Discover insights on MEP plumbing, specifically focusing on the piping systems in Revit, exploring the properties and graphical overrides of hot and cold water lines. Understand how the project browser, object styles, and other factors influence the design and function of piping systems in Revit.
Key Insights
- The color of the pipes in Revit can be changed using graphic overrides; for instance, you can make cold water pipes blue and hot water pipes red. This is a crucial aspect of understanding plumbing in Revit as it helps to differentiate the piping systems.
- Revit allows you to customize properties of the piping system elements including fluid type, fluid temperature, and other specifications. These properties are greyed out as they are type properties and can be edited through the type properties option.
- Understanding how to use selection filters in Revit is a crucial skill for users. This feature enables you to filter out specific elements such as pipe fittings and pipes while copying to clipboard, which can streamline your work process in Revit.
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 VDCI video course content for MEP plumbing. In the previous video, we went ahead and adjusted our cold water line and we got in our hot water line here. But what we want to go ahead and do now is talk about some specifics about this hot and cold water line and the piping systems, and then we're going to get this information up to the second floor.
So what I want you to notice, first of all, is the color of these pipes. You may notice that when I have this pipe here, it is part of my domestic cold water system. And you'll also notice that it has a blue color, right? And that's the graphic override. It has there. The same thing with the hot water line—you'll notice that it's a red color.
Now this is set up in the piping systems, and understanding how this aspect works is actually a pretty important aspect of understanding plumbing and Revit, and we'll be creating our own systems and everything like that. But let's go ahead and take a look at where I'm getting this information. So in your project browser, if you go down here to Families, I'm going to expand out Families.
I'm going to scroll down until I find piping systems. Yours might look like this where it's collapsed. Just hit the plus sign next to the piping systems, and click on it.
You’ll see you might have piping systems collapsed there. Just expand that out again, and you'll see that there are values for these different piping systems already in here.
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The template that we brought in automatically had all these systems. Again, your office that you may work at may call it domestic cold water or domestic hot water. They may just call it hot or cold water. There might be additional systems.
Like I noticed that there is a sanitary system, but there is no storm drain system. There is no hot water recirculation system either. If you work a lot on pools, you might decide to define those systems more clearly by adding a pool system or similar.
But let's take a look at the properties of these elements. So I'm going to go to my domestic cold water, and you have some properties here, but these are really all type properties.
That's why they are grayed out and we cannot edit them. So I'm going to right click on one and hit Type Properties. Nothing super crazy here, but you have your graphic overrides, which is where the color is given.
Now notice that there is no pattern and there is no weight given, but there is a color. This means the pattern and the weight of the lines are governed by the object styles of the project under the Manage tab. So under Manage, we can set different object styles.
We'll take a quick peek there, but we've overridden the color of those elements to be blue in this instance. We have no pattern and no weight override, but the color of the lines is going to be blue. That is only a 2D or 3D representation.
If you were to export this out to an NWC file for Navisworks or to a DWG, this override may not necessarily come through because it's just a graphical override. If you wanted to export into 3ds, you could create a material and assign that material to it. But that's another thing.
Calculations. You can say, I want it to be all calculations, flow only, performance, none. The fluid type is water. So you could specify the type of fluid, especially if maybe you are working in industrial or lab settings. You might have different piping types for oxygen or other kinds of items. Fluid temperatures.
You could specify the temperature here, and obviously that'll be factored into the calculations. They have a wide range of temperatures. For certain applications, you may have a higher temperature of, say, water for large industrial purposes. Fluid dynamic viscosity, a flow conversion method, and other items, identity data, and then some graphical items about the rise and the drop.
Two-line drop, two-line rise, single-line drop—this kind of gives you the option to choose what that graphical aspect looks like if your office has a specific way of documenting that. So there are quite a few options here to go ahead and have there.
I'm going to go ahead and hit OK. And then the same thing for, say, the hot water.
If I go over to my hot water Type Properties, my graphic overrides here—again, only the color is overridden, and you see that it's red. No pattern override or no weight override.
And again, the same set of settings here. The fluid temperature is 140, fluid type is water, and so on. And then again, the rise and drop symbols are there.
If I go down to, say, Hydronic Supply and I go to Type Properties, let’s see what color they have for this. There is no override for Hydronic Supply. So in this template, it hasn't been set to be any specific color.
Again, your office may have an office standard that's built into their template. This is just the standard Revit template. If I hit OK, let's check out Sanitary. Maybe Type Properties.
I believe that this is green. And I wonder if Vent is actually the same color. Let's take a quick peek at the Type Properties.
There is no override for your Vent system. I'm going to go ahead and hit OK.
Okay. I'm going to go ahead and zoom out. Now I want to get this up to the second floor.
Now, obviously I really don't need these lines running all the way from there. So I'm going to go ahead and zoom out.
I really just kind of want to have it maybe from this aspect there. I really only want this location, and we'll find the spot that it's going to go up to the second floor. But what I'm going to end up doing is I'm going to zoom out and drag a window.
Now, obviously I have some things I don't want to copy. And this is something that I think every Revit user should really know—understanding how to use selection filters. When I drag over this entire thing, I'm going to go ahead with that.
Notice I have the entire pipe system. I also have some spaces that, again, I'm not going to worry about. We can filter those out. If I go up here to Filter, I'm going to click on Filter.
I'm going to hit Check None. I want to take Pipe Fittings and Pipes. Those are the only items I want.
I don't want elevations. I don't want any space tags, spaces, or views. I just want Pipe Fittings and Pipes.
I can hit Apply, and you see in the background how your selection set has changed. So I hit OK. I'm going to go ahead and hit the Copy to Clipboard here, and then I'm going to go up to my second floor plan.
So let's go to my Level 2 Plumbing Plan. And then under my Modify tab, I'm going to go here to Modify. I'm going to paste.
I'm going to choose down and select from my options the paste method I'm going to use, which is Align to Current View, and I've put those in there. Notice that they still have all the fittings and everything up to that point I selected.
But again, they're representing as 2D again because of the detail level. So you want to make sure that the detail level is set to Fine. On your working drawings, you're probably going to want to see. By "working, " I mean the ones that you're constantly modeling in, where you're putting a majority of the work. In your documentation views, they may be set to the single line to help enhance the readability of the drawings. So you can see where transitions are.
It's a little bit easier to read. If I switch this back to Medium, you'll notice where I can see these bends, where I can see these T’s. I can see these transitions.
It's a little bit nicer from a printability and readability standpoint when looking at, say, a set of 2D documentation. I'm going to go ahead and change this back to Fine. There we go.
And we have that on the second floor. We'll coordinate exactly where it's coming up and how it's all working when we get to that point. I'm going to go ahead and stop this video here.
We'll see you in the next one.