The Reflected Ceiling Plan Revit mep

The first step in creating a well-coordinated lighting plan is to ensure that your reflected ceiling plan is properly set up to display the model in a way that allows you to see all the items necessary to coordinate as you design. Set the view range of your view so that all ceilings are clearly visible, and turn on any worksets from other disciplines that may contain items in the ceiling.
You can set the categories from other disciplines to halftone to see your layout more clearly. If you are linking in files from MEP consultants, use the visibility control options for linked files to achieve the desired result.
View Orientation
When you create a new ceiling plan view of a linked architectural model, you will have to manually set the Underlay Orientation parameter of your view to Reflected Ceiling Plan in order to see the model in the proper orientation.
If you intend to display the ceiling grids on your lighting construction documents, you will have to make visibility adjustments to ensure that the building model displays correctly.
Remember that, with a reflected ceiling plan, you are looking up at the model, so certain elements, such as plumbing fixtures or windows, may not display as desired until you adjust the view range and the Visibility/Graphic Overrides. Stairs will also display differently in reflected ceiling views than they will in normal plan views.
Another method for displaying ceiling grids on the construction documents of a Revit project is to create a ceiling view that shows only the ceiling objects. This view can be placed on a sheet in the same location as the lighting floor plan view. Revit will automatically snap the view to the same location as the floor plan view, so you can be sure of the alignment. This allows you to display the model correctly as a plan view and still be able to see the ceiling grids or surfaces.
There is often debate between architects and electrical designers as to whose model should contain the ceilings. Ceilings are not always required in early project submittals, so the architect may not get around to modeling them when the electrical designer needs them. This may prompt the electrical designer to create ceilings in their model in order to begin the lighting
design, which can cause coordination issues after the architect begins designing the ceilings in the architectural model. Having duplicate information in multiple models can be a recipe for error. The electrical designer would have to keep the ceilings in the electrical model coordinated
with the architect’s ceilings and would have to ensure that all model views were displaying the proper ceilings. This extra effort defeats the purpose of using a BIM solution such as Revit MEP and hampers the effort to achieve a coordinated project delivery because it adds another level of
manual coordination that creates more opportunities for error.
You may use the option of creating reference planes in your model to host your lighting fixtures temporarily. When the ceilings are placed in the architectural model, you could then rehost your fixtures to them. Another option is to use nonhosted families in your project.
Because you cannot change a family from nonhosted to hosted, you have to make the decision to use hosted or nonhosted.
Lighting fixtures that are modeled in the architectural model are another thing to consider.
Many architects like to create lighting layouts for their design to get a feel for how the rooms will look with lighting fixtures in the ceiling. If the architect uses 3D families to represent the light fixtures, this can cause problems for the electrical designer when it comes to using the linked model for hosting. Lighting fixtures in the architectural model will most likely cut a hole
in the ceiling where they are placed. An electrical designer who attempts to put a light fixture in the same location as the fixture in the linked file may not be able to do so because there won’t actually be a ceiling there. There is also the chance that a face of the fixture in the link hosts the fixture in the MEP file. So if the architect deletes the fixture in their file, the fixture in the MEP
file will not have a host and will not respond to changes.
Early in the project, the architect and electrical designer should agree on who will model the ceilings and in which model they will reside. They should also coordinate which types of families will be used if the architect intends to place lighting fixtures in the architectural model.
If they need to be modeled in one file initially, they can be copied and pasted into another file if necessary. Another option is to use the Copy/Monitor tool to copy the lighting fixtures from the architectural model. The ultimate goal is to have one ceiling design that all disciplines can use for layout and coordination.

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