In this detailed walkthrough, the CAD Teacher from VDCI guides learners through the process of setting up a return air system for the first floor using the Rev MEP software. The guide focuses on creating a duct system, adjusting its dimensions, and ensuring it's correctly labeled as a return air system.
Key Insights
- The article demonstrates how to use the Rev MEP software to create a return air system. It provides detailed instructions on changing system types and setting up duct dimensions.
- The guide emphasizes the importance of correctly labeling the system as a 'return air' system, rather than a 'supply air' system. Incorrect labeling can lead to errors in system design.
- The process involves creating a duct system, adjusting its dimensions, and connecting it to other ducts. This requires precise manipulation and understanding of the software's features and functions.
Welcome back to the CAD Teacher VDCI video course content for the BIM 321 course, Introduction to Revit MEP. In the previous video, we went ahead and got all of our supply system for the first floor done. Let's go ahead and get our return system done for the first floor.
So I'm going to go ahead to duct, we're still using our rectangular duct with mitered elbows and taps, 18 × 12, offset of 10 feet. I want to go ahead and we're going to go and the one thing that we need to make sure that we're doing is please make sure your system type says return air. Typically your system type right now will say supply air, please make sure your system type says return air because that's the type of system we want to draw. What we're going to go ahead and do is we're going to kind of bring this and loop it back around and run it on the other side of this corridor.
When we get to this location here, we're going to go ahead and actually bring this guy up and run it at a higher elevation so we can get over everything. So I'm going to go ahead and come out this way, come here, come down this way, over to here and I'm going to go ahead and take this up and I'm just going to take it all the way down because I know I'm going to adjust it later on. Take it down about there and there we are.
So I'm going to go ahead, I've brought this duct all the way around and I need to go ahead and adjust this first. We want to get our main set and then go back and do all of our branch lines. So I'm going to select this guy here, I'm going to bring it over, I'm going to do a rotate RO and then I'm going to drag the direction I want to rotate and go 90 degrees and there we are.
So as you can see, we have our duct going through the other duct. What we're going to end up doing is we're going to split this, move this section of the duct up to get over it and then we're just going to leave it at the higher elevation there because that's going to make it easier to tap into all of our other ducts here. So I'm going to go to my plan view, I'm going to do a split, I'm going to go SL, pick here and there we are.
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I'm going to go ahead now and select the duct, the piece that I want to move up and I need to disconnect it from the system. So I'm going to grab this grip here, pick there and let it, drag it up, hit escape. There's going to be a little tiny piece here which is the split transition, the union.
I'm just going to delete that piece. I'm going to go ahead and move this guy and I can either use my directional arrows to move it up to the correct location or I could specify a specific height. Let's go ahead and make it 11 foot 3,11 foot 2. So you can also, you can use your directional arrows to move it up or you can go over here to the offset location and say move up 11 foot 2. I'm going to go ahead and hit escape.
Now what I need to do is I need to now connect these two. So I'm going to go ahead and drag back. But do you notice what happened? It wanted to connect over here.
I need to drag this back so that I have room for my fittings and everything so when I turn everything together it will be fine. But the problem is, is that since I can see everything, it's going to want to automatically connect. If I select this again and I drag back, see how it's wanting to connect with the center line in the background? So that's exactly what's happening there.
So I need to go to my plan view. I can do it here or if I needed to, I could also select my section and reduce the amount of information I'm seeing so I don't see that duct in the background anymore. Now that I have that done, I'm going to select here, right click, draw duct.
I'm going to go up at an angle of 135 which is an increment of 45. Now I'm going to go TR for trim, pick here, pick there, and they'll tie together. Now the one thing I don't want to do is I don't want to leave a big space like this.
So I'm going to go ahead and select this. Just I drag the standard selection window over it and I'm just going to use my directional arrows to move it over. And there we are, perfect.
Now we're ready to go ahead and start tapping out for all of our other ducts. So I want to go ahead, I'm going to go DT for duct, I'm going to go ahead, I'm going to change my height back to 18, I'm going to change it to 12 × 12, and I'm going to change it back to 10 feet because this is the duct that I'm doing right here. So I'm going to pick here, go over to there, and there we go, okay.
Then what I might need to do is I might need to do a slight adjustment here, but I want to come back to this one in a minute. Now I know that this is sitting at 11 foot 2, so I want to go ahead, let's change our offset to 11 foot 2, and I'm going to go ahead and start here, pick, drag over, pick there, pick here, drag over, pick there, pick here, drag over, pick there, and I'm just tapping into these rooms to get these different return air diffusers, pick here, drag there, pick here, and drag there, perfect. Let's go ahead and connect those with some flex.
So I'm going to select this here, right-click, draw flex duct, pick there, escape, select the duct, right-click, draw flex duct, pick here, there we go. Again, I know it's kind of repetitive, but it's the process we go through. There we go, going to come here, right-click, draw flex duct, there we go.
Now we need to figure out how we're going to get to this guy here. We could have a couple of different ways. I do want to tap out of the main here though.
So I'm going to go ahead and go DT again for duct. Let's go ahead and make sure it says 12 feet. I'm going to bring this down like so, and there we are.
Now since I'm going to be using flex, I can have it go through. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to select it, do a right-click, draw flex duct, pick there. One thing we can do is we can adjust the flex.
So let's go ahead and bring our section over to see what's going on. As you can see, it's kind of going through, it's going to be going through that duct. But if I select my flex, if you notice, I can kind of go ahead and bring some things around so that I can get up and over that.
This isn't a huge mission-critical portion, but it's one of those things that we want to know. Don't worry about this connection. Again, they know that we're using flex and obviously in the field, this would be able to be done absolutely no problem.
So again, to adjust the flex, you have these two little grips to go ahead and adjust the flex as you need to. And there we go. I'm going to go ahead and zoom extents, Control+S to save the file.
And I actually just quite accidentally missed one. Let's go ahead and get this guy in here. So I'm going to go duct, again I need to change my height to 11 foot 2. Just tap off here, bring it in.
Select, right-click, draw flex duct, and there we go. We are all tapped in, ready to go. I'm going to go ahead and zoom extents, Control+S to save the file.
I'm going to go ahead and stop this video here and go ahead and get all of these diffusers and ducts tied in. And in the next video, we're going to go ahead and actually start to work on the second floor. See you then.