Cable Trays

Alright. So we're gonna place a data rack, and I'm gonna show you how to do cable tray from one side of the building to another. So right now, the there's no IT room in this building. And so I'm just gonna use the storage area, and we're going to route it up high across this bay so that doesn't get hit by anything, and then we're gonna drop it over here by the meeting and office space. So to start, I'm going to start placing a data rack.

So I'm gonna go here to systems, click on data. And if it doesn't pop up right away, you can always click this drop down menu and select it. So here, I'm going to do a floor mounted unit. Let's do front and rear clearance, and let's put it on the floor. So I'm gonna do zero, and here we go. So here's my unit. So let's say I dropped it here. Now I am in a sheet view, which is cleaned up so that it presents well for this systems. What I also wanna check is make sure I go over here to the working view. So you can see under under my working category, it's electrical.

So electrical broken into sheet view and working view. Sheet view is what you put on the sheets, and it's what you wanna make look pretty. The working view is here so that you can coordinate with other systems. So if I zoom in here, you can see how I have ductwork turned on and for good measure because I just placed my data rack underneath the ductwork. I don't wanna do that because I wanna run a cable tray over it to be able to feed it directly.

Now I'm gonna move this over here, and that should make that should clear up a space for me. What I wanna do is I wanna align this. So I'm gonna use the align tool. I'm gonna take the wall to the back of the rear clearance, and let's leave, like, 24 inches on the side here. So I'm just gonna go to annotate, align from wall to the rack. And then when I click on the rack, you see how this number shrinks down? That means it's now able to accept the input. So I'm just gonna press 2 and press enter, and it's gonna push it out to two feet. So it's it's two feet on the side, two feet in the rear. And I should have access to feed a cable tray straight down.

Perfect. So now I'm also going to go into this section right here by right clicking. Go to view, and let's figure out what the height is. So the room lid is 12 feet, so I need to be at least above that. However, I wanted to make sure that I clear this overhead door. So let's drag this section over here. And if I go back to the section, you can see that this overhead door is actually higher than the room lid. So let's take a dimension. So I wanna measure from the top of this door all the way to the bottom, And that says fifteen foot six inches looking right here. Alright.

So let's put the cable tray at 16 feet. And at 16 feet, what you can also do I'm I'm going to maybe you know what? I'll just model it because I think we're at 16 feet. It might be closer enough that we'll just support it from the roof. Okay. So I have my height. I'm gonna model at 16 feet, and let's go back to the systems plan. So systems plan, I like working in this sometimes just because it's a clean slate. I can run my, cable tray, or you could alternatively run it in the working view. Depends on what you wanna coordinate with.

Let's say you wanna just do it on here and then look over here on system plans to see how clean it'll show up. But alright. Let's do this. Let's let's just run it here so that you can see purpose of this working view. We're going to go up here to systems, click on cable tray, and over here, I'm going to select which cable tray I want. Let's see. I want something with fittings and yeah. Let's do I think the ladder type. Yeah. Ladder type is probably fine.

So ladder type, and then I'm going to check the edit type button. In here, I wanna make sure that the fittings are actually indicated. Sometimes when when you start a project, it might show up as none. And what happens is when you make the horizontal bends or the vertical inside out bends, the fittings don't automatically get placed because none is selected. So we wanna make sure that all the fittings are selected. Hit okay. And here, I'm just gonna cancel that for now. And then I'm just gonna check a couple other things. I wanna make sure that it's on the correct level. So, yes, I want it on the 1st Floor level.

The lower end bottom elevation, I wanna make sure that this is at 16 feet. K? And then rung spacing, let's do if I'm gonna put cables in it, I think I want, like, six inches of rung space. 12 inches wide, six inches high. Yeah. Okay. That looks good. So I'm gonna hit apply. And then if I go over here, I can start drawing it. So I'm gonna start here from the data rack.

I'm gonna click this way, and I'm gonna go up over here to this corner, and then I'm gonna make this bend. And here, you can see that I'm gonna go all the way over here. I'll demonstrate on this corner. When I click these and I and here, you can see how the fittings automatically show up. And these are technically separate families, but they are automatically attached.

