Trouble creating electrical "dummy load" family for populating existing panel schedules on renovation projects

[rzwolinski1]

Hi team,

I'm hoping one of you smart folk can solve my family issues (revit family issues, you cheeky buggers).

I've got an electrical fixture family that I made which has multiple electrical connectors within. The purpose of it is to demonstrate existing loads in the panel schedule by circuiting them to this one family which can be managed and hidden.

The electrical connector's poles, voltages, and apparent loads are populated with instance parameters.

Ideally a person would use the family in our office by placing it in a 3D view (deliberately not visible in Plan/RCP, Front/Back, Left/Right) and Create Systems>Power, after which the "Specify Circuit Information" window pops up. The user would then enter the 'Number of Poles' and 'Voltage', then hit OK. They would keep on doing this for as many dummy loads they want shown in the panel schedule.

The issue I'm having is that the 'Number of Poles' entered in the "Specify Circuit Information" window is not updating the 'Load_**_Poles' instance parameter I've got set up.

Would some kind person please take a look at the family and see what's up?

Thanks a bunch.

-Romualdo

[robert2JCCH]

Not an electrical guy, so I only have about half the answer here.

I can replicate the issue with a new family of 2 electrical connectors, as well as by modifying your family down to 2 electrical connector. What's interesting is that if you actually attempt to circuit the family up, the very last circuit will properly display 3-pole and provide you the 3-pole panelboard options. No idea why this is the case, but apparently only the final circuit will carry number of poles properly.

The immediate workaround is to just use multiple single-connector dummy families, which might actually be a better workflow anyway since you can leave yourself notes about individual circuits in the model via Comments or a Shared Parameter.

[rzwolinski1]

Thanks for giving it a shot robert2JCCH. That's strange about the poles only properly allocating on the last circuit.

I was hoping to not require multiple single-connector dummy families since it clutters up the model and requires the modeller to be diligent about placing them all in a location where they will not be forgotten if they're needed to refer back to them.

Perhaps an acceptable compromise would be creating three dummy families - each dedicated to a specific number of poles.

I would like to know though if there is something missing though to make the 'number of poles' entry in "Specify Circuit Information" actually allocate properly.

[fabiosato]

Hello,

Despite you can change the number of poles when you create the electrical circuit, the value will not return to the instance parameter, the value will remain as it was before creating the circuit, if you need this information to be correct, you will need to change it BEFORE creating the circuit.

[sragan]

---

@rzwolinski1 wrote:

The issue I'm having is that the 'Number of Poles' entered in the "Specify Circuit Information" window is not updating the 'Load_**_Poles' instance parameter I've got set up.

---

That's not how revit works.   The circuit voltage and number of poles is not passed back to change the parameters of the device connectors.  So with your dummy load, you need to place the load, and then edit the instance parameters for each connector (voltage and # of Poles) before creating the new circuits.

The biggest problem I see is that 1 phase circuits need an unbalanced connector, and 2 and 3 phase circuits need the balanced connectors.   And Revit doesn't let you control that with a parameter.   So at the very least, you are going to need 2 separate dummy loads - one for single phase loads and one for 2 and 3 phase loads.

The other major problem is that if the user doesn't select the panel and name the circuit when its created, you will have a whole bunch of "unnamed circuits" that will make it hard to figure out what is what.   I even tried giving one of the connectors a "Description" like Load 32, but it still doesn't show up in the "unnamed circuits" list or in the systems browser.

If there were a way around those two issues, I would like what you have.

[rzwolinski1]

You say "That's not how revit works" however I'm not sure why not.

It seems to me that the circuit voltage in "Specify Circuit Information" is being passed back to the parameter; I click on the family in a model and set the instance parameter Load_01_Voltage to '208V', and Load_01_Poles to '2'. After which I circuited by clicking "Create Systems, Power". This is when the "Specify Circuit Information" window pops up. In the window, I set the number of Poles to '1', Voltage to '120V', and hit "OK". It then presents which electrical connector to allocate these values - I selected "Connector 1:Power" and hit "OK". If I hit escape a few times then reselect the dummy load family I see that the instance parameters for Load_01_Poles and Load_01_Voltage greyed out with Poles set to '2' and Voltage set to '120V'.

All of this is to say that the "Specify Circuit Information" window is populating the instance parameters since Load_01_Voltage is now set to 120V instead of the 208V I had initially set. What is not changed from the "Specify Circuit Information" window is the number of Poles. The amount of Poles I had initially set (2) remains in Load_01_Poles.

[sragan]

Yes, I don't think the number of poles will change based on the circuit you create.

I think of it this way - you might place a 3 pole disconnect, but when you create the circuit, you might create a 2 pole circuit. 

It doesn't mean the number of poles on the switch has changed, it just means you are only using 2 of the 3 poles available on the switch.

I think a similar thing happens with the loads.  You might have a 3 pole load, but only connect 2 poles to power.  Revit will calculate the load on 2 poles, and just ignore the 3 pole.