Discover the process of setting up the air diffusion system for the gym section in the Revit MEP course. This part of the course focuses on the technicalities of placing the rooftop mechanical unit, orienting it appropriately, setting up ducts, getting the right diffusers, and tuning the dimensions for optimal functionality.
Key Insights
- To start with, the rooftop mechanical unit is placed on the roof of the gym and centered around the ridge line in the architectural model. It doesn't have to be perfectly positioned as adjustments can be made later on.
- One of the major tasks involves setting up the ducts, this involves choosing the correct type of duct (round or rectangular), setting up the right orientation, and ensuring the right dimensions. The process might need troubleshooting for parameters to fit correctly.
- Using the 'create similar' option, ducts can be replicated in different parts of the gym while maintaining the same properties. This helps in maintaining uniform air dispersion across the gym.
Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.
Welcome back to the VDCI video course content for the Revit MEP Mechanical course. In the previous videos, we went ahead and finished up some of our system here over the bathrooms, adding in supply diffusers and some exhaust systems. Moving into the next portion, we're going to start looking at the gym and the diffusers and how this gym is going to go ahead and be serviced.
So the first thing we want to go ahead and do is place our rooftop mechanical unit on the roof of the gym. So I'm going to go to my roof working view. There we go.
We can see our roof here. We see where the ridgeline is in the architectural model. And we're going to kind of center this guy.
It doesn't necessarily need to be perfect. We can always adjust it later on. But what I'm going to go ahead and do is I'm going to go to my mechanical equipment.
I'm going to pull down and I'm going to look for my air handler unit. And I want to choose rooftop AC unit electric. And I want to go ahead and choose my 25 tons.
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That's going to be the big boy, the big one. Now, when we look at this one, we're going to want to go ahead and orient it in the fashion we want, and we can always rotate it later on. But we're going to have a large duct running kind of down the middle of this space here to allow for on-duct diffusers.
And then we're going to go ahead and have a return plenum. So I think maybe we want to go ahead and hit spacebar, and spacebar will actually allow you to rotate mechanical items. It'll also allow you to align to those we can to a reference, potentially.
If there's like an angled wall, say this wall here, I could go ahead and hit spacebar around there. And you can see how it's aligning to that wall. I'm going to go ahead, drop this guy on about here.
And there we go. We can see if I select it, I have my return here and my supply here. And I think actually we want to go ahead and have it in the other orientation so that when we drop out, we can do a return plenum over here, pulling return from this side of the building.
And then we'll do the supply coming out this side. So I'm going to go ahead and spacebar again, and I can continue to rotate it with the spacebar to go ahead and get in the orientation that I want. Great.
So I want to go and look at this in section, because it's easier to draw the drops when we're in a section. We'll clean up my section a little bit and just drag this working section over. And here we go.
Perfect. Now the roof level is actually there's the parapet of the gym. We have that roof view, but it's technically hosted down here.
So what we need to go ahead and do is we're going to move this guy up. So I'm going to move it up. I can use the move command.
I'm going to go ahead and bring it up. I'm going to do kind of the same dimension that we did for the fan. And let's see, can I find a connector? There we go.
There we go. And I want to go ahead and set this maybe, oh, 18 inches up. So I placed that dimension.
Let me go and save my project again. I'm going to go to my annotate tab. I'm going to choose Aligned.
I'm going to pick the connector piece. It should be right there. So that little, that reference right there, I can pick that and then pick this edge.
If I pick the straight edge, I won't be able to pick the roof line because that is sloped. So under my annotate tab Aligned, I'm going to pick that reference right there, come down, pick, and then I can go and select my dimension. I mean, go ahead and maybe a one foot six up.
And that allows for our roof curve, those kinds of things. I'm going to go ahead, click here. I'm going to pull down, go down and let's see here.
So I want to give him my auto-route because there we go. It wasn't quite long enough for this transition and we may need to look at this duct in 3D, kind of see what's happening. Here comes this one—make it nice and long.
It didn't want to go. Let's make it longer. And there we go.
So you can see how long these transitions are. And I think that's possibly because of the orientation or the angle that these are in. So let's go ahead and take a look at our 3D view here.
And that's not the right one. Here we go. Ah, well, it was because we were using a round duct.
So let's go ahead. Let's undo this. Again, you always want to make sure you're checking your parameters when you look at these.
If I click here and I pull down, notice how I'm still using my round duct taps and T's. I'm going to go to my rectangular duct, and I'm going to go mitered elbow. Let's see mitered elbows and taps, mitered elbows and T's.
We want mitered elbows and taps. There we go. And that works a little bit better.
Same thing here. Come down, mitered elbows and taps, drag down, pick. There we go.
So let's take a little look here. I didn't want to do, for some reason, didn’t change this. So what I'm going to go ahead and do is I'm actually just going to grab it and assign mitered elbows and taps.
And it's still kind of not the right size that I want it to be. So let's see, let's look at the connector. We can see, we have like a 26 7/16 × 68 11/16.
So I'm going to go ahead, give it a little bit nicer number. So let's go 26 × 68. So 26 × 68.
There we are. Sometimes it just wants to do its own thing. And we just have to sit there and adjust it.
We looked at the connector that was on the unit and made it the size there. This one though, this one is good. So this is a 20 × 76, and this is a 68 × 26.
Perfect. So I'm going to go back to my roof plan. So you see how our return here can just be a return plenum.
And then what we end up doing is going to tap out of here with a round duct and then run a long round duct along this edge. So let's create our return plenum. So here, all I need to do is I just need to draw a duct.
We're just going to draw a length over. And my return plenum is only going to be that this is going to have like a, it’ll have like a little grille on it, you know, almost like a diffuser there so that then they can just—it'll just suck air in from the space. The supply is going to be a little bit different.
So let's see here. We want to take our—we want to draw directly out of this with a round duct. So I'm going to come down.
I'm going to go to my systems duct. This time I want to go ahead and use a round duct. So taps short radius, pick there, drag over, and pick there.
Again, I just didn't change my system before doing it. So I could just select it here and change my system to supply air. I think 26 is probably going to be a little bit small for what we want to do here.
So let's go ahead and bump this up. We're going to make this like a 32. There we go.
And then I can go ahead and get this maybe a little bit higher. And I'm just going to adjust as I go. Now I'm going to go back to my roof working plan.
I'm going to select this guy and I'm going to create similar. I'm going to do just a long run. Let's go ahead.
We'll do a 50 foot run. Here we are. And so by the create similar, I've also made it so that these are at the same point.
By doing that create similar, it takes the properties of this guy here and applies it to my new one. So I'm going to go ahead and drag that there. And there's my tap.
What I want to go ahead and do now is, is I'm actually going to use some dimensions to help me line this out. If I do a dimension from the center line to here, and then over to here, I'm going to go ahead and make this 25. And there we go.
So line that up. I could also probably use the EQ constraint. If I hit EQ.
No, it didn’t want to use EQ. So that's okay. Sometimes it works.
Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes just testing it out in Revit is the best way to kind of go about it. Then now we know, hey, that EQ doesn't work.
I can just select it. I'm going to make this 25. And since we drew this at a 50 foot length, there we go.
We might need to increase it. We could always increase it. Let's say that we wanted it to be a 75 foot length.
That EQ actually keeps it so that we get a little bit better air dispersion. And there we go. You could delete that EQ.
And now we don't have that dimension there. Now we want to start looking at the air terminals on the duct. So I'm going to go and stop this video here.
When we come back, we'll talk about those air terminals being actually on the duct, not going to a diffuser.