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 that 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 their colors.

We have standard GFCI and floor outlets. The outlets that are not colored are receptacles that already exist in the model. We don't need to model them again; they're already there.

We simply need to update the circuits. This brings us to circuits. We have dashed lines here that connect each of these receptacles together into a circuit.

This helps us know which receptacles go on which circuit and are assigned to panel boards. To keep it 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 circuits onto panel board 4.

Alright, let's dive in. We’ll move quickly, so refer to this PDF handout whenever you need to follow along.

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Let’s start with a little bit of organization here. I’m still in the top-left corner of the Level 1 power plan, near classrooms 1510 and 1509.

I wasn’t very careful when I placed these receptacles, so I’ll use the Align tool to line them up a little better.

If I find the Align tool in my Modify tab, I can align all of these receptacles.

It can be tricky, but if I zoom in really tight, I’ll notice this small line. I can use that line for alignment.

Here, I can start aligning other devices across each room. It can be tricky to find it—you may need to zoom in tightly—but once you get it, it works great to align everything.

I’ll do a couple more here. This one, and I’ll zoom in here. Grab that small line again, and right here.

I’ve got my receptacles lined up in that direction.

Now, let’s line them up vertically.

This one to there, and that one was already pretty good.

We’re mostly set. I may want to move this classroom tag out of the way to give myself more visibility to the receptacles, and I’ll be good to go.

Now, I can use the Mirror command to quickly replace all of these receptacles.

I’ll select each receptacle in the classroom, and holding Control, I’ll 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. I can repeat the Mirror command all the way down this bank of classrooms and quickly place many receptacles.

I’ll keep going and do it one more time here.

Perfect. That’s all set across the top.

Now, I need to create the receptacles down below. I can select one of the existing receptacles, right-click, and say Create Similar.

This lets me quickly create a receptacle of the same type.

I’ll place a GFCI outlet here.

Back to Modify, I can select one of the regular duplex receptacles, right-click, and create similar. Then, I’ll place one right here, one across the room, and another right here. We also need a floor receptacle.

I’ll select that one, right-click, and create similar. Then, I’ll place one right here in the middle.

I can use the Align tool again.

It’s worth taking a moment to align everything because once I mirror, everything will be the same.

I’ll get it right the first time, and then we’ll mirror it across.

Okay, I’ve got five receptacles here.

I’ll 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. Then, I’ll mirror these all the way down the line.

One more at the end, and there we go.

The classrooms across the way may not line up perfectly, but let’s try here. I like to draw a line as a reference point.

I’ll go to my Annotate tab, select Detail Line, and draw a line perfectly between the two wings. Then, I’ll find the midpoint and draw it across.

Now, I can draw a careful box around just my classrooms.

I don’t want to go into the hallway, just the classrooms. I’ll grab the other side as well and hold Control to select all of these too.

Now, I’ll apply a filter and turn off Lighting Devices and Room Tags.

I only want the electrical fixtures. Again, I’ll use the Mirror command and select the center of this line, then mirror them across.

It gave me an error quickly.

If things don’t line up perfectly, something might lose its host, but that’s okay for now.

We have them where they need to go.

I’ll select the lines used as a guide and delete them.

I may need to move my classroom text. I’ll do that by holding Control and grabbing them all at once, then pressing MV on my keyboard to move them and shift them up out of the way.

There we go.

That looks good. We have all of our classroom receptacles in place now.

Let’s move on and see where else we need to place receptacles.

First, 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 start fresh. I’ll go to my Systems tab, select Device, Electrical Fixture, and find my duplex receptacle standard. It’s 18 inches off the ground, and I want to place about eight of these in the library.

Three across the bottom, three across the top, and left and right. One, two, three, left and right, and one here, and two, and three, and one on the left. So, there are my eight.

Now, let’s place some floor receptacles. I’ll go back to my Systems tab, select Device, Electrical Fixture, and place a floor receptacle. I’ll type “floor” in the 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 here, and that looks fine here, there, and there. That looks good.

I can move my library tag out of the way, and now I have these offices that may each get one receptacle.

Now that I have these receptacles, I can right-click and say Create Similar to place one in each storage and office-type space here. Okay, that looks good.

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

That looks 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, for a 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 couple on the top and bottom walls, or north and south walls, depending on how you look at these.

Two there, two here, and now I want some floor boxes. I’ll go back and find my floor. I’ll type in floor, select my floor receptacle, and imagine there’s a table here for scorekeeping.

We want to put a receptacle here, one on this side for the home team, and one on the opposite side for the away team. That’s looking pretty good.

I also need to add some receptacles to the restroom areas. We'll 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. I’ll do 18 inches, and place one GFCI receptacle on either side of our sinks. 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 standard receptacle. We won’t show a mop sink here, so it wouldn’t be a wet area. Maybe we just do a standard receptacle. Place one there, and we also want one here in housekeeping.

Alright, with those receptacles, we can select them by holding Control, and we can mirror them across on our keyboard, mirror, and there we go.

It 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 recreate it.

I’ll move these ones down to align with those sinks. I can even use my arrow keys and create a similar receptacle to the standard here for housekeeping.

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, I need to add about three receptacles. I’ll add one here and two more there. Alright, 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.