And to see if you're fully attached, you can hover over a section of cable tray and press tab, and you can see how it selects the entire cable tray. Now if I click it, you can zoom out and see that this whole thing is one continuous piece. So if it doesn't look like this, by the way, you can always change your oh, sorry. This is a a view template. So you can change your view template instead of detail level. Let's say you wanna just show as medium. You can see how the cable tray shows up slightly different. Alright. So now that we drew this in the working view, I was able to successfully dodge all the ductwork over here. So let's see.

Where is this? Is this on the roof? So what you can do is actually I'm going to tab over the cable tray. Click. I'm also going to press control and click on the data rack. And let's also click control click on this air handler unit. What I wanna see is the three d nature of how this is all put together. So if I go up here to selection box and click that, can you see how it pulls up like a three d view of everything in here. So let's see. Looks like mechanical unit, is it on the roof?

If I click this, like, selection box and I expand it upwards. No. It's not on the roof. Let's turn on a couple things. Visibility graphics. Go down here. Looks like it's seems to be hidden. Let's click on this. Mechanical equipment, it's at nine feet. Oh, I see. Okay. So if I were to go back in here. Alright. It's in here. Gotcha.

So what I actually don't wanna do because I see it here, you can see that there's a clearance zone in front of there. I actually don't wanna drop down through that. If I wanted to drop down, I could I I could probably drop down right here, but I don't wanna drop down right in front of this unit because it looks like this is where it needs to get serviced. Okay. So, yeah, right here is perfect.

There we go. So now that I have the horizontal pieces run, and I can also confirm here on the three d view that it does indeed clear the garage door, we're going to go ahead and add the vertical drops. So to do the vertical drops, you wanna you wanna make sure that you're working in a section. So I'm gonna take this section. I'm gonna drag it so that the area the depth that it's showing encompasses the end of the cable tray.

Then if I can go to the view, you can see it show up right here. And now what I wanna do is hit cable tray and make sure connect it automatically connect this select it. And from here, we can go ahead and click the center of this cable tray and just drag it straight down to the top of the data rack. And now I'm gonna hit escape, and then I'm gonna go over here to this side. Same thing here.

And I'm gonna actually, for this one, I'll probably stop it just above the ceiling because chances are they'll route the cables down, and then they'll go into, like, the walls to drop down for the data outlets. They don't I'm not gonna stick it into the room. Alright. Perfect. I'm gonna go back here to systems, and you can see that now they are dropping down. If I go over here to the three d view, if I click on this piece, I can orbit around. You can see I drop down and I don't bump into any ductwork. Same thing on this side. Let's let's cut in slightly. There we go.

Okay. That's a little close. Maybe I'm gonna scoot that back just a little bit. So here, I'm just gonna use my keyboard. So I'm gonna just tap that up up up up up. Okay. Right there. That's a pretty good drop. Alright. So now I have it all modeled. Let's go here to the sheet view, take a look at it. That looks pretty good. Looks like it shows up. You got the drop or you got the riser, the horizontal, and the drop. So now we wanna annotate this because I have to tell the contractor how high to put on this cable tray, how big it is, and everything.

So just go up here to annotate, go to tag by category, and you can go you can see how it says cable tray tag. So we can make sure, you know, we're gonna tag the cable tray. And then in later years of Revit, you can actually select what tag to put on before you tag it. But now right now, you have to kinda put it down, and then I'm going to change it to this is the size. And if I want the leader to show up, I can click on it and then attach a leader to it.

Let's say I want the leader to have an arrowhead, I can hit edit type and give it an arrowhead. Let's say 15 degrees. There we go. Now I'm gonna throw another tag on here. Maybe this one I'm going to do let's do the height.

Okay. And I'm gonna just park this under here, and that's probably good enough. So we'll say ladder type cable tray, 12 by six, sixteen foot AFF. And if I were to change this, let's say I bring this up to, like, 17 feet and I hit enter, you can see how it actually does update. I'm not sure why scoot it over a little bit, but it does update in real time for what this is. Okay. So, yeah, same thing. I can go over here and tag the fitting. The fitting is a separate type. So we're gonna chain we're gonna put an arrow on that as well.

