Creating a Revit Mechanical System: Adding VAVs, Air Terminals, and Aligning Components

Welcome back to the VDCI video course content for Revit Mechanical. In the previous video, we finished up a little bit of a system here, and in this video, we're going to go ahead and finish up the system down here. Kind of take it at your own pace, but we're going to be putting one tap off, one VAV, and then connecting it to many air terminals so that this is all serviced by one thermostat.

So what I want to go ahead and do is I'm going to use that CREATE similar that I used previously. I find that to be a very fast and effective way if I already have existing elements in the model to just replicate those elements in different locations. So I'm going to select one of my supply diffusers.

I'm on my level one ceiling mechanical plan. I'm going to go ahead to CREATE similar, and here we go. So I'm going to go ahead, and I'm just going to place them in.

Again, I know that I'm going to come back and align them later, so I'm not too terribly worried about their exact location currently. I'm just going to put it in where I think it works, and we're going to go ahead and put that there, put that there, and there we go. I'm going to go back now and align.

I've unchecked my multiple alignment just because sometimes I feel it's faster just so I can click, click, and just keep clicking around to make sure I get them aligned properly. So I'm just going to work my way around, keep clicking and aligning. Just make sure you're careful of what you're clicking, and make sure that you do not have that lock alignment on if you're going to go, or the multiple alignment on there.

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There we go. We've laid out those spaces. I'm going to go ahead and put some return diffusers in.

So what I want to go ahead and do is select one, CREATE similar. I'm going to check my elevation and make sure it's nine feet. I can go ahead and place this guy here.

Now I can put it inside of the door swing because the ceiling is taller than the door. I'm going to go ahead and put a return here. The return, because this is just an opening here, I'm going to have this return service both spaces.

So I'll kind of put it here in the middle. Again, I'm not too terribly worried. Sometimes a room might be very small and you might have to just put them right next to one another.

Kind of just sometimes the nature of the beast. And let me make sure I get the right aligns. And I'm going by using AL to start my align command.

And I'm just going to go ahead and go through and align these. There we go. And sometimes it may look like it's 100% correct.

So a lot of times I'll just align it just in case, just to make sure. Even though it looks proper, you know, this is a very accurate software. If you want to get down into the nuts and bolts of things, it can be very accurate.

So you want to make sure that you do it properly. I'm going to go ahead. I'm going to place my VAV.

So I'm going to go ahead, hit CS on my VAV or create similar. Make sure your in and out is going the right direction. So I'm going to go ahead, make sure I want to slide this one just a little bit farther back.

We're going to go ahead and take this guy, CS again. I'm going to pick on there, go back to there. Perfect.

And then I'm going to match this system. So I'm going to take this guy. This is a 10 inch.

So again, CS, and then I'm going to come down. I'm going to angle, I'm going to come over and here we go. Perfect.

We actually kind of might need to, to get this last one, I'm actually going to run it closer to this here, come down. And then we might just decide to let's see here, draw a dot. We can't really, we don't really want to go through the wall at a 45.

As nice as that sounds, walls don't particularly like that unless there is no, no chipboard up there or drywall. So this is all being served by the same VAV. Now I can just go ahead.

I'm going to take my eight inch connections, create similar, come off of here, poke into that room. There we go. This one, I could do it as a 45 off of here, or actually I'm just going to service it off of that trunk there.

And we can look at where this location is. Maybe it's better to rather than have two penetrations here. Maybe we slide this over and service it from the other side.

But in this instance, we're just going to go ahead and go with this. So I'm just going to come into these rooms. There we go.

I have this guy here. This one, I'm actually gonna do it a 45 and I need to be a little, I just needed to get a little bit longer. There you go.

So the first time I was, I was drawing it too short to where no auto route solution was found because this piece isn't long enough to place all the fittings in. But if I do the same exact thing and I draw it a little longer, that's okay. It's going to go ahead and allow me to do that.

And then I'm going to go ahead and make my connection up here. Now I'm just going to draw my flex duct in, select, right click, draw flex. And then I'm just going to go through and draw my flex.

So it can be very quick and very effective in setting things up as long as you're doing it in a way that facilitates it. And there we go. We've laid out that entire space.

So one thing I want to talk about right now is you notice that if we compare the two systems, we have this long run, but as, as there's more going to air terminals, as we service air terminals, it starts to step down in size. And this is actually very easily accomplished within Revit. It's pretty simple, pretty straightforward.

So what I'm going to go ahead and do is I'm going to start on this one. So you can see here, we started with an 18 inch. So here we have a 14 inch.

So what I'm actually going to end up doing is I'm going to upsize this so I can change these to an 18 inch. Now Revit might freak out. So what ends up happening is I'm actually going to delete these fittings because Revit is putting a fitting on every single one of those.

