Explore the intricacies of working with conduit in Revit MEP, including navigating the quirks of the software, achieving proper alignment, and adjusting conduit size. Learn how to create a detailed conduit layout on both the first and second floors, working through potential issues while ensuring the proper placement and sizing of conduit runs.
Key Insights
- The article provides a comprehensive walkthrough in creating a detailed conduit layout using Revit MEP, including the process of navigating to the second-floor plan and making necessary adjustments to the detail level and wireframe.
- Readers will learn how to rectify common issues in Revit MEP, like the software not allowing the drawing of a straight conduit run. The author suggests drawing the conduit upwards slightly before drawing out as a workaround.
- The article also covers the process of aligning conduits to the correct height, adjusting conduit sizes as per project requirements, and saving the changes made in the layout. The author shares tips on how to avoid clashes with other elements and how to make adjustments to the conduit layout.
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 some things dialed in here for our actual first floor conduit going up to our second floor. Now I want to go ahead—I'm going to go to my second floor plan. So I'm going to my ceiling plan level 2, and I'm going to go ahead and zoom in up here.
And again, these are showing like this because they are a coarse detail level, so I'm going to go ahead and change my detail level to fine. Then I'm going to go ahead and give myself a wireframe—there we go. Now I can go ahead, select this guy, right-click, and what's happening is there are two pieces stacked up here, so I'm going to hit TAB. There are two little grips here stacked up.
I'm selecting the one below, I'm going to tab and then draw a conduit, and that should come directly on the top. And it's not wanting to find it, so let's go ahead and look at our section view. I'm going to close hidden windows and then go ahead and double-click into my section and Window Tile.
So let's go ahead and draw it from this location here—draw a conduit—there we go. And again, it's wanting to just be finicky. This is sometimes how conduit really is. Let’s see what the problem is here.
I paused the video for a second because it was acting really funny—and this is just the way conduit is. I don't know why this happens this way. If I select here and I draw a conduit and try to draw straight out, it doesn't like it.
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But if I draw a conduit, go up a little bit, then draw out—Hooray, it works! Again, it's just one of those things we have to get used to. I'm going to go ahead and take this guy and place it about here.
I'm going to go ahead and change my section to be wireframe also. Let’s see how many conduit we can get here. So—draw a conduit—again, I need to go up a little bit, then over.
I'm going to go ahead and bring it down—select here, right-click, draw a conduit, up a little bit, then over. There we go. And we'll align them all in a minute.
Draw a conduit, up a little bit, and over. And again, am I going to be able to see all of them? Not quite. So I'm actually going to go ahead and move my section so I can just see the ones I haven't drawn yet.
Go up a little bit and over. And again, I don't know why it does this. It's a weird thing that I can't just draw a conduit straight over like that.
It's not saying there's a fitting for that, even though I know we have one. It's just one of those Revit MEP bugs that you have to get used to sometimes. Let me just grab my last section here.
There we are. Draw a conduit—go up a little bit, go over. And there we are.
I'm going to go ahead and now take my section so I can align these to the correct height. I'm going to go here, rotate 90 degrees, and cut through all of them. As you can see, they're kind of all over the place.
I'm going to go ahead and draw my detail line, starting from the center point there. There we go.
Let’s go ahead and turn off fittings so I'm not seeing the actual bends—I just want to see the conduit.
So hopefully it looks like this. I'm going to go Align, make sure Multiple Alignment is checked.
I'm going to pick this edge here and now bring them all down—and that's all it takes. There we go.
Let’s go ahead and run some conduit. The one thing I do need to be mindful of is where I am here. I'm going to grab my section.
Rotate it 90 degrees. Let's take just a quick look at this corridor. Again, probably the same kind of location—or we could go up and above here, which actually might work a little better.
But then we also have to remember the lines that are coming over. So our best bet is probably going to be underneath there—the same exact location we used on the first floor.
I'm going to take this guy, draw a conduit, pop over here, come down.
Again, I tend to draw these as I run them. Go down. Draw a conduit.
Go down. There we go. Draw a conduit.
There we are. Bring it down. Again, same process. Come here, draw a conduit, drag down—there we are—only two more left.
Draw a conduit. That one I kind of stacked up a little bit, so I'm going to go ahead and drag that over. Again, I haven't aligned them or anything yet—I'm just placing the conduit so I can have it where I need it. I'm not really worried about running directly in the wall, because again, I'm going to bring my section back up—and as you can see, I can see where everything is landing.
So I'm going to go ahead and align all this. I’m going to go DI for my dimension. Let's change my view so I can actually see the dimensions. Select here, 2 inches. You have to make sure you enter that 2-inch marker. Select here, 2 inches. Select here. I'm going to select on this guy, 2 inches. Select here, 2 inches. Select here—there we go—and 2 inches. Then I can go ahead and delete those dimensions.
I want to have all these out at the same location right now, so I'm just going to go Align, pick on the end there, and bring them all out—aligning with that end of the conduit. There we go. So as you can see, everything is
Looking pretty good here. I'm going to go ahead now and run them down. Let’s actually cut one of these short. I'm going to take this one here—because it's going to feed this room—slice it there. Delete—oops—slice it, and I can't just delete the connector. I have to break it first like that, then I can delete it.
To delete that entire conduit run, I'm just going to hit TAB, delete. It’s going to feed that room. I'm going to go ahead, draw a conduit, and again—oh, now it's wanting to play nicely. It does things differently in plan views versus section views. It's just one of those things. Again, I want to go ahead—let's check that real quick. I'm going through it, so I'm going to grab here, rotate it up 45 degrees, draw a conduit—and again, it's working for us, great, rather than being difficult for once.
So there's that. I'm going to draw the conduit down, come here—and again, I know I need to slope it up, but I do not have, as you can tell, there's no slope tooltip there. So I'm going to place that there, go ahead, bring this down—okay. I'm going to rotate that up 45 degrees, draw a conduit—and again, it's just being difficult. So I'm going to draw out a little more at 45, come over—and there it goes. Let's select that back—and again, I'm probably not in the other guy at all. So I'm going to come here, right-click, draw a conduit, work my way all the way down. There we go. Let’s pull that guy up—and there we are. Let me rotate my 45, right-click, draw a conduit—and again, it's just one of those Revit MEP things that is just a bit of a hassle, but it’s something we have to get used to.
Slide over—okay. I've got three. I've got two more offices down here. Brought up just enough conduit. There we go—right there—and I'm going to bring both of these down first, then I can go ahead and route them as needed. There we are. I'm going to go ahead, come to this guy, take this, 45 up, right-click, draw a conduit over—and again, it decides when it wants to work and when it wants to mess up. Sometimes you just have to draw that little piece of conduit coming out.