light switch, but it's powering lights up on level two. So let's take a look at that one.

I will click on that switch and I can see it's under this first unnamed circuit. I will select that first unnamed circuit and double click on the L2 lighting plan. Let's zoom out a bit.

And with that still selected, we can see that that switch is controlling these lights up above on level two. How cool is that? We can branch our circuits between levels. So once we have that circuit selected, it's unnamed, I can change its panel.

And for convenience, I wanna put the level two lights on panel board two. So swap that out to PB2. Let's take a look here.

PB2 now has its own circuit and it looks really good. All right, well, now that we're at level two, it's a great chance to go ahead and assign circuits here on level two. And I will leave that to you.

You can follow this PDF guide. It shows the circuiting for the level two classroom area. And for the existing lights, you'll also want to select those unnamed circuits that are upstairs here in level two and assign them to panel board two.