Just because I change the duct size, it doesn't change this, the fitting size. Now I could also select the fittings and I could change them all to be 18 inch. And there we go.

Or you could delete the fittings and then reconnect the system together. I'm also going to go ahead and make, now to size this up differently. Now this is one continuous run.

Well, I actually want to make this one a different size. So I'm going to split it here and then I can change this to my 18 inch. And there we go.

Now I've got an 18 inch there. It transitions down to the four. Once I get past here, I'm only servicing one air terminal.

So I don't really need a 14 inch at this point. I can probably do the same split or SL. I'm using the split command here.

Take this. I'm going to change this to an eight inch. Just make it a little smaller.

And there we go. So let's take a look at what we have going on with the big duct up here. So this goes from our 48 × 18.

It transitions down to a 30 × 18. And then it finally transitions down to a 20 × 12. So I'm going to kind of match that.

I'm going to use the split command to create where I want the brakes. So I can see after it's after the first four, one, two, three, four, along that straight run. So I'm going to go split one, two, three, four there.

Then I'm going to work my way down the next four split. There we go. And then I'm going to go ahead and actually change the sizes.

So this size here was a 30 × 18. So let's take this, make it a 30 × 18. And you can see Revit's automatically doing all the fittings and everything for me.

And I believe this one was like a 12, a 20 × 12. So here 20 × 12, boom. And there we go.

I did notice that we didn't have this room. So let's just populate this room real quick. So again, using my create similar, I'm going to select one of my supply diffusers, create similar.

Let's go ahead and kind of match this layout a little bit. There we go. Go in, make sure these guys are aligned real fast.

Sometimes they don't always align perfectly. So even if I think I placed them correctly, I like to always just go back and align them. I'm going to go ahead and extend this guy out by just grabbing that grip.

I can go ahead and grab, select it, grab that grip and just drag it out. I could also select it, right click, draw duct, come down. If I wanted to like that and then come down here, I'm going to go ahead and create similar for my VAV.

So CS for my VAV, I'm going to make sure that my in and out is going correctly. There it is. And one thing I noticed is I really don't need this to be this big, long duct run.

I could match what's happening here. So this 10 inch duct, I'm going to actually split this. And now I'm changing from a rectangular duct to a round duct.

So to do that, I could just go up here and change it to my tab short radius if I wanted to. And it will make that connection and do the fitting. This is now a rectangular to round connection.

So I can go ahead and do that. Sometimes it's easier to if you just delete the additional fittings. This needs to also be a 10 inch.

There we go. Now I'm going to go ahead and draw a duct. Now this guy is not quite aligned and it doesn't necessarily want to snap.

So let's see if we can use the align tool. I can pick on the point of the connector and then align it that way. So let me do that one more time.

If I go to align, I'm going to pick on the point of the connector and then the center line of the duct, and then it's going to bring those in. I can go ahead and connect this guy to here. I'm going to take this size here, which is a 10 inch, create similar.

I'm going to come off, come down, we'll go about there. I'm actually going to slide this guy out just a little bit more. Once you get the ducts in there, it's actually really nice and easy to adjust them.

I mean, I can slide this all the way over here if I wanted to. I could do that and do the system a little differently because I'm getting close to the exterior of the building here. But we want to go ahead and we'll just leave it there.

Then I have my eight inch taps. Yes. So I did my create similar again.

I'm just getting close within there. Boom. There and there.

This one, I'm actually going to bring it back just a little bit. Draw flex duct. I can even tell that for whatever reason, this guy, maybe I didn't align it earlier, but let's align it.

Draw flex duct. We're going to continue drawing our flex duct. And there we go.

Great. So it seems like we finished this first floor here. We're going to talk about how can we copy things, move things around so that we don't have to redo all that work we just did on the second floor and the upcoming videos.

In this video, we discussed how to size these guys down and start to taper a little bit. And we also finished out our spaces. Oh, you know what? I forgot one thing.

We need to go ahead and put some return diffusers in here. So let's go ahead and grab these, create similar. And I'm going to go ahead and place some return diffusers, place one here, place one here.

And the mechanical equipment can be over it because it's higher up in the ceiling. My return diffusers are at nine feet. And I think I misclicked on my align.

Sometimes that happens. If you do that, don't worry. It's okay.

I'm just going to undo. It's going to move my link back. And there we go.

Really though, we should have, let's double check this link real quick. See if we can select it and let's make sure that it is pinned up here at the top. This is one thing I've been doing a lot lately with link models is make sure you pin it in place and then you won't accidentally move it.

Perfect. I'm going to go ahead and save this file and we'll see you in the next video.