Designing a Ducting System for a Rooftop Mini Split Air Conditioner

In the previous video, we went ahead and got our kitchen hood all dialed in. We ducted our supply air to our makeup unit. We also ducted our exhaust fan in, in the next few videos, we're going to go ahead and start talking about annotating and creating the sheets and everything, which we've already done for the midterm, but we're gonna start adding some more information and some more data and start pulling in other items.

Before we do that, though, we do need to add one thing. If you would, please go ahead and do your ceiling mechanical working view here. And one part that we added that we didn't really fully flesh out the system though, is that we have our mini split here.

If you recall this mini split, which was this HC air conditioner indoor unit, we brought this in and it's paired kind of with a system that is up here on the roof. Now one thing that these have is that they have both a supply line and a return line. If I select this little guy here, if I zoom in, you'll see, I have a quarter inch and a three eighths inch piece of pipe.

Now piping and duct are kind of the same way, kind of the same thing. And we're going to go ahead and pipe this in real quickly to our, uh, to our rooftop condensing unit. So what I'm going to go ahead and do is I can go ahead and I'm going to go bring over my section.

So let's bring over a working section. This one should be fine. If you still have this one here, or you could grab either of them.

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Doesn't really matter. I'm going to go into here and then I'm going to go look at this section from this section here. I can go ahead and find my connectors.

So they have the connectors kind of buried in there. You may have to zoom in to get these to pop out, but I'm going to go ahead and click on this one. And I'm just going to use the pipe type standard for right now.

And I'm going to come out and just click. And there we go. Now I did get a warning that says, could not find matching pipe type and pipe type standard.

Please check the routing preferences. That's okay. And then here, I'm going to do the opposite one, pick here, drag out, pick.

Now what this was talking about is that the size of this pipe is not listed in here. Well, interestingly enough, it's supposed to be a three eights. Let's go ahead and change this to a three eights.

Delete the family connector has been modified. So the connection is invalid. Okay.

Delete instances. And it deleted. Oh, it deleted the entire family.

Let's go ahead and undo that. So sometimes these kinds of things will happen. I'm just going to go ahead and leave this as three eights for right now, not to worry, but what I want to go ahead and do, and it's something to do with the connector in here in the family.

But what I want to go ahead and do is notice how these pipes are showing as a single line. Currently. They only show as they don't show the overall thickness.

I'm going to change my detail level from medium. I'm going to change that to fine. And there we go.

Notice how my entire unit here also changed. So that's one of those things that people build into these families is that you can go ahead is if I select the medium, see how it becomes not quite as well defined. And then I select the, I select the fine.

It gives me a little bit more information. So you start to see more of the controls, the little logo, all that kind of stuff. So I have both pipes there.

Now I'm interested why this one's not showing. We'll have to take a look at it in 3D. But what I could go ahead and do is I could start drawing my pipe, draw up.

And maybe I want to go up high. You close the deck and come over. I'm going to zoom back in.

Let's see if I can find that pipe. There it is. Right click, draw pipe, come up, go over.

Now a lot of times when routing pipes like this, you want to just be kind of aware of how you're placing it. I'm going to go ahead and get those centered up together. Let's go ahead and take a look at this in 3D though.

So I can kind of see what's happening. I'm going to go here to my section box again. I'm going to go ahead and start to bring this out.

And you may notice that my pipe, let's see here. Perfect. Okay.

And then you may notice that my pipe here is single lines again. Again, that's because my detail level is set to medium. Once I set it to fine, now it'll start to do what I need to.

Perfect. So I've got that guy running high. Now I want to know where this is supposed to go.

So I'm going to expand out my selection box here. And I believe my rooftop condenser where we placed it was on top of the second floor roof. We're going to kind of need to find a path.

And really in the design phase of this, this is extremely schematic. So you can kind of run it wherever you want. So that's where my condensing unit is up there on the roof.

So this will also have connectors. So you'll notice that I have a five eights connector and a quarter inch connector there. What I'm going to go and do is I'm actually going to bring my pipes out of this first, and then we'll match them up.

So I'm going to go to my roof plan, my roof working view. We should be able to see it here. I'm going to bring that section back over to here so that I can kind of see what I'm working on.

Double click, go into my section. Perfect. I've got my five eights connector and my quarter inch.

I can draw a pipe. Now, sometimes you may have to play with this a little bit to figure out exactly how it's going to work. So I didn't want to find the auto route going down, draw a pipe.

Do I go up first? Okay, that's fine. It's just a warning, nothing critical. And there's my quarter inch.

It wants to go up. So let's go into here. So how it looks is it wants these to actually come straight out.

So I'm going to actually take my section. And this is one of these things with these different MEP families. You're just going to have to kind of figure your path around.

But what I'm going to go ahead and do is go back to my roof. Let's look at this section. We looked at it, it was going up.

We want the pipes coming out. So I'm going to rotate my section 90 degrees and let's align it, maybe something like this. So there are my pipes.

And let's see if I can, let's see if it wants to let me select them. I might have to tab through a few times. Let's go back to my roof.

And sometimes this is just a battle of where you're cutting your view. Let's see if I make a wire frame. Does that help? That does help.

There we go. If we can bring this out this way. There we go.

I can bring this out this way. Perfect. So I'm going to run these over a little bit.

So draw a pipe, come over, and then I'm going to come down through the roof and then come over again. And so it's very similar to drawing dirt. I'm going to drag this guy out, draw a pipe, drag down, drag over.

And there we go. I may, let's take a look at it in 3D. So, okay.

So you may have to adjust some of these pipes a little bit, but we'll go ahead and leave them like that for right now. And we'll get everything tied in and then make some minor adjustments here in a little bit. So I'm going to look at where do I have my other pipes? So I need to find a pathway to that.

Well, I think I want to use the same shaft that the vertical of this here is using. So let's go to my, my level one ceiling plan. So I'm going to go to my ceiling mechanical working.

You can see my pipes here and I want to route over to this here. So I'm just going to bring this down, grab that grip, drag over, draw a pipe, come over to there. This one here, I can drag it down, drag down, right-click, draw a pipe, come over.

And there we go. I'm going to kind of put them up close to the wall. I'm going to use a section here and I'm going to go ahead and draw some verticals because I know I'm going to tie these into my roof.

So draw a pipe, come up. Let's see. I only got one of them.

So draw a pipe, come up. You want to be wary though, not to click on the pipes together. You don't want to actually like create a loop or something with this.

So this is just kind of the back and forth that you have to go through, especially with this piping aspect. If I go into 3D here, I can see I need to go a little farther up. So I kind of want to take it.

Let's see. That's where the roof is. So let's get our other pipes in here.

Let's get our other pipes in here first. So there's that. I'm going to go to my level two ceiling mechanical working.

So I can see where these pipes are coming in and I'm going to switch this to fine. So I can actually see the true pipe sizes. There we go.

Let's go ahead. I'm going to take this guy, drop pipe, drag it over this way. Come back in here.

I find the end point of the pipe, drop pipe, come over and let's go ahead and rotate this 90. We can kind of start to see what's happening here. So I just rotated my section 90 degrees.

Cool. And then I think I'm a little bit ahead of the other pipes. That's okay.

I'm going to bring these and extend them out. One of these things too is that I know I want these pipes to be at the same center line. So I'm just going to align it as I go.

There we go. Perfect.