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Revit Circuiting (wiring)

12 REPLIES 12
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Message 1 of 13
mwhea
15376 Views, 12 Replies

Revit Circuiting (wiring)

Hello,

 

New to Revit MEP still trying to mirgate from AutoCAD.

 

Is there a way to change the wire properties in Revit to only be drawn at 90degree angles or force the wires to come into the base of the outlet where the connector is located or the top?

 

This wiring obviously works in America as there symbols are 2 lines and a circle and when the wires find the nearest point to attach it looks correct – with Australian gpo symbols when this happens it turns out quite messy and unable to be read as a A3 print. Even if you go about drawing your own wire chamfer style it still won’t draw exactly straight lines. 

 

Obivously Revit isn't the same as AutoCAD but i would like to clean up circuiting drawings from what is shown in tutorials which looks rather messy.

12 REPLIES 12
Message 2 of 13
CoreyDaun
in reply to: mwhea

As of now, I think you are of out luck - there is very little that can be done about how Revit draws it's wiring. I dug into something like this a while ago, but I don't think anything has changes since. There can be lots of manual work involved to achieve the desired appearance. Or even hiding the Wiring and drawing simple Lines to represent it instead.

Corey D.                                                                                                                  ADSK_Logo_EE_2013.png    AutoCAD 2014 User  Revit 2014 User
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Message 3 of 13
DMaurer-Veca
in reply to: mwhea

I feel your pain. Some things I have done to use the wire function is to turn off the homerun arrow in the visbiltiy graphics for the view. Then I don't need to have the wire attached to the device and can end it where I want. If I use the chamfer and have one end short, I can have it make a 90° without chamfering. I have a symbol I use to add the homerun arrow where needed, this has to be to the correct scale of the view I am working in. Not perfect, but it seems to get the desired effect. Good luck.

Diane M
Message 4 of 13

Anyone figure out yet if there is anyway to change the circuiting from arc to straight lines?

Message 5 of 13

Like someone said previously, we're kind of SOL for the time being. Autodesk is really pushing Revit at the Architect level. I don't know why they're not listening to the MEP trades, specifically us in the electrical industry. Please try to spread this word: We need to be vocal about these requests. Both here and the AUGI forums are good places to be heard. In the 2014 release, I noticed a lot of the new features were available in AUGI's Wish List system. Go there, rank, vote, and make wishes to help make Revit better. They won't change until they see a demand.

 

You can also send a message directly to Autodesk here:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=1109794

Shawn B.

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To help improve Autodesk Products, please Click Here to Vote for ideas and submit your own.
Message 6 of 13
adam.jw
in reply to: smbrennan

Wires/circuiting has gotten no love from the Revit development team over the years.

 

 

  • There's no control over the size of the home-run arrows (or ability to swap it out for a different Generic Annotation Family like you can with Wire Ticks).

 

  • There's no control over quantity of home-run arrows (we'd rather just show one, and use the wire tag to show the quantity of circuits).

 

  • There's no control over placement of the wire-ticks on the wire.

 

  • There's only "chamfered", "spline" and "arc" for wires (in your use case, it would be nice to have something like AutoCAD's polyline so you can use orthagonal wires).

 

  • If your wire is in a design option, multi-circuit home runs behave strangely. (this was in Revit 2012, haven't checked in a while).

 

  • If your wire is in a design option, wire-gapping ceases to function (this was in Revit 2012, haven't checked in a while).

 

  • Circuiting: There's no way to circuit equipment from a design option, to an electrical panel in the main model (only work around is to make sure you circuit the device/equipment FIRST before you move it into a design option.

 

  • Circuiting: There's no way to manually adjust the sizes of the wires and quantity of runs (Using the NEC tables is great for automatically sizing, but sometimes the designer would like to add a spare neutral or a couple extra runs for an anticipated future service).

 

  • Circuiting: There's no way to do DC distribution systems in the model. A single phase panel will ALWAYS show both an A and B bus --- so you can't create 24VDC or 48VDC distribution systems for say server equipment or fire alarm systems (how nice would it be to do your Fire Alarm voltage drop calcs in Revit? Or see if your 70V speaker system amp has enough oomph to power your long runs of speakers).

 

  • If you have multiple circuits on an electrical device, the "Circuit Number" tag will ONLY show the circuit associated with the "Primary Connector" in the Revit family. The only way to get aroudn this is to create a wire out of EACH electrical connector and tag that wire. Looks goofy if you're doing a bunch of circuits off one junction box.

 

  • Multi-section panelboards are unsupported (you can't do main lug to main lug commections between panels WITHOUT a breaker).

 

  • Relay panels are unsupported in Revit. You can't, for example use an Electrical Panel family, and have a single feeder circuit (from an upstream panel) associated with multiple output circuits (as you commonly find in Relay Panels without a single pointsof connection).

