Setting Up Cable Tray in Revit MEP: A Step-by-Step Guide

Welcome back to the CAD Teacher VDCI video course content for the BIM 321 course, Introduction to Revit MEP. In this video we're going to go ahead and start setting up some cable tray. So I'm currently on my ceiling plan level 1 and we're going to go ahead and run some cable tray through here and then down the corridor here and we'll have to figure out where we want to run it based on where all the other systems are but let's just go ahead first and actually get this information in.

So with cable tray we have here, cable tray is these items that are used to house loose cables, typically data cables, those kind of things. We're going to be going ahead and using a channel cable tray. So I want to go ahead and let's take a look at our cable tray settings first.

So I'm going to go here cable tray and under here we have a couple of different things. We have a width, a height, an offset and a bend radius and this is automatically calculated so we tend not to mess with this too much. Then we have our type selectors as cable tray with fittings and cable tray without fittings.

If I hit edit type and I come into here, bend radius multiplier, all that kind of stuff and then as you can see I don't have any fittings specified because I don't have any fittings loaded into the project. So I'm going to go ahead and let's hit escape and escape. I want to go ahead now, let's load our cable tray fittings just like how we had to load our conduit fittings.

So I'm going to go cable tray fitting and it's going to obviously tell us that no cable tray fittings is loaded in the family or in the project. So I'm going to hit upload and I'm going to go to cable tray here. I'm going to go to fittings and I'm going to select all of the channel ones.

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Again, I'm going to select all of the channel ones. I clicked on the first one, held shift, clicked on the last one. I'm going to go ahead and hit open and it's going to load all those in.

It might take a minute because we are loading a lot of different things into here and there we are. Now, I don't want to place any of these fittings on their own. I want to go ahead, I'm going to hit escape.

I want to go back to my cable tray command here. Let's go to edit type under cable tray with fittings. So please make sure you're using the cable tray with fittings.

We're going to go edit type and I'm going to choose my different ones. So I'm going to choose my vertical inside bend, my vertical outside bend and I'm going to set this up and here's my T. I'm going to use a 12 inch radius, cross 24 inch radius, channel reducer is fine and then the union, there we are. We've set all the routing preferences and the fittings for these.

I'm going to hit apply and then hit okay. Now let's go ahead and place this. Let's go ahead and place this at about 10 feet and I want to go ahead and I'm going to draw a cable tray starting about here.

I'm going to drag over, pick and again it's just like drawing conduit. Come down, pick. I'm going to come out of the room and actually I notice that I have my light right there so I'm going to go ahead and let it start from this corner.

I'm going to hit escape and I'm actually going to go ahead and just put this in the room as such. I might need to slide this out just a little bit because I'm slightly hitting that light and I'm going to actually draw it from this side and then come out and down. So I'm going to select it, right click, draw cable tray.

I'm going to come out here and then come all the way down the corridor till about right here or so. And there we are. Now we've drawn our cable tray.

Now let's go ahead and take a look at our section. So I'm going to take this and I'm going to rotate my section 90 degrees. I want to go ahead now and close all hidden windows and then I'm going to double click into the section head, WT for window tile and as you can see we have a little bit of a clash here, not a big deal.

So what I'm going to first go ahead and do is actually turn on my ducts here so I can kind of see what's going on. So I'm going to go ahead, go VV in my plan view. I'm going to choose ducts and duct fittings, turn both those on, hit apply, hit OK and there we go.

So I need to go ahead and slide my cable tray over. I know it's really busy in here. Just navigate in and then I'm going to go ahead and slide my cable tray over so it's right there, lined up very nicely.

But if I look down this line you'll notice I have where it crosses some things. Now obviously I'm not going to have a clash with the pink line because that one's higher, the supply, but I need to go ahead and actually get it up and over this here. So I'm going to go ahead and actually bring it down, my section and one thing we also want to go ahead and check is let's check our conduit real quick and the nice thing is since our conduit is going up and over like that, it's going to work perfectly fine.

So I'm going to go ahead, work my way down and as you can see I have a clash here. So I'm going to go ahead, let's rotate 90 degrees our section and we need to adjust the cable tray so that it comes out correctly. I'm going to go ahead and also reduce my section so I can only see what I need to see.

I'm going to go ahead and use my slice tool and I'm going to slice the cable tray in two different locations and then suck it back just a little bit, very similar to what we did with the duct. I'm going to go ahead and lift this up until it just clears, I'm going to get rid of those. I'm going to go ahead and select here, do a right click, draw cable tray, I'm going to draw it up at an angle of 45, perfect.

Select here, draw up, draw cable tray, angle of 135 and I'm going to have to slide these guys back a little bit because I may not necessarily be able to get the fittings in there and it's a little bit too big there. I can go ahead and I can actually raise it, so I'm going to raise it up, so TR for trim, there we go. I'm going to go ahead and grab this, slide it back, TR for trim, there we go and I can go ahead and now bring this back down to the level that I can actually have it at.

I might be able to slide this guy back just a little bit more and that's about as close as I'm going to be able to get it. Again that's all based on these minimum turns, there we go. I could take this guy, I could bring this entire group here and I'm just going to slide it back, so I'm not taking up as much space, just like that.

