Discover the process of creating and implementing an air handler unit profile within the BIM 321 course, Introduction to Revit MEP. This walkthrough guides you through creating the unit, setting its dimensions, and integrating it into your project.
Key Insights
- The creation of a new air handler unit starts by selecting the appropriate template, in this case, "mechanical equipment". The basic form of the unit is then designed based on the dimensions of the existing air handler unit, which can be obtained from a manufacturer's submittal package or cut sheet.
- The air handler unit is then positioned at the intersection of the reference planes, which will serve as the insertion point when integrating the unit into the project. Duct connectors are created to facilitate the flow of air, with "supply air" and "return air" connectors being placed on opposite sides of the unit.
- Once the air handler unit is completed, it is saved and subsequently loaded into the project. The unit is then placed on the roof plane of the project, with its exact location and height being adjusted as necessary. The final step involves drawing ducts out from the unit, thereby creating the system based off the air handler unit.
Welcome back to the CAD Teacher VDCI video course content for the BIM 321 course, Introduction to Revit MEP. In the previous videos, we went ahead and got all of our information here dialed for our mechanical system. Now what we want to go ahead and do is create an air handler unit profile or an air handler unit family that will eventually go up on the roof that will tie everything together.
So what I'd like to go ahead and do is we want to go up here to the application button and we're going to go to new and then family. Again, we're going to start with a new family and the first thing that we ever do with starting a new family is we have to select the appropriate template. Obviously, we're creating an air handler unit which would be specified under mechanical equipment.
So I'm going to go ahead and pull down here. Please scroll all the way down to the bottom and find our mechanical equipment which is right there. I'm going to go ahead and hit open to open the family template.
So for this template, what we're really going to be doing is we're just going to kind of make a basic form that's about the size of our air handler unit that we're going to be using. This information in the office would come from a submittal package or a cut sheet from a manufacturer. So I'm not too concerned with you guys actually knowing the exact size and dimensions for a train, model this, model that.
I want to talk about the modeling aspect and the other aspect I really want to talk about are these connectors here because these are going to be very important when we move forward and start doing other things. So to start this off, let's go ahead and we're going to make a basic extrusion. So I'm just going to choose extrusion and I want to change my depth to 3 feet.
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I want to go ahead and use my rectangle tool here and I'm just going to go ahead and draw it like so. I'm going to adjust the size. This length will be 64 inches.
This width will be 34 inches. There we go. And I'm going to go ahead and hit finish to say that I'm done.
And we've created the basic shape and size of our air handler unit. What I want to go ahead and do now is I want to move this so it's centered on the intersection of these reference planes because that is going to become my insertion point for when I take it into my project. So I have it selected.
I'm going to go MV for move. I'm going to grab the midpoint here, take it down and intersect it with this reference plane. I'm going to go MV for move again, pick here, intersect it with this reference plane and we have it completed.
I'm going to go ahead and hit escape to deselect. The next thing I want to go ahead and do is we're going to be actually creating our duct connectors. So I want to go ahead, let's go to our default 3D view.
This is typically a little bit easier to do here. And there we are. I want to go ahead, let's go to create tab and that's going to give us our connectors.
I'm going to go ahead and select a duct connector here. I'm going to make sure, please go ahead and make sure it says supply air and then we're going to be placing it on a face and I want to go ahead and place it on this face here. There we are.
I'm going to go ahead now, pop over to this side, choose return air, place here and then I can go ahead and hit ENTER to say that I'm done. Now let's just double check these guys and make sure they're correct. I'm going to hit escape just to clear everything out, select this.
As you can see, the system classification is supplier. Let's change the height to leave the height at one foot and let's change the width to 18 inches. There we go.
I'm going to check my other one, which it says return air, which is perfect. Height will be one foot, width will be 18 inches. We can also put the mechanical flow and everything in here if we needed to.
Right now, I'm not really horribly worried about that. Again, that information would come from the cut sheet that you could pump this in there so you could actually get all of the loads calculated and all that kind of stuff. But I'm not too worried about exactly that right now.
So I'm going to go ahead, once we have this created, let's go ahead and save this. So I'm going to go here, I'm going to go save. Please go ahead and save this as in your BIM 321 folder under 321 families.
Please save this as your AHU and overwrite if it already exists. There we go. We want to go ahead and load this into our family now or into our project.
So I'm going to go up here to load into project and it's been loaded. So I'm going to go ahead and switch my windows to my BIM 321 file. There we go.
What I want to go ahead and do now is we need to go to our roof to actually put it in. But if you notice, I do not have a roof plan here. The reason why is because these were automatically created when we started with the mechanical template but there was no roof plan created.
We just need to go ahead real quickly and create our roof plan. So I'm going to go to view, plan views, floor plan and just select the level roof. Okay.
There we go. I need to go ahead and bring in my AHU. So I'm going to go to my systems tab, my mechanical equipment and as you can see, my AHU is there.
Let's go ahead and change our offset to zero feet, zero inches. Make sure it says that because we don't know exactly what height we need to place it at yet. And I'm going to go ahead.
Here's our little shaft of where our mechanical ducts are coming up and going down. I'm going to go ahead and place it about right here. And there we are.
As you can see, we have our supply here on the right and our return here on the left. I'm going to hit escape to say that I'm done. The one thing I do want to go ahead and check though is I want to make sure that we're going to be going ahead and actually this is sitting at the correct location.
So I'm going to go ahead and bring over my section. I want to go ahead. I'm going to go WT.
And as you can see, I have a lot of windows open. There's a lot of things going on. So I'm going to go ahead and take my floor plan roof from my BIM 321 file and expand it back out, maximize it.
And then I'm going to go ahead and use the close hidden windows. And this is a strategy that you can use to close multiple windows at once rather than having to go click, click, click, click, click. You can maximize one window, close hidden windows, and now I'm going to go ahead and jump back into my section view.
I want to go ahead. I'm going to go WT. Now, one thing you'll notice is that I have three.
The reason why is that close hidden windows, this command up here, will not close out a different project. It will close all the windows and leave one window open of the project, but it will not close out a project. We no longer need to have this AHURFA or the family file open, so we can just go ahead and close it there.
Window tile one more time. And here we are. I'm going to go ahead and adjust my section a little bit so I can see that roof.
And as you can see, my air handler unit right here is a little bit too low. It's actually sitting within the roof, which is not exactly where I want it. So I'm going to go ahead using my directional arrows and tap it up to about 2 feet.
Now, right now, obviously, this is just floating in space. Depending on the contract, it's probably not the mechanical contractor's scope of work to actually draw in a building pad here or a little support structure on the roof for the mechanical unit. That's probably sometimes typically part of the architect's or depending on the contract, it could be part of someone else's.
So you never want to really model things that you're not really responsible for because it's going to take up your time and eat into your budget. So what would happen here is that the mechanical guy will give the architect the locations of his air handler units, and then the architect would have to go through and design and create the little pad here that they would need for the actual supporting that air handler unit. What I want to go ahead and do now is I'm going to go ahead and select this, and let's go ahead and draw some ducts coming out of it.
So I'm going to pick here, draw a duct. I'm going to go out, come down, come over. There we are.
I'm going to hit Escape to end the chain. Select the air handler unit again. Pick here, draw out, down, and over, and there we are.
We've put in our air handler unit. We've started to create the system based off of that. I'm going to go ahead and pause this video here.
In the next video, we're going to go ahead, take these guys down, and actually connect everything together. It's going to be really awesome. See you there.