You only have to do this once. And we're gonna do a leader. There we go. And we'll just say, like, 90 degree bend. And you see how it's like it kind of points itself to wherever it wants to. What you can go here is do a free end, and then now all of a sudden you have the ability to tell it what to do. Alright. So then I'm gonna tag this over here as well. Cable tray let's just say vertical drop. Actually, it's a normal site.

We'll say this is the riser part. Same thing, attach cable. This should be this should be the last one I have to add an arrow to. There we go. Here, I can tag the rack itself and then we'll call this data rack. And so, actually, sometimes what I like to do is put in parentheses front. It's pretty I mean, to me, it's pretty obvious. The front faces away from the wall, but you never know. Maybe sometimes you wanna face it towards the wall. Alright.

Yeah. We can go ahead and continue to tag this. Let's see. Tag. There we go. This is the yeah. You can put do size or height if you wanted to. You know, we could just keep we can just keep going across like that. Okay. And there we go.

Let's see. Last thing I wanna show maybe is if I wanna add to this, let's say I wanna, like, tee off somewhere in the middle, like, if I wanna run a tray down the middle of the room for some reason, it's very simple. Just go ahead and click on cable tray, and I want to specify that you wanna inherit the elevation and the size. So with that selected, you can go ahead and just click on a cable tray and bring it out. You can see how it automatically adds a a t right here.

And then same thing here. I could just do, like, a loop back if I wanted to. I don't know if you wanted to, you know, run this around. Let's say you had, like, a process line or something underneath. You could do something like that if you wanted to. That way you can drop a data, drop anywhere in this space. And then once you if you change your mind and delete it, you can go ahead and delete this. And I'm gonna delete this and to reconnect cable tray, all you do is drag from one to the other. Same thing here. One to the other.

Perfect. Now if I wanted to change elevation in the middle, that one's also pretty simple too. We're gonna go ahead to I'm gonna go grab my my working view. Go to view. And let's say I wanted to, like, bring this up a little higher. So I'm gonna click on the cable tray, and we can actually split with gap, which is really fun. So sometimes, yeah, sometimes it's the other button that works. Sorry. Not split with gap. Split element. You wanna split the element. Perfect. And then sometimes it'll nope. This one's attached. So what you'll do is actually you see this little union piece right here?

I'm gonna hit delete. Break the union, and let's say this one, I wanna put this at, like, you know, 17 feet above. Okay. Perfect. Now with this, you're gonna drag it back and then we're going to draw a cable tray from here. From here, And you can see how I can specify, like, an angle. So, like, 45 and then to here. Oh, that doesn't go together because it's too short. So what'll happen is you'll have to there's a minimum amount of length needed for this. So what you can do is bump it a little bit higher.

There we go. Now connect these two. There we go. And then you can actually use the keyboard tray or the keyboard arrow button. You can go down until basically it bottoms out. Hit cancel. So with these pieces, you can have a minimum of 17 feet and one and a half inches. So that's kind of your lower limit. So same thing here. I'm gonna just pull this back a little. Going to connect from here. And the reason I like to draw from this is that I can specify, like, a 45 degree. So from here to here. Oops. Delete.

And then connect. And then to always check, you can hover over one piece and press tab, and you can select this whole piece. So there we go. And then if I ever wanna move this up, you can see how it's it's all connected. Like, this will behave just fine. If I move it around, I select this whole piece, think, yeah, the keyboard is the best way to do this. And there you go. If you look at it in three d view, looks pretty decent. Okay. So with all that in mind, oh, I guess we have to tag this height a little differently.

So this one is 18. That one's back at 16. So let's put this out like a nice even number, eighteen six. I like it. Okay. Let's see. Leader arrow. There. Oh, that's right. I have to turn on the leader. There we go. Yeah. This one I didn't want the leader on because I placed it right under here. Okay. So there you go. You have your cable tray, height, annotation, data rack, risers, drops, all that stuff. And that's how you do cable trays.