Creating a recessed 2x4 light fixture - Revit Tutorial

- Okay let's make some lights, shall we? The first type of lighting fixture I'd like to create is going to be a face based, fully parametric, two by four, recessed commercial light. To get started let's go into families, let's go new, let's scroll down until we find Generic Model face based and let's click Open. What I'd like to do with this is actually make this be the insert corner. So I'm going to right click on this reference plane. I'm going to create similar. On my draw panel I'm going to use Pick Lines and I'm going to offset it two feet to the right. I'm going to change my offset to four feet and I'm going to offset it downward. I'm going to hit escape. I'm going to select my extrusion here and I'm just going to drag it down a little bit just so I can see what I'm doing. Now I'm going to hit escape. Now let's dimension this right away so we don't get lost. I'm going to click Aligned Dimension. I'm going to go from my strong reference to my weak reference. I'm going to go from my strong reference to my weak reference. I'm going to select my 2 foot dimension and I'm going to add a Parameter. I'm going to cal it Width. I'll keep it as a Type Parameter, and I'm going to click Okay. I'm going to select my four foot dimension. I'm going to add a label and I'm gonna call it Length. And I'm gonna click okay. Excellent. Now let's go to our front elevation. With lighting fixtures I like to leave just a little bump up in here. It looks a lot better in Revit and it also looks a lot better in Navisworks when we're doing clash detection. So I'm going to right click on one of these reference planes and I'm going to Create Similar. On my Draw Panel I'm going to use my Pick Lines Button and I'm going to offset it, just a half an inch. I'm going to offset it up. And I'm going to hit escape. I'm going to dimension it. And of course I'm going to make this parametric. So I'm going to select my half inch dimension. My label, I'm going to add parameter. And for my name I'm just going to call that Reveal. I'm going to click OK. I'm going to right click on this Reveal. I'm going to create similar. On my Draw panel I'm going to click on my Pick Lines button. My offset is going to be six inches. Now I'm going to offset this bottom one down. That way my Reveal doesn't affect how deep into the ceiling my light's going. So I'm going to click this and I'm going to offset it downward. I'm going to click on align dimension. I'm going to pick here, here, pick here, Select my six inch dimension. I'm going to add a parameter, I want to call it Depth. I'm going to click Ok. Now I'm going to make another reference plane going downward. I'm going to right click, Create Similar. I'm going to Pick Lines and I'm going to offset this three inches. I'm going to offset this down. I'm going to dimension this from my strong to my weak. Select my three inch dimension. For my label, I'm going to add parameter. I'm going to call it Clearance. I'm going to click OK. Beautiful. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to do some extrusions in this view. So I'm going to go Create Extrusion. On my draw panel I'm going to use my Pick Lines Button. Make sure it's Locked. I'm going to pick here, to here, to here to here. I'm going to type t + r for trim. I'm going to trim these out and I'm going to click on Finish Edit Mode. I'm going to go to my Ref Level floor plan. I'm going to type a + l for align. I'm going to actually align this one first. Just to make sure it's aligned and locked. I'm going to select this one second and I'm going to align and lock it. Hit Escape. I'm going to go back to my front elevation. I'm going to Create Extrusion. I'm going to pick points on my draw panel. I'm going to select this reference plane, this reference plane, this one, and this one. And I'm going to trim these out. Now before I finish with this one, my material, I'm going to click into my material category, I'm going to click on the builder button. I want to make a brand new material so down here I'm going to click on this little drop down and I'm going to Create New Material. I'm going to right click on Default New Material and I'm going to rename it. Now I'm going to go to my Appearance tab. In my color I'm going to make it red. I'm going to click OK. But I'm going to come down to my Transparency and I'm going to turn this up. I'm going to make it about 67% transparent. I'm going to click Apply. I'm going to click OK. I'm going to click on Finish Edit Mode. I'm going to go to my Ref Level Floor Plan and I'm going to do the same alignment. A + L for align. Select this reference, select this line, pick it. Select this reference, select the leading edge, pick it. Hit escape. Now let's go to a 3D view. We'll notice it's recessed but that's fine. We have a couple things we need to do. First thing I'd like to do is go to the Family Category and Parameters. Let's make sure this is a lighting fixture. I want to make sure that it's a Light Source. I'm going to scroll down until I find Room Calculation Point and I'm going to click on this as well. I'm going to click OK. Now here's my light source but I need to align it to where my light is. I'm going to go back to my Ref Level Floor Plan. I'm going to slect my light. I'm going to rotate it 90 degrees. I'm going to move it. I'm going to pick the base point, move it to the mid point. And I'm going to move it one more time. And I'm going to move it down two feet. Now I'm going to go to my front elevation. I'm going to selct my light itself but I'm going to click on Light Source Definition. Notice that we can do different emissions. We can do different distributions. I'm going to click on this distribution right here. I'm going to click Apply. I'm going to click OK. What I want to do now is rotate it back to the other orientation. So I'm going to click Rotate. I'm going to click Place for Center of rotation. I'm going to put it right here. I'm going to pick this point and I'm going to rotate it around this way. So now I know it's shining into the room. I'm going to select this point and I'm going to move my light source definition right to about the middle of this emission here. I'm going to hit escape. I'm going to back to a 3D view. What I'm going to do now is I'm going to go Create. I'm going to go Electrical Connector and I'm going to select the face of my light. You can tab onto it if you can't quite get it. I'm going to select my connector. The system type I'm going to click the drop down. It's going to be Power- Unbalanced. The Load Classification, I'm going to click the builder button. It's going to be lighting. I'm going to click OK. For my voltage I'm going to type in 277. I'm going to click my builder button. I'm going to add a parameter I'm going to call Volts. I'm going to click OK. I'm going to click OK again. Hit escape a couple of times. I'm going to click my Save button. I'm going to save it as two by four fixture. Go to my Options, backups will be one. I'm going to click Save. Now, I'm going to open up my Electrical Test Model. This time I'm going to go to a ceiling plan. Zoom into an area, preferably around where my section marker is. I'm going to close my hidden windows. I'm going to hit control tab. I'm going to Load into Project Now for placement, I want to Place on Face. Notice now I can hit my space bar and flip it around. But I have control over where I'm going to put it now. So I'm going to put it right here. Here's my light. One more thing I want to do is I'm going to double click on it. Because if I go to Wireframe, I can always see my clearance. I want to make it so we can turn that on and off. So I'm going to select my clearance for Visible. I'm going to click on the Associate Family Parameter here. I'm going to add parameter. I'm going to type in Show Clearances. It's going to be a Type parameter. I'm going to click OK. Click OK. I'm going to click Load into Project. Overwrite. Now I'm going to go to a 3D view. Zoom into my lighting fixture. I'm going to select it. But now if I click on Edit Type. And if I scroll down to the bottom, if I uncheck Show Clearances and click Apply. The Clearance goes away. Click OK. Hit escape. There we have it. That's how you create a lighting fixture.