Electrical panel schedules are a very important part of designing and documenting the electrical portion of a building project. The electrical panel schedules help with designing the electrical system by showing the power requirements on the panel to the designer and allowing the designer to spread the power requirement across the poles of the panel. It is also useful for showing the electrician how to circuit the items assigned to the panel. Those 2 different purposes may involve showing slightly different information on the panel schedule. In addition to that, the facilities manager may even desire to see different information on the panel schedule.
Because of those various uses for panel schedules, there may be variations in the panel schedule appearance and information that is shown on it. Need I mention that there may also be changes to the panel schedule appearance during the implementation phase of Revit? Regardless of the reason, there are times when you need to change the appearance of several panel schedules that are already created. When an electrical panel is created (via the Analyze tab, Reports and Schedules panel, and the Panel Schedules command), it is based upon an electrical panel template. (There are 3 different types of panel templates from which to choose – Branch, Data, and Switchboard.) After the panel schedule is created, it does not automatically change if the panel template is changed. The user must manually tell Revit to change the panel schedule to use a different template and have a different appearance since the template is simply a starting point and does not control the panel schedule.
Change panels one at a time:
- In the Project Browser, right-click on the desired electrical panel schedule in the Panel Schedules section and select the Change Template… option from the menu.
- In the Change Template dialog box, select the desired panel to apply to the existing panel.
- Pick the OK button and the panel schedule will change immediately to have the appearance of the selected panel template.
Change multiple panels at one time:
- Go to the Manage tab, and select Panel Schedule Templates from the Settings panel. Select the Manage Templates option.
- Go the Apply Templates tab in the Manage Panel Schedule Templates dialog box.
- Select the desired template in the Apply templates box on the right.
- In the Panel Schedules window, select the electrical panels to which you desire to apply the new template
- Pick the OK button and all of the selected panel schedules will change to have the appearance of the selected panel template.
When there are a only a few electrical panel schedules, it is easy to change them individually. However, on a large project where there may be dozens of panels, it is much easier to change them in bulk.
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