Placing and Customizing Power Receptacle Symbols in Revit

Now we're ready to place Power Outlets or Receptacles in our Power Plans. These terms can be used interchangeably. I will try to use the word "Receptacles, " but if you hear me say "Outlets, " it means the same thing.

Essentially, a Receptacle is a device we can plug power equipment into. Now, Revit includes GFCI Outlets and Duplex Outlets in the basic project templates, but we can also bring in Floor Outlets, Simplex Outlets, or even larger Appliance Outlets. So let's go back to our project and open up our two Power Plans.

In the Project Browser, we're looking under the Electrical section > Floor Plans > Power Plan. We want to double-click to open both the L1 and L2 Power Plans. I'm going to go to my L1 Power Plan, zoom in a little bit, and I notice a couple of issues with this floor plan.

First, I'm seeing the Lighting Fixtures and the Architect's Lighting Fixtures. Also, if I zoom in close, I can see there are some Receptacles in the plan, but they're shown at actual size—as very small rectangles. I want to show the symbol instead.

So let's make a few edits to improve the clarity of this plan. In the View Properties, I’ll go to the left to find Identity Data and View Template. Right here, it says Electrical Power Plan—that's the correct template, but let’s make some modifications.

First, I’ll type VG (Visibility/Graphics Overrides) for the Model tab and click Edit. One thing to notice here is that if I scroll down to Electrical Fixtures and Electrical Equipment, their Detail Level is set to Fine.

That’s what’s giving us those tiny Receptacles, and that can be frustrating if you’re not sure why it’s not showing the symbol. This setting is likely the reason.

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It’s currently set to Fine. I want to change it to By View because the View itself is set to Coarse, and the Coarse View Detail Level will display Receptacles as symbols—just how we want them.

Now let’s jump across to the Revit Links tab.

We’ve been seeing those architectural lights, so we need to turn them off. Background Architectural is currently set to By Host View. I’ll click that button and change the Basics tab to Custom.

Then I’ll go to Model Categories and set that to Custom as well. In the list, I’ll scroll down and uncheck the boxes for Electrical Devices, Electrical Equipment, Electrical Fixtures, Lighting Devices, and Lighting Fixtures.

I also noticed earlier that the Site might be causing display issues, so I’ll scroll down to Site and uncheck that box as well.

Let’s go ahead and click OK, and OK again. Now we won’t see any lights in general—neither the Architect’s nor our own electrical Lighting Fixtures.

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Next, in the View Properties, I’ll scroll down to View Range and click the Edit button. The Top is set to 10 feet, which is why we’re seeing a lot of these Lighting Fixtures—they’re high up near the ceiling. I want to lower it to about 7 feet and click OK.

With that, I’ll click OK again. This plan is now starting to look pretty good. I can now see the Receptacles as symbols, and I think everything looks solid here.

The one thing I might update on Level 1 is this extra Corridor label, which is oddly coming through from the architectural model. I’ll delete that. If any Room Tags are misaligned or out of bounds, I can move a few into place.

And I think that’s pretty good for now. Let’s jump to the L2 Power Plan—double-click to open it—and we’ll verify that all the changes have carried over.

Why did this plan update automatically? Because we're using the same View Template. If we update the View Template in one place, it updates all the plans associated with that template. This one is looking really good too.

I think we’re ready to begin placing our Receptacles.

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