Explore the detailed process of routing plumbing pipes in a Revit MEP model, from creating a reflected ceiling plan to ensuring all pipes are at the correct elevations and locations. This article will guide you through the necessary steps to accurately align and adjust pipes within a project's plumbing system, preparing them for further enhancements in the next stages of design.
Key Insights
- The process of routing pipes begins with creating a reflected ceiling plan in the project browser to accurately visualize the plumbing system.
- Detail and visual styles should be adjusted to 'fine' and 'wireframe' respectively for optimal visibility. This allows for precise alignment and positioning of pipes, ensuring they are at the correct elevation and are not interfering with other project elements.
- After routing, pipes need to be carefully adjusted to ensure they are perfectly aligned, running at the same elevation, and are placed accurately within the vent area. Future steps will include connecting these pipes to the necessary fixtures.
Welcome back to the CAD Teacher VDCI video course content for the BIM 321 course, Introduction to Revit MEP. In the previous video, we started running our plumbing pipes for our domestic water, so I want to go ahead and continue with that. We're pretty much done with the connections here, so that's good to go.
I want to go ahead now and start working on routing these pipes. So the first thing I need to go ahead and do is I do not have any ceiling plans here, and obviously these are up here above the ceiling. So let's go ahead and go to View, let's go to Plan Views. I'm going to go to Reflected Ceiling Plan, and there we are.
Now we don't have a reflected ceiling plan of either the roof or anything like that, but what we do want to have a reflected ceiling plan again of Level 1 and Level 2 and primarily right now just Level 1. Because it says "Do not duplicate existing views" down here, it's not going to allow us to create that. So please uncheck "Do not duplicate existing views, " please choose a reflected ceiling plan of Level 1, and I'm going to go ahead and hit okay. Now the one thing that we do need to do is put this in the correct location.
The reason why I say that is because, and what I mean by correct location is the correct location in our Project Browser. It's just gotten placed here, it's gotten placed in some random location, so let's go ahead and please make the reflected ceiling plan we just created our current view so it's showing up here in the Properties palette. Please choose your Discipline as Plumbing, please choose Sub-Discipline as Plumbing.
Now if I go into here, you will see now that in your Project Browser you have a ceiling plans view. I'm going to go here and you can see that it's Level 1. Let's go ahead and rename that real quick, so I'm going to select it, hit F2, that's going to allow me to rename. I'm just going to name it 1-Plumbing.
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Okay. Nope, we do not want to rename the corresponding level, that's fine, just the view. So I want to go ahead, let's go ahead and do some other things here first.
I'm going to make this one large. First thing I want to go ahead and do is change my detail level to fine so I can see everything. I'm also going to go ahead and change my visual style to wireframe so I can see everything that way.
So I can see the centerlines and all that good stuff. Again I want to be working in both plan and section, it's going to be the most efficient way. Because if I just take these over and route them, we're going to be eventually routing them to this location here. We want to route them up above the ceiling, but I need to make sure I'm not going to be hitting anything else as I go.
These plumbing pipes can adjust a little bit easier, so we're going to try and find a route between the items that we need to avoid. So I'm going to go ahead, I'm going to close all my hidden windows, I'm going to go ahead here, double-click into that, WT for Window Tile, and then let's go ahead and extend this over. Again I want to make sure that I'm not going to be hitting anything.
And it looks like we're going to have a fairly clear route which will be nice. I'm going to come here, my plan view, and I'm going to take my cold water over and I'm just going to extend it down. And everything looks like it's going to be fitting nicely.
Take this guy over too, there's that. And so as you can see, everything is fitting perfectly. Now the one thing that we do want to go ahead and do is that I'm going to change this to wireframe also so I can see everything.
The one thing I do want to go ahead and do actually is I want to make sure these pipes are running at the same elevation. So I'm going to align to the bottom, I hit TAB to select the bottom of the pipe, there, tab, bottom of the pipe there, and there we go.
I want to go ahead, select here, right-click, Draw Pipe, run it up and above, bring it over, and there we are. I'm going to bring this one, right-click, Draw Pipe, down and over, and there we are. Let's go ahead and make sure that these are fitting in here correctly.
There we go. Again, I'm just slightly adjusting them, and I'm going to go ahead and bring my section over here. I'm going to reduce it again because we already know they're in a good location.
Bring this guy up, and here we are. Now I know I need to drop them in both directions. I need to go up to get up to these guys here, and I need to go down to get to these guys here.
So my section view, I'm going to go ahead and select my cold water pipe, do a right-click, Draw Pipe, and I'm going to draw it straight down. And we're going to have this dropping in from the top, so we're going to stay kind of in this vent area. Pick there, and I'm going to just draw over for myself because I know I'm going to need that later on.
I'm going to pick my hot water pipe in the back, right-click, Draw Pipe, draw down. Then again, I'm not too worried about placing them precisely level right now. We'll go through later and place them in the correct locations.
The next thing I want to go ahead and do is actually bring them up so I can get up to this area here. So I'm going to go ahead and select the elbow here, and do you see how I have the plus sign here? I'm going to go ahead and hit the plus sign there.
Perfect. And that's going to give me another connection for our T, so I can do a right-click, Draw Pipe, and I can drag this up and come over. I'm going to take this plus sign, select here, right-click, Draw Pipe, drag this up, and come over.
We've got our hot water supply and our cold water supply now running to the actual bathrooms themselves. Everything is already coordinated. We're already good to go.
I'm going to go ahead. I'm going to adjust this just a little bit. I kind of want to be more so over the center of this duct because of potential seismic supports or hangers.
Make sure here that our elbow isn't in the way of anything, so I'm going to go ahead and slide this guy out just a little bit so our elbow is not in the wall. There we go. And I think we're looking good here.
We've got the hot water and cold water both run to the correct locations. We're going to go ahead, and in the next series of videos, we're going to go through and put in the different connectors for all of these fixtures here, and I will see you then.