Discover the process of transitioning from mechanical and plumbing drawings to electrical drawings with the BIM 322 course. Learn how to compress mechanical areas, expand electrical sections, adjust elevations for electrical fixtures, and duplicate views for sheet views.
Key Insights
- In the BIM 322 course, students are guided through the transition from mechanical and plumbing drawings to starting on electrical drawings. This includes learning how to clean up the project browser by compressing sections that are no longer needed, like the mechanical area.
- Adjustments to the elevation of electrical fixtures, such as power outlets, are also covered in the course. Students learn how to select and move these elements to the correct location, enhancing the accuracy of their plan.
- The course also teaches how to duplicate working views to create sheet views, a process also used for plumbing and mechanical drawings. Renaming and organizing these views in the project browser is also discussed, providing more effective project management.
Welcome back to the CAD Teacher VDCI video course content for the BIM 322 course. In the previous videos, we went ahead and actually finished up our mechanical and plumbing drawings, and in this video, we're going to go ahead and start on our electrical drawings. So in your Project Browser, all I'm going to go ahead and do is compress the Mechanical area in my Project Browser since I no longer need it, and it helps clean it up, making it a little bit easier for us to read.
As you can see, I have Electrical here expanded. If you go ahead and click on the plus sign next to Electrical, it will bring these out, expand them if you need to, and let's go ahead and jump to this first-floor lighting plan. This is a reflected ceiling plan, so we're actually looking up towards the ceiling.
As you notice, we have a fairly basic plan here. One thing that we do have going on is that we have some electrical fixtures showing up or some power outlets. Now, what's happening here is that these outlets—if I click on one of them—you'll see their elevation is at four feet.
If I go ahead and double-check my View Range, I can see that my cut plane is at four feet. If these are here at four feet, I'm able to see them because my cut plane is at the same location. But obviously, I do not want to see these on this plan, so what we're going to go ahead and do is move these to the correct location.
So go ahead, select both of these while holding Control, and I'm going to move them to an elevation of one foot six. And there they are. Perfect.
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I'm going to go ahead and hit Escape to deselect because even though they're off my screen, I still have them selected. What we need to do first is, if you notice in our Project Browser, we really have what we would use as our working views. We want to go ahead and duplicate these so we have our sheet views.
Same exact process that we've done for the plumbing and mechanical drawings. So what I'm going to do is hover over Electrical Lighting 1, right-click, Duplicate View. I'm going to Duplicate with Detailing so I can bring over those room tag names.
There we go. I'm also going to do that for the second floor as well. I don't need to double-click into it.
I can just select it, right-click, Duplicate, Duplicate with Detailing. And there we are. I'm going to go ahead and select that electrical copy, right-click, Rename.
I'm going to rename this to Sheet View. Hit OK. I'm going to go ahead and do the same thing for the second floor.
Right-click, Rename, remove “Copy of, ” change it to Sheet View. And hit OK. Now, one thing you may notice is how it's being organized.
This kind of comes down to personal preference. If I expand out my Mechanical, you’ll notice here in the Electrical we actually put “Sheet View” at the end. And then we put “Sheet View” at the beginning on our Mechanical. Now, there are a couple of different trains of thought on this.
In one setup, I have all my sheet views grouped together as in 1 or 2 and they're all in the same location. Or I have them grouped by level. I'm actually going to go ahead—I like how this feels where I have the sheet views grouped together.
So I'm going to go ahead, select these again, right-click, Rename. And I'm going to move “Sheet View” to the beginning of the view name. I'm going to do that for both views.
So right-click, Rename. I'm going to delete “Sheet View” from here and type it at the beginning of the view name. And there we go.
Now, I actually have both of those grouped together. What I'd like you to go ahead and do is please make sure you're in your Sheet View 1 for the first floor. I'm going to go ahead and talk about a couple of things.
What's going on is I have just the lighting layout here. I'm also showing the switches. The reason why I'm showing the switches is because I need to show how these lights are being controlled.
Which lights are going to which switch. We're going to be drawing in wires in the next few videos. But I wanted to also show you that we have the switches and the lighting fixtures.
All these lights and everything have already been placed into a circuit. So as you can see, I hovered over one light and hit TAB, and it's going to give me the overall circuit, which then shows the lines back to the actual panel. We're going to be using these components here.
They're already all created in a circuit for you, so there's no need for you to go through and do that. And I will see you in the next video.