Creating a 3D Isometric Plumbing Diagram in Revit

We're going to continue on with our documentation, but I think we're all pretty familiar with the different types of documentation that we have. We've created a couple of sections here.

What we can go ahead and do now—this one's a little bit more specific to plumbing—but this is kind of a fun one to do too. It's going to be a 3D isometric. You could use these if you wanted to do certain types of diagrams, like single line diagrams or single line riser diagrams.

I've also seen a lot of places start to use the 3D in certain fashions, which is really kind of nice. So let's take a look at that. So what I'm going to go ahead and do is go to my 3D view.

Please find it in your Project Browser. It should be under Plumbing 3D Views. I'm going to take it, right-click, duplicate the view, and duplicate with detailing.

And there we go. We have a copy here. I'm going to go ahead and name this Plumbing.

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So rename it Plumbing Isometric, and we're going to have this take up an entire sheet, actually. So what I'm going to end up doing is changing this to a fine or a coarse detail level so that I get a single line diagram. We have an eighth of an inch, but I also want to crop this down.

So what I'm going to do is go to Crop View and Crop Region Visible, and we're going to start to crop this down. The one thing you're going to notice, though, is that the levels don't really line up terribly well. We can just go ahead and turn those off, but this kind of shows what we've got going here.

So I'm going to go into my VV, turn off my levels, Apply. Okay. There we go.

I'm going to go ahead and leave it like that. So let's go ahead and get this on a sheet. Now I don't have one here yet for it.

So let's create a new sheet. So Sheet > New Sheet > VDCI E1. Let's go ahead and name this P-701, just Plumbing Isometric.

And let's see how this eighth inch looks on the sheet. So I'm going to grab that Plumbing Isometric and bring it in. The eighth inch actually looks pretty good.

We're going to go ahead and leave that size. I'm going to adjust my view title here a little bit, but I want to be able to tag and annotate this guy in this view. Now, the problem here is that I'm activated in the view.

So I'm going to hover here and activate it. Now I can't tag—the orientation of your 3D view must be locked before you can add tags or keynotes. What I can go ahead and do, though, is down here at the bottom, there is this unlocked 3D view.

It's a little house with a little lock on it. What I can do is lock that, save orientation, and lock view. And there we go.

Now I'll actually be able to go through this and tag these pipes and everything, which is really kind of a cool aspect. Now, the tags operate a little differently, so you might need to get used to this a bit, but there we go. Let's get that there, there, there—there we go.

I could also add or remove hosts if I wanted to. So again, we're just representing the plan in a different fashion. This gives a little bit more information, which is really kind of nice.

And the tags operate a little differently. It wants us to draw in these leaders. Let's see here so we can keep going.

But again, you've just got to kind of take your time with it, going through and tagging this. We're not going to tag every little thing, but we'll tag quite a bit. And if you need to adjust your items, adjust them.

I can tag the sinks. I guess in the 3D view, it always wants to populate with the free end version. So there we go.

But you'll also notice that I've turned off the Revit link for now, because we're really focusing on the plumbing aspect here. This might be a good time to use the Tag All. So let's say I want to use Tag All.

I'm going to go ahead. I want to use, let's see, Plumbing Fixture Tags. I'm going to have a leader on it.

Let's go with a quarter inch. Apply. Okay.

And there we go. And then I can go through and start to adjust them. I do kind of like just the ability, though…

And I could do this too. I could add or remove hosts if I wanted to combine some tags. So sometimes I will say that the Tag All—I mean, I could literally tag all three, like all four of these—based on one tag.

So check this out. I'm going to delete those three. I'm going to select this one tag, add or remove host.

Boom, boom, boom. And then all I need to do is just adjust my leader lines a bit. Now, if I move this tag, it moves all those leader lines, which is really kind of a nice functionality.

Again, this is kind of new in the scheme of Revit. So I can do the same thing here. If you need to be more specific—let's say you wanted to tag, add, or remove hosts—

Let's say that you needed to tag with individualized kinds of things, maybe some kind of a number for the actual fixture itself. You would want to change out this—whatever this tag is here—you want to change out that value.

I'm going to change it to a free end just so that I can get these to actually touch. It looks like it's wanting to go to the faucet. The faucet is not showing right now, but we can fix that.

So I want the faucets to show. But if I switch it to a fine view that shows everything—well, we want to do it on a per-category basis. So I'm going to switch it back to coarse. I'm going to hit my VV.

I'm going to go down to Plumbing Fixtures. Where is it here? And I'm going to change the detail level of the Plumbing Fixtures only to be fine and apply it. Okay.

Now you see I have my Plumbing Fixtures showing everything, but my pipes are still represented as single line diagrams. There we go. Let's get that guy into location.

I'm going to delete these three. So again, sometimes the Tag All is not necessarily the greatest, because I could just do this and get kind of everything I need right there. So the Tag All is always kind of like a crapshoot.

If you want to use it, is it useful? It's kind of up to the individual user. If I'd rather just tag all of these with one tag for all the water closets—so let's say I just had one tag for all the water closets rather than get this all wild and crazy in here—

I could select this guy, enter, remove host. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And again, this is the same information we've represented on plan, but this also kind of gives a nice single line diagram of what you have going on for the project that looks kind of funky.

We'll just move all these back to a common location. There we go. Same thing here: remove host.

And I'm going to delete these tags. Make sure you delete the tags, not your actual elements. That would be an important thing.

Let's move this guy up so that we get a little bit more of a downward angle with our leader lines. And I'm just going to stack them all kind of right there. There we go.

Let's change it. I'm going to make it a free end. Keep working around.

There's a lot of tags here. It's just kind of the nature of the beast. Select and remove hosts.

But I can guarantee you—you’re going to be very, very proficient at tagging at the conclusion of this course, which is a great skill to have. Maybe change this to a free end. Most of them look pretty good, but I kind of want to get that one.

There we go. I'm going to kind of do the same thing here. I'm just going through and cleaning this up.

So clean them up as you see fit. It doesn't have to be perfect. There’s no really wrong way to do it, per se, as long as your elements are readable.

That would be the number one aspect that you want to make sure you're getting. So this is kind of getting a little wild here, but let's see. Let's try moving this around.

And yeah, maybe down here is a better location for it. Let's go with a free end. I can move these little free ends as much as I need to.

There we go.