Designing and Placing Sprinklers in Different Ceiling Areas for our Mini Project: A Step-by-Step Guide

Let's continue laying out our sprinklers in our mini project area. If we zoom into here, we can see this area of the corridor is at a different elevation than this area, and we can confirm that by going to the Annotate tab and finding Spot Elevation. If we hover over here, we can see this is at 10 feet, and this is at 8 feet.

Now, this is going to provide an obstruction to our sprinkler heads, so we're going to need to add more sprinklers to this area right here. Let's press Escape. Now, we've d1Copy, and we've d1Create Similar, but there's another way to bring in our sprinklers.

But first, I'd like to do some detail lines and mark out where I want to place my sprinklers first. So let's use the keyboard shortcut DL. And let's find the midpoint of this line, looking for the triangle, and we'll draw it down perpendicular.

Escape, Escape. Okay, now I've already measured this, but we can confirm it's about 18 feet long, from here to here, 18 feet, 2 inches. And again, I used my measurement tool right here.

We're going to need two sprinklers here. So let's use the Detail Line tool again by typing DL. And I've already considered my spacing, so I'm going to draw up following this wall just until about here.

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It's not very important. And we're going to click on this, go to Copy, and we're going to move down our detail line. We're going to go 4 foot 1, and again.

And my copy is set to Multiple, so I can do another copy. I'm going to go down this detail line, and this time I'm going to go 10 feet. So these intersections are where I want to bring my sprinklers.

If we find our System tab, under Plumbing and Piping, we can see Sprinkler. If we click on this, now we can find all of our sprinklers that we can use in this project. The sprinkler we're using in this case is the Pendant Hosted, so let's look for that again here.

So again, System, Sprinkler, Sprinkler. We're looking for our Pendants. Now, this is the wrong sprinkler, but we're going to use this one in our ceiling tile areas.

But let's talk about what the differences are between these. So I'll just select this right here. Now, we have two different symbols.

This one is our semi-reset sprinkler, which is inside an escutcheon, and this one has a cover plate. Generally, in our jitboard ceilings, we'll use the cover plates, and our regular ceiling tile areas, we'll use the semi-reset sprinklers. So this is not the one we want.

So let's go on ahead and do a Match Properties by typing MA. Let's choose the one we want, and let's select the sprinkler. Now, this is going to be the one that we want.

Let's go on ahead and move it. So let's select the Move tool, find the center of our sprinkler. Now, here we're constrained.

In this situation, we don't want to be, because we know we want to bring our sprinkler at this intersection. So I'm going to have to unconstrain it. And now I can move right here.

Now, we got a notification. We are no longer on the host face. Instance will lose association to host.

Okay. We'll click on it. Now, this is set to 10 feet.

But we know this is already at 8 feet. So what we're going to have to do is pick a new host. So let's select the sprinkler, edit work plane, pick a plane.

Now, we're going to, if you can't find it, you can keep pressing Tab. But we're looking for this area right here. We don't want this wall or this section.

And hit ENTER. Escape, escape. Now, we see our elevation is at 8 feet, which is exactly matching this ceiling height right here.

Now, we need one more sprinkler at this intersection. So let's go to this one. Right-click.

Create similar. And we'll bring it right at that intersection. Escape, escape.

Double-check. Level 1,8 feet. Great.

This is what we want. We don't need the detail lines anymore. We can delete them.

Let's move on to the restroom. We're going to use another tool here to bring from this side of the restroom over here. Now, they're not exactly the same distance, but we're going to start from here and then make some adjustments later.

So let's go up here and let's drag our mouse all the way across. Now, under the Modify tab, we'll see Filter. Let's click that.

And let's go to check None. Now, let's go back in and just check Sprinklers. Okay.

Now we're in the Modify Sprinklers contextual tab. Let's look for Mirror Pick Axis. This button right here.

And let's find the midpoint right here, dividing the two restrooms, and click. Escape, escape. Now, it looks like I accidentally brought over too many, but that's okay.

Sometimes these things happen. This isn't going to be perfect, and you just got to pay attention when you're designing. We'll delete those.

Now, these look pretty similar to the restroom above, but let's, again, see what's going on here. If I click on this, again, we see there is no schedule level. Remember, we don't want that.

So let's go ahead and hold Control and select all of them. Let's choose Level 1. And they're at 9 feet. Just to confirm that's correct, let's go to Annotate, Spot Elevation, 9 feet.

Okay. We know we're at the right location. Okay.

We've worked mostly on these JIT board ceiling areas, but if we look at the special ed room and the work room and these offices and the classrooms, these are all acoustical ceiling tiles. And if we zoom into this special ed room, you can see that we are at the very center of these tiles. So why don't we go on ahead and populate some sprinklers here.

So, again, let's go to System, Sprinkler. Let's choose, let's see, a half-inch pendant on a drop. Now, let's find this intersection right here.

Now, we don't want to be at the intersection of the tiles. We want to be at the very center. So right now we're at Level 1 at 9 feet.

This is good, but we need to move it. So let's click the Move tool. We'll go over 1 foot.

Click the Move tool again. And we'll go up 1 foot. So far, so good.

But let's go to Copy that. And let's move this over 10 feet. And now let's select both of them.

And we'll copy them. Again, starting anywhere, just making sure we go down. And let's go 10 feet.

Okay. Now, again, these sprinklers are not hosted to the ceiling yet. So let's go make sure they're all set.

Now, it says varies because the first sprinkler was, but the other ones aren't. We're just going to confirm by selecting all of them in Level 1. And now they're all at 9 feet. Great.

Why don't we do the workroom? We can go to the sprinkler we have here. Right-click. Create Similar.

And it's generally difficult to find the exact center of our ceiling tiles. So it's better in this case, why don't we just find the intersection. Zoom in.

Make sure you're exactly at the intersection with the center of the sprinkler. Escape, escape. Let's move.

We'll go this way 1 foot. We'll move again in this direction 1 foot. Okay.

We are at 1 foot and at 9 feet. Now, with this sprinkler, let's go on ahead and copy. Move it down.

And we'll go 14 feet. Since this one's in the center of the tile, and these are 2 foot by 2 foot tiles, we know that we should be good right here. But again, it is not set to the level yet.

We'll choose Level 1. And we're at 9 feet. Now, we've just got a few of these areas here. So let's go on ahead.

Go to Create Similar. And in this office, we'll just need one sprinkler. Let's put it at this intersection.

In the reception area, we'll have 2 sprinklers. We'll put one about here. And another one about right here at this intersection.

In this office, we can go about to this intersection. This office, about this intersection. And this one, about right here.

Escape, escape. Now, again, we don't want them at these intersections. But what we can do is drag across, select all of them.

We will move up 1 foot. And we will move again over 1 foot. Escape, escape.

It looks like I missed the copy room here, which is no problem. We'll go click Create Similar. We can put it about right here.

Escape, escape. We'll move up 1 and move over 1. And again, checking. We're hosted at the ceiling, 9 feet.

We are good to go. Now, this area is actually open to the level above. When we put the sprinklers on level 2, those will provide coverage to this area here.

So for our mini project, our sprinklers are laid out. In the next video, we'll connect them with branch lines.