This article provides an in-depth guide on how to lay out fire sprinklers in a project area using a design software. It discusses how to correctly position and align the sprinklers, adjust their elevation, and efficiently replicate the layout using the array tool.
Key Insights
- When setting up fire sprinklers in a design, it's essential to ensure that they are correctly hosted to the ceiling. This automatic adjustment feature is beneficial as it eliminates the need for manual alteration if ceiling heights change.
- The article recommends maintaining a minimum distance of 6 feet between sprinklers, but in the demonstrated project, the sprinklers are placed 15 feet apart to ensure proper coverage.
- The array tool can significantly speed up the process of laying out sprinklers. However, it's crucial to check and adjust the schedule level and elevation of each replicated sprinkler as they default to zero when copied.
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In this video, let's get started on our mini project area by laying out some fire sprinklers. But first, let's save. Okay, let's go to our level one reflected ceiling plan, and we'll be working on this area of the corridor, the restroom, the special ed room, the workroom, and some of these offices down here.
If we zoom in, we can see the corridor here. We have some sprinklers already lined up, so we're going to continue there. Let's zoom in to this sprinkler and click on it, and let's look at its properties.
We see it's a pendant sprinkler, which means it's facing downwards at the ceiling. It's hosted to the ceiling. Now, this is very important because if the ceiling heights change, our sprinklers will also go with that change, so we don't have to manually do it later.
The half inch means the orifice end of the sprinkler that's connected to the one inch pipe is a half inch threaded piece, which is connected to the one inch pipe with a reducing coupling. So with this sprinkler selected, let's go to right click, and let's find create similar. Okay, now we can move it anywhere we want.
Let's just drop it somewhere around right here and press escape, escape. Now let's click on the sprinkler, and let's go back to its properties, and we can see it's set to level one, and the elevation is at 10 feet. The sprinkler that we originally selected is also on level one and at 10 feet.
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So this is exactly where we want it to be, but it's not quite in line with this sprinkler here. So why don't we go on ahead and use the align tool by typing al, and let's zoom into our sprinkler here and find this line right here, not in this direction, but this direction. If you see the dashed lines, you're in a good spot, and we'll find our sprinkler here.
And if we zoom out, now they're aligned perfectly. This is great, but they're still too close together. As we see here, in this direction, they are 15 feet apart.
So let's first use di, keyboard shortcut for dimension, and zoom into our sprinkler here, and our next sprinkler right here. And we don't want to add another dimension, so let's just move around until you find a spot where it will not create another dimension. Right here is okay.
Click and escape, escape. Now currently, I'm at about five feet. It's too close, as we can see here.
Our minimum distance between sprinklers is generally going to be six feet, but there's no need to have them so close together here. So let's click on this sprinkler, and now we can see our dimension is editable. We'll click into that and type 15.
That's much better. Now, there's still more room down here, so we need to keep going. This time, instead of create similar, let's make a copy.
We'll click on the sprinkler and find copy. Let's zoom in, find the middle of the sprinkler. And in this case, you can see I can only go in this direction or in this direction.
That's because I'm currently constrained with my copy. If I go up here and unselect constrain, I can now move in any direction. But it's actually preferable in this situation to stay constrained, so I know I'm going in a straight line.
So let's do this, and we know our distance is 15 feet, so we'll type 15. Okay, and we need one more, so let's keep going down in this direction and type 15 again, and escape, escape. Now, let's click on those two sprinklers that we copied, and let's go to the properties.
As we can see here, they are not currently set to a level, and they're at zero foot zero elevation. We definitely don't want that, so let's go to the schedule level, drop down, choose level one, and now we can see that they're at 10 feet. This is exactly what we want.
Now, that was quite a lot of work to get those lined up. There's another way we can do this by using the array tool. So let's start on these sprinklers on this side over here.
Let's click on this sprinkler, and this brings us to the modify sprinklers contextual tab. Let's look for the array tool, which is right here. Let's go ahead and click on that.
Now, what we want to do is look at this menu up here, group and associate. If it's checked, make sure we uncheck that. We want to be going linear.
The number, we're going to set this to four. This is including the sprinkler we selected, and we want to move to the second sprinkler, and we'll stay constrained. Now, let's find the center of our sprinkler here, and move down in this direction, and we know we have to be 15 feet, so let's type 15, enter, and if we zoom out, we can see now that we have this row of sprinklers 15 feet apart.
What about their properties? Now, if I click on this one here, we can see its schedule level is set to zero or no level, and its elevation is at zero. Again, we don't want that, so let's hold down control and select all three. Choose level one, and now we're at 10 feet.
Okay, in the next video, we're going to continue laying out more sprinklers in this area.
