Placing Electrical Receptacles and Circuits on a Level One BIM Power Plan

Let's place all of the receptacles for our level 1 power plan. To help us out, we have a PDF handout and it looks like this. It's called the BIM 323 Power Plans and if we take a look, we'll notice that it shows all of the outlet locations for level 1 and level 2. New outlets that we need to place are indicated by the colors.

We have standard GFI and floor outlets. The outlets that are not colored in, these are receptacles that are already existing in the model. We don't need to model them again, they're already there.

We simply need to update the circuits. That brings us to circuits. We have these lines here that are dashed and that strings each of these receptacles together into a circuit.

That helps us know which receptacles go on which circuit and they're assigned to panel boards. To keep it really simple, we're putting all of the circuits for level 1 on panel board 3, assuming they all fit, and for level 2, we'll put all of our circuitry onto panel board 4. Alright, let's dive in. We'll move quick, so come back to this PDF handout whenever you need to to follow along.

Alright, so a little bit of organization here. I'm still up in the top left corner of level 1 power plan classroom 1510 and 1509. I wasn't super careful when I placed these receptacles, so I can use the align tool to line them up a little bit better.

Learn Revit MEP

• Nationally accredited
• Create your own portfolio
• Free student software
• Learn at your convenience
• Authorized Autodesk training center

Learn More

If I find that align tool up in my modify tab, I can align all of these receptacles. It's tricky if I zoom in really tight, I'll notice this small line. I can use that for alignment.

So here and I can start to align other devices across each room. It can be tricky to find it. You have to zoom in pretty tightly sometimes, but once you get it, it works great to align everything.

Do a couple more here. This guy and I'll zoom in here. Grab that little line again and right here.

I've got my receptacles lined up that direction. Now let's line them up vertically. This guy to there and that one was already pretty good.

We're mostly set. I might want to move this classroom room tag out of the way just to give myself a little more visibility to the receptacles and I'll be good to go. Now I can use the mirror command to make quick work out of replacing all of these receptacles.

So I will select each receptacle in the classroom and holding CTRL, I select all of them. Then I can use the mirror command and mirror these across. It's mm on my keyboard and I'll click and I can repeat that mirror command all the way down this bank of classrooms and very quickly place a bunch of receptacles.

I'll keep going and I will do it one more time here. Perfect. So that is all set across the top.

Now I'll need to create the receptacles down below and I can select one of the existing receptacles, select it, right click and say create similar. Let's me quickly create a receptacle of the same type. So I'll place a GFCI outlet here.

Back to modify, I can select one of the regular standard duplex receptacles, right click and create similar, place one right here, one across the room, one right here, and we also need a floor receptacle. So I will select that one, right click and create similar, and place one right here in the middle. I can use the align tool again.

It's worth taking a moment to align because once I mirror across everything will just be the same. So I'll get it right the first time and we'll mirror it across. Okay, so I've got five receptacles here.

I will select these by holding control on my keyboard and I'll use the mirror command MM on my keyboard or it's under the modify tab, mirror, and mirror these all the way down the line. One more at the end and there we go. We have all those classrooms across the top here.

Now the classrooms across the way, they may not line up perfectly, but we'll try here. What I like to do is draw a line as a reference point. So I'll go to my annotate tab, detail line, I'll draw a line perfectly between the two wings and then find that midpoint and draw it across.

Now I can draw a careful box around only my classrooms. I don't want to go into the hallway, just the classrooms, and I will grab the other side as well and I'll hold control to select all of these as well. So these classrooms.

Now I'll do a filter on this and I can turn off lighting devices and room tags. I only want the electrical fixtures and again I'll use that mirror command and select the center of this line and I can mirror them across. It did give me an error very quickly.

If things don't line up perfectly, something might lose its host, but that's okay for now. We have them essentially where they need to go. So I will select my lines that were used as a guide and delete those.

I might need to go ahead and move my classroom text. I can do that by holding control and grabbing them all at once and mv on my keyboard to move and just move them up out of the way. There we go.

That looks pretty good. We have all of our classroom receptacles here now. Now let's move on and see where else we need to model in some receptacles.

Number one, the library. If you don't place your receptacles exactly how I have them, that's okay. The idea is to get close to a real floor plan of receptacles.

I'm going to go back and just start this one fresh. I'm going to go up to my systems tab, device, electrical fixture, and I want to find my receptacle duplex receptacle standard. It's 18 inches off the ground and I want to place about eight of these in the library.

So three across the bottom, three across the top, and left and right. So one, two, three, left and right, and one here, and two, and three, and one on the left. So there are my six, I'm sorry, eight.

Now I want to go ahead and let's place some floor receptacles. So I go back to my systems tab, device, electrical fixture, and now I want to place a floor receptacle. I'll type in floor in my search.

There it is, floor outlet, floor duplex, and single, meaning there's one duplex outlet in each floor box here. I'll line that up there, that looks fine here, there, and there. That looks pretty good.

I can move my library tag out of the way, and now I have these offices and they can get maybe one receptacle each. Now that I have these receptacles, I can right click and say create similar, and place one in each storage and office type space here. Okay, so that looks pretty good.

Now I need some receptacles along this hallway. I'll place one in the vestibule, and you can see how quick it is to place receptacles in Revit. Just by clicking, pretty soon I can replace all of my receptacles all the way down the hallway here.

So that looks pretty good. Now I want to come up to the gymnasium, and I want three on either wall. We'll start there on both sides, left and right, total of six, and then, oh, I got a warning.

I didn't click quite right. Sometimes I have to zoom in, click, and I'll be good to go. Now I want a receptacle, a couple on the top and bottom walls, or north and south walls, depending on how you look at these.

So two there, two here, and now I want some floor boxes. So I'm going to go back and find my floor. I'll type in floor, my floor receptacle, and imagine there's a table here for scorekeeping.

We want to put a receptacle there, put one on this side for the home team, one on the opposite side for the away team. All right, that is looking pretty good. I also now need to add some receptacles to the restroom areas, and we're going to go back and create our GFCI outlets, but let's pretend that in the restroom, we don't need the GFCI outlets above any counter.

They can be down low, and so we can do that as well. GFCI, and the default is four feet, but I can place it wherever I'd like to. I'll do 18 inches, and I want one GFCI receptacle to either side of our sinks, and we'll mirror across the other bathrooms.

We'll just do those two for now, and then in the janitor closet, we can place a normal receptacle. We don't show a mop sink here that it wouldn't be a wet area, so maybe we just do a standard receptacle. Place one there, and we also want one here in housekeeping.

All right, so with those receptacles, we can select them by holding control, and we can mirror them across on our keyboard, mirror, and there we go. Wasn't a perfect mirror, as we can see. This one didn't show up where we'd like an outlet, so we'll delete that one, and we'll recreate it.

I'll move these ones down. I want them to align with those sinks. I can even use my arrow keys, and I'll create a similar receptacle to the standard here for housekeeping, and I also want to, while I have those standard outlets rolling, I'm going to place a couple in my electrical room.

I've got some outlets here ready for service, and right here in the book room, it looks like I need to add about three receptacles, so I'll add one here and two more there. All right, let's zoom out and see how it's looking. Looks like we have receptacles in the classrooms, all the rooms here.

I think we're pretty good. You can double check in that PDF handout. Make sure you have all of your receptacles placed.