I just want to be able to get over that duct and there it is. I'm going to go ahead, I think I have one more that I need to change, I see it right here. I'm going to go ahead and do the same exact thing and as you can see I'm actually clashing with the conduit there also.

So I'm going to go SL for slice or split, there we go and same exact thing, I split the cable tray in two different locations, I'm going to drag it back just a little bit, delete the unions. I'm going to go ahead, bring it up and I might need to go higher. I'm now going to go ahead here, right click, draw cable tray, come up, let's see if that will trim together.

Perfect. Again, I'm going to need to slide this guy back just a little bit. Come here, right click, draw cable tray, go up, let's see if that will come together.

Perfect, it actually did. I can go ahead and grab this short little section here in the middle and I can bring that down as such and there it is. Perfect.

Everything else is good. I don't think I have any more clashes with that, it's running well down the middle of that corridor. I'm just going to go ahead, take my section along real quick and check a few quick spots just to make sure everything is good to go.

So obviously I'm seeing this conduit before here, so that's running just fine and let me check down here real quick, everything else is perfect. Awesome. We've gotten that cable tray into that specific location.

And that's really all it is to drawing cable tray. It's nothing super, super crazy. So I'm just going to go ahead, let's go up to the second floor and put some in there real quick.

So I'm going to go to my ceiling plans level 2, I'm going to go ahead and we're just going to run some cable tray straight down the corridor. They may bring up a bundle of wires from the first floor, not necessarily in a cable tray, but they're going to need a cable tray here. So the first thing I'm going to do is actually I'm going to go VV and I'm going to turn on my ducts and duct fittings.

There we are, apply, okay. As you can see I probably have an area, a nice little spot right here to run through. So I'm going to go ahead, go to my systems, I'm going to go cable tray and I'm just going to go ahead and start it, same 12 inch by 4 inch and I'm going to change my offset to 10 feet.

I'm going to go ahead and run this right down here and there we go. The one thing is that this is probably not supplying quite as much cable so let's actually go ahead and make the size a little smaller so I'm going to go ahead and select it. I'm going to go ahead, let's make it an 8 inch by 4 inch.

That's all I have to do, I just come up here, I change my width to 8 inches and everything's good. I'm going to go ahead and go WT to find that section and there it is. So I'm going to go back to my first floor plan and it's kind of not really showing up here, that's okay.

I'm going to go ahead and select that section. If I can find the grips in here, it gets a little bit crazy sometimes so what I'm going to go ahead and do now since I have it set on my first floor, I'm going to turn off my ducts and duct fittings. There we go.

I need to go ahead and find the line that dictates, there it is, cool. So I'm going to go ahead and go WT again, here's this. I'm going to go ahead now, take this guy, select it and let's go ahead and make a subdiscipline for it.

So let's go ahead and put it into lighting. So electrical and the subdiscipline is not quite showing up, that's fine. Now I'm going to go ahead and rotate it 90 degrees, there we go.

And I just want to go ahead and look at my second floor here, make sure I'm above the lighting fixtures. I think everything looks good. Let's go ahead and take a look at this real quick and see if I need to jump up over anything.

Looks like I need to jump up over one spot here. So I'm going to go ahead, rotate this guy again 90 degrees. I'm going to go ahead and bring it down.

I'm just using my first floor plan. And there it is. So I can see it right here.

Again, I'm going to do the same kind of thing, I'm going to SL for split, pick here and here. Let's go ahead and make this view specifically a little bit larger. I'm going to go ahead and select that off, select that off there.

Get rid of those. I'm going to go ahead and raise this up. Select here, right click, draw cable tray.

Select here, right click, draw cable tray. And for some reason, again this is one of these weird things, Revit MEP is deciding to be very awkward. Not sure exactly what's going on there.

So let's go to my plan view, draw cable tray, back to my section, interesting, so it's wanting to be a pane. Let's try from here. Okay, it's not liking the fact that I'm probably drawing from the section.

I'm going to adjust my section slightly. And the reason I couldn't see my section here, the reason why I couldn't see it is because it's super small because my drawing scale is set to an 1 inch over a foot or inch and a half. Let's go ahead and change that to 1 inch over a foot.

There we go. And now I can really see that section in there. So I can go ahead and close my first floor plan.

I'm going to go WT. There it goes. Now it's wanting to work, probably because of the scale.

There we go. I can go ahead, trim those two together. See, it's going to give me the fittings.

Perfect. Drag this guy back. I'm going to go ahead, draw this up, draw cable tray, angle of 135.

Trim. There we go. And this is off in the background.

Well, we're clashing maybe just a little bit. No, not at all. Actually, we're okay.

If I was worried about a clash there, I could just slide that back. And I can go ahead and slide this guy back farther like that. And now I don't have a clash, period.

Awesome. I can go ahead and lower it just slightly. Maybe slide it back once this way, just to avoid that.

And we've placed in cable tray. Cable tray is very simple to place in. There are two different types.

There's a channel and a ladder. And the ladder is kind of where they weave it between the different rungs of that ladder. And we've gotten all of our cable tray in.

I'm going to go ahead and stop this video here. And we're good to go. See you then.