Explore the process of incorporating lighting fixtures using Revit MEP in a building design. This article dives deep into the specifics of aligning, placing, and adjusting different types of lights to achieve the optimal lighting layout.
Key Insights
- The article emphasizes the use of Revit MEP's system tab for placing lighting fixtures, specifically troffer lights of varying sizes, in a building design. The placement option 'Place on Face' ensures the light fixtures are hosted correctly to the specific lights.
- Detail is given to the process of aligning fixtures in a space, using the 'AL' alignment tool, and the importance of aligning fixtures to the correct location for an optimal lighting layout. The article also highlights the use of 'multiple alignment' for efficient fixture placement.
- Adjustments can be made to the lighting layout by deleting and replacing existing lights. The flexibility of Revit MEP allows for changes in lighting design based on requirements such as foot candles.
Welcome back to the CAD Teacher VDCI video course content for the BIM 321 course, Introduction to Revit MEP. In the previous videos, we went ahead and actually got our lights here in the bathroom dialed, so now I want to go ahead on this first floor and start putting in our troffer lights. What I'm going to do is go to my Systems tab, select Lighting Fixture, then pull down and select the 2x4,2-lamp, 120-volt fixture—the same exact thing that we had to do with these lights here and the air diffusers. I need to choose my placement option as Place on Face because then these will be hosted to the specific lights themselves.
Now, I can go ahead. These are typically pretty easy to line up; these 2x4s are really nice and easy to line up. I'm going to put one here, one here, and one here. That one actually did not get placed correctly, but that's okay. I'm going to hit Escape to say I'm done, zoom in, go AL for Align, pick this edge, and then pick that edge. As you can see, it's going to go ahead and align those in there. Those are all the big lights we're going to put in there. We may add some wall washers or something a little later. I'm going to come down here and go back to my Lighting Fixture. Again, every single time I have to Place on Face. I want to be using that troffer light 2x4,120-volt. I'll place one here, one there, and continue working my way down. These are very easy to place in, which makes it really nice and simple to do.
There we are. Okay, I'm going to go ahead and go over to my offices. Let's say I want to use 2x2 lights in here. I'm going to go to the troffer light and change it to a 2x2. I'll go ahead and place one here. Now, these are a little bit more difficult because I need to center them in those grids. What we have to do is place them off to the side first, then align them to where they need to be. So I'm just placing them in. My placement option is Place on Face up at the top there. After placing these, I'm going to go back and align them. There we are. I'll hit Escape to say I'm done, then go AL for Align. I'm also going to go up here to Multiple Alignment. I'll select this edge and then align all of these ones along this edge to their correct location because all of our grids are in the same location. You have to make sure that the grids align properly for this to work. I'll pick here, select here, go there, and continue working my way down. Beautiful. Now, I want to go ahead here, here, and here—click, off; here—click, click; I'm clicking off to specify a new line to align to: here, off, off; here, click, off, and off; click off. There we go. I'm just going through and aligning these. Perfect. We've got those 2x2s in and the 2x4s in. I want to go ahead and add some to our hallway because obviously we need some lighting there. I'm going back to my Lighting Fixture and using the 2x2s. I'm not going to be horribly specific with these; I'm just going to kind of go here. Let's see: one, two, three, four, five up and one over; one, two, three, four, five and one over; one, two, three, four, five and one over; one, two, three, four, five and one over; one over; one, two, three, four, five and one over; one, two, three, four, five and one over; one, two, three, four, five. Here, I might want to be a little different, so what I'm going to do is keep it the same: one over; one, two, three, four, five and one over; one, two, three, four. Then I'll hit Escape. I need to go and align these guys, so I'll go AL for Align. I still have Multiple Alignment checked.
I'll pick here, go over, and go down the line to align all of these here first. There we are. I'll pick here, click there, and off; pick here, click there, and off.
I'll choose this edge and align it there. I'll go ahead and align this guy up, align this guy up, align that guy there. It looks like we've got all those lights placed where we want them. Awesome.
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We've got all of our troffer lights on the first floor dialed in. Now let's say we want to adjust these because maybe the Designer came back and said, “Okay guys, this just does not give us our correct foot-candles.”
I want to go ahead and put one, two, one, two, one, two, one, two. I'll go ahead and select these and delete them here to remove those. Not a big deal. I'm going back to Lighting Fixture.
I'm going to choose the 2x4,120-volt fixture and select Place on Face. I'll go ahead and choose here and here.
I'll choose here and here, here and here, here and here, here and here. Again, just changing the lighting layout and adding a few more lights in that specific room. And there we go.
I'm going to hit Escape to say that I'm done. Let's zoom extents, press Control+S to save the file, and I'll go ahead and stop this video here.
In the next video, we'll come through, put some wall washers in, maybe add a few more decorative lights, and we'll be good to go. See you then.