Create intricate systems in Revit MEP with CAD Teacher's VDCI course, BIM 321. This walkthrough demonstrates how to place and arrange conduits on the first and second floors of a building model, including tips for overcoming common challenges in the software.
Key Insights
- After placing the conduits on the first floor, they can be extended to the second floor by drawing them up along an exterior wall, as the interior layout of the second floor may not align with the first.
- Conduits can be placed inside the wall, then copied multiple times and arranged in a line. For clarity and accuracy, it's helpful to slice off any conduits that extend above the ceiling level.
- Conduit placement can be a complex and repetitive process in Revit MEP due to its quirks, but with practice and patience, a comprehensive and accurate system can be created. The alignment tool and detail lines are particularly useful for ensuring consistent placement and spacing of conduits.
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 placed some conduit on our first floor. Everything is pretty well dialed in, and I want to go ahead now and we'll actually go ahead and get some conduit running up to the second floor. I'm going to go ahead and bring my section back. The first thing I want to do is go back to VV, and I'm just going to go ahead in my floor plan or my reflected ceiling plan and turn off my ducts and duct fittings, so it looks more like an electrical plan.
Now I want to go ahead and we're going to bring some conduit up into the other space. We're probably going to have to use an exterior wall because if I change my underlay to be level 2, it's going to have a different room layout above. The walls are not in the same exact location. So I'm going to take my layout back to, or my underlay back to none, but we're probably going to have to use one of these exterior walls to go up into the space above.
So I want to go ahead—let's first of all bring my section back here. I'm going to go ahead now and run the conduit up in this edge of the wall here. So the first thing I'm going to do is come here and look at that wall. This is the electrical room, and I'm going to draw a conduit—again, 1-inch conduit—and I'm going to go ahead and just draw and go up. And there we are.
If I zoom in here, you can see that it's now there. But if I zoom in here, it's in the middle of the space. That's because it doesn't have an offset or anything like that to place it, so I have to go MV for move, and I'm going to place it inside that wall. Let's go ahead and make a couple copies. I'm going to go CO for copy, I'm going to come down 2 inches—2,2, 2, and 2. Let's see here—1,2, 3,4, 5,6—let's go ahead and make 8, so I'm going to make 8 copies down that way.
I could also array those if I wanted to. The other thing I want to do is get these above the ceiling level, so I'm going to go SL for slice, and I'm going to slice every single one of these above the ceiling. I'm not too concerned about exactly where I am, and then I'm going to select those bottom pieces and delete them. I can also select those couplings and delete those as well.
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Perfect. Now I'm going to go ahead and select this, and I know that I need to get back over to these panels here. So I'm going to come straight out of this and then angle it down to get into the panels. But I'm not going to really worry about changing my views—I'm just going to draw a conduit, come out, and there we are.
I can then go to my floor plan view, grab it, and rotate it around. I could also grab here, right-click, draw a conduit, come out, select here, right-click, draw a conduit, go out, select here, right-click, draw a conduit—and I'm just going to bring all of these out. There we go. Again, it's a very repetitive process.
Yes, I could run one, and then copy them all also, but I want you guys to get used to modeling. And there we go. The other thing I need to do is pull my section back a little bit, and
Actually, let's go ahead and cut through the conduit, and then align based on the centerline to here—and it doesn't like it very much.
So the best way to do this with conduit is to go DL for detail line, draw a detail line from the center point of this guy here all the way across, AL for align, multiple alignment, pick on that line, and now I can just go ahead and align all those together. Again, I do that quite often by dialing those detail lines because it gives me almost a reference point, and then I just remember to erase the detail line later. Most of these conduit will be running to panel LP3 or PP3, so I'm going to go ahead now, draw a conduit, take it off at my angle of 135—and again, it’s wanting to be difficult.
It's just one of those things with conduit sometimes. So I'm going to rotate my section. Let's go ahead and bring that up.
There we are. Let's see, is it going to want to be nice? Nope. Again, this conduit can be particularly annoying.
It can be annoying at times, so I'm going to right-click, draw a conduit, go a little farther out, and now go at a 45-degree angle—and it works. It's just one of those things that as you use Revit MEP, you'll get used to the little quirks and everything about it. Draw a conduit, go out, 45 down. Draw a conduit, go out, 45 down.
Again, I'm not too worried about exactly how I'm running all this stuff. I'm going to adjust it later on. I just want to get these angles in here.
Come out just a little bit farther. I don't really want to be overlapping. Draw a conduit.
There we go. I'm going to go ahead, DI for dimension. Let's see here.
Kind of the same thing, but I need to get all these. It's slowing down just a little bit, but that's fine. There we go.
I'm going to go ahead and change the scale factor of my drawing again, so I can really see those dimensions. Here, I'm going to go ahead and select this dimension here, or this one here, and make that 2 inches. I'm going to go here, select 2 inches.
Here, select 2 inches. Here, select 2 inches. Here, select here, 2 inches.
Select here, here, 2 inches. Select here, here, 2 inches. There we go.
Those are all nicely aligned now. I'm going to go ahead, and that's not going to want to work there, so I'm going to break my straight pieces off. Draw a conduit.
I'm going to come out, and down. Come here, draw a conduit. Out, and down.
Draw a conduit. Out, and down. Draw a conduit.
Out, and down. Again, it's kind of a repetitive process, but it's fun. Again.
Draw a conduit. Out, and down. Draw a conduit.
Out, and down. Draw a conduit. Out, and down.
I'm going to do the same kind of alignment technique that I used previously. I'm going to go DI for dimension. There we go.
Bring my dimension lines all the way across. Here we are.
I'm going to select this guy. I want to go ahead, 2 inches. Select here, 2 inches.
Select here, 2 inches. Select here. There we are.
And this is the same exact thing that we do to adjust walls with dimensions or anything else that we need to adjust with dimensions. And there we go. I want to go ahead now, and I'm going to select these pieces here, by holding CTRL.
And I'm going to go ahead and slide these over. And as you can see, it's not really liking it. Okay.
So, there we are. I'm going to go ahead, and we could actually flip-flop these panels around if we wanted to. Based on how sometimes things go, it may not necessarily work out to have the panels in one location.
So, this is LP1—excuse me, right? So this is PP1, and this is PP3. I'm going to go ahead, take this guy, slide it over. I'm going to take here, slide this over into position.
And I'm going to grab this one, and bring it back over here. And then, if I needed to make sure that they were aligned with the other panels, I could just align. I'm going to zoom in, find the panel, and there it is.
Beautiful. I'm going to go ahead and just slide these guys back just a little bit more. Okay.
And one thing that we may need to do is I can take the fittings and slide them straight back so that I have a little bit more room here to slide these over. There we go.
Now, let's go ahead and take a look here. I'm going to go up to—I'm going to actually pause this video here. This video has been going for a while.
So I'm going to pause this video here. We're going to go up to the second floor and start tying this system in. See you there.