wire ends don't 'mask'

[dtiemeyer]

When I manually draw wires, they work just fine, but when I use the 'generate' wires, often times one end of the wire will not be masked by the light fixture it is connected to.  Similarly, if I alter a wire, it can be difficult/impossible to re-connect a wire and get the 'masking' by the fixture. This doesn't seem to be related to the fixture type. Yes, the wires are 'snapped' to the connector of the light fixture.

Are there any settings or tricks I'm missing?

[stever66]

I have the same problem.  If your family has a physical geometry, and your plan shows an annotation symbol that is not the same size, it seems like it is the physical model that trims the wires.

Mine frequently stop short of the fixture.

You can always click on the wire, and then grab the small circle at the end (its showing on one wire in your post) and drag it to move the wire end.

[dtiemeyer]

Yes, but even if I do drag them around, they still dont 'trim' as they should. In fact, the uppermost connection in that image shows an automatically generated wire that was incorrect, and then I attempted to fix it by stretching, and it still was wrong after that.

[Judy_S]

HI, dtiemeyer,

Judy here again! Hope your new year is off to a good start! Can you post a sample model with this problem so I can have a look at it? All I need are the elements you showed in the screenshot, and a step-by-step description of what you do when the wires don't display correctly (or even a video of this). Which version of Revit are you using? And do you have the latest updates installed (Revit 2018.2, or Revit 2017.2.3)? 

Thanks, and looking forward to hearing from you!

Best,

Judy_S

[dtiemeyer]

Hey Judy, Great to see you again. Hope your holidays were enjoyable. 

I've attached a video to show the issue.

[dtiemeyer]

also, here are the exact same settings working just fine on a 2x4 troffer.

[Judy_S]

Hi, dtiemeyer,

Thanks for the videos.  I see the problem but can't reproduce it in the Revit sample files, so it might have something to do with the families you're using,or with the model itself. Can you send me the sample file I described earlier so I can dig into it?

Thanks!

Judy _S

[Judy_S]

Hi, dietmeyer,

Thanks for sending the file privately. The problem was the nested detail items. The wires were ending at the edges of the detail items, and since they are don't fill the entire lighting fixture symbol, some wires cross into the symbol and some end at the edge (which is also the edge of the detail item). You can see this by tuning on the PBA Emergency symbol:

emergency detail ON at left

The wall sconces at the bottom of this screenshot show one way to solve the problem (and yes, there are probably other ways of getting the same result):
1. create another detail item that fills the entire half-circle or circle depending on which light you're using, and make it white

2. Place these in each light fixture and leave them visible

3. placement order of detail items matters, so you'll need to select the original detail items > CTRL+X to cut to clipboard, then CTRL+V to paste back into the same place (the visibility parameters should stay as they were). This will put the original detail items on top of the new white ones so they'll be visible when you want them.

Hope this helps! Let me know what you think.

Cheers,

Judy_S

[dtiemeyer]

Hi Judy

Would you please post the 'fixed' RFA of the fixture at the bottom of the screen?  When I read your description, it says to create a 'white' filled region detail item, but I dont want the symbols to be 'filled', I want them to be empty - the way you show.  Thanks.

[Judy_S · Accepted solution]

Hi, dtiemeyer,

I've attached the two families with the added white detail items. The white fills appear as black when your background color is set to black, and they appear white when the background is set to white. In contrast, the detail items in the original families are black (so they will appear black when printed), and when you make them visible on the black background they show as white.

The new detail items are white so they won't be visible when printed on white paper, and they'll look like the two wall sconces at the bottom of the above screenshot. If this is getting confusing, you can temporarily change your background to white so you can see what the view will look like when printed without doing mental gymnastics.

Let me know what you think!

Best,

Judy_S

[dtiemeyer]

Thanks for this Judy, your explanation cleared it all up!  My lighting people are going to really appreciate this!

Also, just for anybody else reading this post, I also had some fixtures where the wires stopped short of the fixture. I found out that I had used reference planes to the outside of the fixtures (to define an offset 'origin' for snapping the fixture into the center of a 2' grid) - well, those reference planes were set to 'Weak Reference', when I changed them to 'Not a Reference' any newly generated wires now connect all the way to the device, like they should.