 

  • If your device needs to change from say, 120VAC single phase (1H 1N) to a 208VAC single phase (2H, 1N) device --- you have to disconnect the circuit entirely. Change the voltage. And recircuit. It would be much nicer if you could just go to your panel schedule, bump a couple circuits out of the way, and change the voltage and quantities of hot conductors on the circuit.

 

  • You cannot associate wires (circuits) with runs of conduit like you can associate air/liquid with Ducts/Pipes. Benttley Electrical Systems can do this. (which is an absolute rubbish product in my opinion, but this is the only interesting feature it has over Revit MEP).

 

  • You can't associate a Lighting Device (switch) with MULTIPLE switch systems. Sof you have a double-gang light switch with two toggles on it... you can't add that switch to both the "A" light circuits and "B" light circuits in your space.

 

I am sure there are more that I'm missing --- the point being, if you're doing an electrical design in Revit MEP, be prepared to develop a lot of work-arounds and procedures to get around Revit MEP's short-comings.

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Please give kudos to the MEP Wish List ideas you like, as this will help the Revit development team prioritize functionality additions!
Message 7 of 13
smbrennan
in reply to: adam.jw

I coudln't agree with you more. The problem I have, like I stated earlier, is I'm not sure enough people are asking for this. Send all of this to product feedback. I recently got in touch with an Autodesk Manager in my region. If he ever calls back, I will be sure to share this thread with him.

Thanks for your added input!
Shawn B.

  ||    
To help improve Autodesk Products, please Click Here to Vote for ideas and submit your own.
Message 8 of 13
jkarben
in reply to: smbrennan

You can give feedback here.

Message 9 of 13
jschultz
in reply to: adam.jw

Autodesk will just keep fleecing the electrical users of their $1000 every year. It is a racket. I have been on subscription since 2006. Autocad MEP took until 2009 until you could even subfeed a pnl. The memory leak I have been complaining about in Autocad 2012 is still present in 2015 even tho they told me they would fix it back in 2012.

I have spent my whole day just trying to get the data outlets to have multiple jacks and connect them to a patch panel. This is a very common item for data drawings, but there is no good way to do it.

everything is a workaround.

 

They sell this program as some sort of time saver. I am not sure who there development people interviewed for workflow, but it must have been the slowest drafters in the world. Just the time it takes to save a file in autocad mep with electrical circuits would make somebody unproductive. And when you don't save because it takes too long, then it crashes and you lose everything.

 

It is not BIM if we have to fool it to make prints.

 

Why don't they create specific systems instead of trying to shoehorn stuff into existing ways. Such as data into power circuits. Instead of making a data specific system, they try and make the panelboard power systems work for data. What a mess.

 

 

Message 10 of 13
getexsm
in reply to: mwhea

Okey, so now it´s 2015 Revit.. and i have HUGE problems with Wirings,, just went from Autocad MEP with an addon, to Revit naviate for electrical

.. and this is a god **** joke..

 

Have to do everything in loops, to make the program understand what i want.. and just to make a Straight line aint easy, it all "auto pops" into place where he thinks i want it and i have,, like, NO control..

Feels like i´m just sitting here, as a monkey i am, and hammering on the keyboard to see what Revit wants todo today.

 

 

Well, Today i have made some Cable-collectors, with all connected cables in the wrong way, kind of.. =P

 

Message 11 of 13
VanessaRetig
in reply to: getexsm

getexsm,

 

What is the addon you are using for Revit MEP? Im new to Revit and want to use as many helpful ideas as possible.

Message 12 of 13
chris
in reply to: mwhea

After years of trying and tens of thousands of dollars in training and lost productivity, we've semi-abandoned Revit MEP.  We've purchased Design-Master software which allows us to design in Autocad and then export devices to Revit (3D) to send to the Architect to incorporate into his Revit file.  Only 10 months in, but so far no complaints from the Architect (one even indicated he likes this better as with Revit MEP we were giving him too much information).

 

The Design Master software is 3rd party and not cheap, but it's actually pretty good design software and as we've gotten used to it we believe we are more productive versus AutoCAD, though I don't track things close enough to confirm.  Still, we were bleeding money and hours with Revit MEP, so I know we are more profitable versus Revit MEP.  There was no model where that was profitable.  If Autodesk will ever produce a usable Revit Electrical product I will use it as having to pay extra for a 3rd party product to do what the Revit software I already paid for is supposed to do is frustrating.

Message 13 of 13
mwt
Observer
in reply to: mwhea

Not sure this will help anyone but I came close to a work around.

if you change the title in your panel schedules from Breaker to WSA wire sizing amps, then add a column for Breaker you can trick it into the right phase cable size. however the ground size on motors is still a problem. also reporting wire size for secondary of transformers is not automatic. if you can figure out a way to have it report only the phase wire size let me know, then we could just add a column to manually input ground size.

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