Best Practices for Interactive Study Setup

Setting up the Interactive Study is the foundational step in generating conduit with ACP. The Creating Schedule Inputs and Importing and Preparing Site Data articles provide the steps to perform each part of the workflow.

This article covers best practices to help you avoid common issues and work within ACP's current limitations at each step.

Setting up the ACP-Import view in Revit

The Site Data in Interactive Studies is composed of the Electrical Model and Background Geometry, which are imported from the ACP-Import view created during Project Initialization. The Electrical Model provides information about the Sources and Destinations in your Revit project, while the Background Geometry provides ACP with spatial context used for clash detection. Both are displayed simultaneously in the Model Viewer where raceway routes are drawn and conduits are generated.

ACP uses this Site Data throughout the routing and generation process. Large sites with complex geometry can create higher demands on processing power, which may lead to a variety of issues once that data is imported into ACP such as:

• Lag during navigation and model interactions

• Longer import duration of Site Data

  • Excessive geometry can also cause complete failure when importing either of the Site Data models.

• Detection of false clashes

• Longer conduit generation times or complete generation failures due to time out

The visibility of the geometry in the ACP-Import view controls what geometry does and does not get imported into an ACP study.

Two of the most impactful things you can do to manage this are:

• Minimize excess geometry

• Scope routing areas

Minimize excess geometry

The visibility of many Model Categories, which are unlikely to be relevant when routing conduit, have been turned off by default within the ACP-Import-Template view template. However, because each project is likely to be configured differently, it’s important to review the visibility settings applied to the ACP-Import view to ensure that only relevant elements are visible.

Some Model Categories may not be relevant when routing the conduit but are still visible in the ACP-Import view by default. In these cases, the view should be reviewed and all unnecessary elements should be hidden, whether through the category control, a view filter, workset overrides, or link overrides.

Common categories to review include:

• Generic Models

• Specialty Equipment

• Plumbing Fixtures

• MEP Fabrication Containment, MEP Fabrication Ductwork, MEP Fabrication Hangers

• Flex Pipes

Creating scopes for routing areas

For large or complex sites, consider dividing your Revit model into manageable routing areas using Scope Boxes and creating a separate Interactive Study for each one. This helps keep your workflow organized, as well as improve Model Viewer performance and conduit generation times.

Because the geometry included when importing Site Data is controlled within the ACP-Import view, you can use Scope Boxes within Revit to define these routing areas. This creates a structured, repeatable workflow, allowing you to quickly switch between routing areas for each study without manually adjusting the Section Box each time. Ensure that each Scope Box encompasses both the Source and Destination. For instance, electrical elements in a large warehouse attached to a two-story office building likely draw their power from Sources on the first floor. The Scope Box must span across the warehouse and the first floor to encompass both Source and Destination.

Follow the steps below to create a Scope Box and assign it to the ACP-Import view:

Create a Scope Box

1. Open a plan view displaying the area where you‘d like to place a Scope Box.

   • Scope Boxes can only be created in plan views.

2. Navigate to the View tab in the ribbon.

3. In the Create panel, select the Scope Box tool.

4. On the Options bar, specify a descriptive Name (for future identification) and Height of the Scope Box.

   • Scope Box heights may also be adjusted manually in a 3D view after placement, by dragging the top/bottom grips to the desired location

   • Scope Boxes may overlap and extend between floors.

   • Scope Box Name may be changed in the properties after placement.

5. Click in the view where you'd like to start the Scope Box and drag to encompass the full routing area.

   • The Scope Box should display as a green dashed line around the boundary.

6. Click again to finish placing the box.

7. In the Modify tab, select the Pin tool.

   • This prevents the Scope Box from being accidentally moved.

PRO TIP

Multiple Scope Boxes may be created by repeating the steps above.

• For an organized approach in creating scopes for your routing areas within your Revit project, you may reference your project’s floors, Pour Schedule, or Coordination Schedule when creating Scope Boxes.

• Ensure the Scope Box encompasses all of the Sources and Destinations for the area to be targeted within each study.  

Assign a Scope Box to the ACP-Import view

1. Open the ACP-Import view.

2. In the Properties palette, click the dropdown for Scope Box.

3. Select the named Scope Box from the list.

Creating schedules

The Conduit and Feeder Schedules interface is built to speed up data entry and catch mistakes before they become problems. Before working with your schedules, there are a few things worth knowing about how they behave in ACP.

• Existing schedule data may be easily imported into your study from a CSV/XLSX file or directly from a previous study.

• Identifying ACP Parameters (e.g., Panel Name, ACP_E_Fixture_ID, and ACP_C_Enabled) are read live from your active Revit project for data validation.

• Each Source and Destination must contain a unique value for the identifying ACP Parameters in the Revit Model.

  • Elements within Revit may contain the same Panel Name or Fixture ID so long as only the desired target is Enabled.

• Each Feeder ID within the Feeder Schedule must also be unique.

  • And each Feeder ID within the Conduit Schedule must have a corresponding Feeder ID within the Feeder Schedule.  

Pre-Import review

Your Conduit and Feeder schedules may be created by importing a CSV or XLSX file. While ACP will flag many data entry issues once imported, each flagged error has to be reviewed and corrected one at a time inside ACP, and not every data entry error can be caught automatically. A thorough review of your schedule data prior to import will typically save time and hassle later, prevent potential data loss, and is often faster than catching and fixing these issues one by one after import.
Here are some things to look out for:

• Variations of Source and Destination names
  Because Panel Names and Fixture IDs are unique, ACP will assume variations in letters or numbers are unique Sources and Destinations.

  This may result in one of two outcomes:

  • If no match is found for the variation, ACP will flag it with a [Source/Destination] missing error.

  • If there is an error in the name of the Source or Destination and the resulting name matches that of an existing element, the raceway will be considered valid by the Conduit Schedule, but you may be routing to/from the wrong Source/Destination.

• Multiple Raceways with unique Run ID but the same Source & Destination

  Because some organizations prefer to manage each run of conduit separately, ACP allows the same Source/Destination pair to appear in more than one raceway within the Conduit Schedule, as long as each Run ID is unique.

  • This can happen accidentally when you copy and paste lines within the schedule.

    • Check for unintentional duplicates and remove them from your Conduit Schedule.

Managing the Conduit Schedule Raceways

In most projects, it's easier to create a single master Conduit Schedule and validate that data across the entire project, rather than maintaining separate schedules for different areas. As covered in the previous section, creating scopes for manageable routing areas means that not all of the Conduit Schedule is likely to be used for every study.

Controlling Active Raceways in the Conduit Schedule also has the following benefits:

• Eliminates the need to maintain multiple Conduit Schedules for different studies in the same project.
  With the options to duplicate the Study (with its completed schedules) or import a schedule from a previous study, the master Conduit Schedule only needs to be created once and can be reused across every study in the project.

• Improves performance of the Model Viewer.

  ACP calculates Proposed Routes for all active raceways in the Conduit Schedule every time you update the Model Viewer. If some raceways are deactivated, there are fewer routes which need to be calculated.

• Provides a more accurate progress status, makes tracking easier, and reduces false errors.

  • The Status column is only updated for active raceways. If a raceway is deactivated, its Status will be Run not active, which indicates that it's not currently being routed in the study.

  • If the Source and/or Destination of a raceway is not within the active scope of the ACP-Import view, the element will be flagged with the Element Not Visible error message and the raceway’s status will display as an Error.

Isolating Raceways

To focus the routing to specific raceways follow the steps below:

1. While setting up your Conduit Schedule, enter any relevant scoping information for each raceway in the Note column.

   • Could include: Study, level, area, and other data that will be helpful when filtering the schedule.

   • You can do this before or after importing the Conduit Schedule into your study.

2. Select all raceways in the Conduit Schedule by clicking the checkbox on the header.

3. Disable a toggle in the Active column.

   • This disables all the selected raceways so that you can focus on only the specific raceways you want to work with.

4. Use the Search function to filter the Conduit Schedule.

   • The Search looks through all columns, you can utilize Panel Names, Notes, or even Run ID indicators to find the specific raceways to work with.

5. Select all search results by clicking the checkbox on the header once again.

   • This will select all visible in the filtered list.

6. Click one of the Active toggles to enable all selected raceways.

   • Leave the search active to view only the specific raceways/routes you are currently working with.

PRO TIP

Steps 2-5 may be repeated multiple times within the same study while moving across the scoped area of the study, and repeated across multiple studies which utilize the same Master Schedules.

Remember:

• The Conduit Schedule may be copied from one study to another

• The Notes Column is your best friend for searching/focusing

• The Search looks through ALL columns in the schedule

• The Search may be left active while you work with specific focused areas, and adjusted as many times as are helpful in the process.

Importing and setting up the Site in ACP

As covered in the previous section, the Scope Boxes created in Revit can be assigned to the ACP-Import view prior to importing the Site Data into its own dedicated Interactive Study. This helps provide a structured and more manageable approach to creating raceways, as well as improved Model Viewer performance.

Once the Site Data has been imported, the next step is to set up the floors in the study.

Keep the following in mind:

• ACP Floors cannot overlap.

• Proposed Routes only appear for active raceways which are located within the Top and Bottom Planes of floors set up in the study.

• When setting up floors in the study, ensure that the Top Plane and Bottom Plane encompass all Sources and Destinations which need to be routed on that floor.

  • Floors in an Interactive Study are independent from the levels in the Revit project where the Site Data is imported from.

  • For projects with varying floor elevations, such as those with a mezzanine, you may need separate dedicated studies in order to route each raceway to the specific floors.