Creating HVAC Systems for Level One in Revit MEP: Rooftop Unit Placement and Ductwork Installation

Welcome back to the PDCI video course content for the Revit MEP course. In the previous video, we went ahead and finished up our level two ceiling plan here with getting these systems in here. Looking at the 3D, we now have a complete system here on the south side of the building.

Now what we're going to go ahead and work on is there's a little area back here on level one. If I go into my ceiling plan mechanical level one, this space back here, how this area is going to be served is going to be served by a rooftop unit over what is the gym here. And then we're going to bring both a supply and return duct down into the space and then go ahead, put the diffusers and all that kind of stuff in.

So let's go ahead. We can start, you can choose where you want to start. We could start with the air terminals.

I'm going to go ahead and start with the rooftop unit and get started there. So what I'm going to go ahead and do is I'm going to go to my roof floor plan, go over here to roof, and we want to go ahead and place this guy up here in this little parapet area here. So it's a piece of mechanical equipment.

So I'm going to go to my systems tab. I'm going to go to my mechanical equipment. The family I'm going to go ahead and use is actually going to be a rooftop unit, this rooftop AC unit electric, and then I'm going to be using the 15 tons.

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So I'm going to go and use this guy here. I'm going to drag it in. I'm going to place it.

Now let's take a look at that in 3D real quick. So I'm going to look at it in 3D. And if it's not in exactly the right location, currently, that's fine.

We can adjust the height and everything of it later, but we'll work it out. So you can see, I have two connectors on the bottom. I have a supply and I have a return.

It has some electrical connectors and it even has a condensate connector for my condensate line. What I'm going to go and do is to first start with this piece of mechanical equipment. I actually want to go ahead and bring my working section over and I'm going to bring it over so that then I can start to see my connectors in section drawing straight down in plan.

Obviously it doesn't work very well because we're looking in that direction. So I'm going to go ahead and bring up this section here. You can see I have this here and we may also look at where it is placed relative to the building, but it looks like we're in a pretty decent spot.

We might need to go a little bit up. You can see I have my roof structure here. We're actually going to offset this up a little bit.

Let's go ahead and offset it up about two feet to get it up above that. Maybe one foot. Let's go one foot.

There we go. There will be a curb there. So maybe, you know, I want to make another change.

We'll do one foot six. And there we go. So from here, now I'm going to create my connections coming down.

So I'm going to click drag down, pick that puts it into my, that's my supply here. I'm going to click drag down pick. And then what I want to go and do is I want to convert these to a 24 inch by 24 inch duct.

Now I don't necessarily want to do that without splitting it first. If I just change this to a 24 × 24, you can see it's a fairly large duct, but if I go 24 × 24, I get this really long transition. So what I'm going to end up doing is I'm actually going to split this first.

I go split here. And once I penetrate through the roof, now I'm going to start to change this up. So let's see here.

Let's take this to a 24 × 24. Let's see what happens. So rabbit's kind of freaking out right now.

It's like, wait, I don't like this. So what I'm going to end up doing is once I split that, I'm actually going to drag this down a little farther. And again, this is just because the fittings are the way that they are.

And I can actually drag these unions down also. And then I'm going to change it. So let's go here.

Let's go ahead and change this to a 24 × 24. See how does Revit do it? Awesome. This is a 45 degree, maybe switch it to a 60 degree.

We can get a little bit more of a compressed transition there. I'm going to go here, go 24 × 24. There we go.

I'm also going to do the same thing. I'm going to switch this to a 60 degree transition. There we go.

And I'm making sure that my transitions are in that in, within the, once I pass through the roof, right? So let's go ahead and take a look at this in 3D. So you can see I have my different transitions there. Okay.

And there we go. I'm going to go back to my section and I'm going to make sure that my section goes all the way through to my level one overhead. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to bring this guy down and I'm just going to drag it down.

And then what I attempt to do is so I can see it and playing really well. I'm just going to draw a duct over like that. Same thing here.

I'm going to come down a little bit more drawing my duct. I'm going to come over. And again, I'm not really too worried about the placement right now.

I'm going to change it later on, but this is so I can start to see it. Remember this is drawing parallel with my section. So it's not really going the direction I want it to go right now, but now we can see it.

And our level one ceiling plan right where these come down. So I can grab this and I can rotate this just like this. And there we go.

So I brought that down. We may need to adjust it. So it's a little closer to the wall, but we'll worry about that later.

I'm going to go ahead and drag this guy in also drag this guy in a little bit, just so I can get into the space. And let's take a look at it here in section, the other direction, make sure that we're making sure everything's correct. So I rotated my section 90 degrees come in here.

So you can see I'm coming in a little bit too high or a little bit too low, excuse me. So what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to bring these up a little bit, bring this guy up, get into this space between the roof and the ceiling in this room. We might actually need to take that air handling, you know, a little bit up.

We need to go to the parapet gym. Notice we don't have a level for that. So what I can go ahead and do though is I can change the level here.

And that one has not been copy monitored. So I'm just going to go ahead and we're going to copy monitor that real quick because we're going to have equipment that we want for that. So I'm going to go here over to collaborate.

I can go ahead and copy monitor, select link, pick on this guy. I'm going to just hit copy. I'm going to select this level.

It's going to create that level. And what I can do now is I can assign that to parapet gym. See how that shows up there.

But let's make sure we finish this first on copy monitor. So I'm going to go here, parapet gym. It's going to move that guy up.

I might actually need to be like negative two feet now because I want to be below the parapet of the gym. Let's go negative one foot six, actually. Not negative 21 six.

There we go. And so that allows for a curb to be in there, all that kind of stuff. So what I'm going to go and do is I can go ahead and start to draw these out.

I'm going to drag this out. Now I always like to put this at a nice value when you kind of just drag and place these. It's kind of like, you know, it kind of just picks whatever value you leave it at.

And I'm actually going to slide my transitions up here a little bit, get them up higher. I don't need all that. I don't need that big run of duct coming down like that.

So I'm going to find a value that works good. Currently, the reference level is middle roof. I want to make it level one.

So right now I'm at 17 feet. So let's go ahead. Let's actually make that 17 feet from level one here.

I'm going to change this again to level one and make this 17 feet. So they're the same elevation. Great.

I'm actually going to go ahead while I'm here in this section, I'm going to draw this duct and come down just a little bit more. Once I come through the wall as such, and then slide it over. So I'm actually in the wall, draw duct, come over.

Now notice that my return duct, again, this is the wireframe versus hidden line. I do kind of like to be working in wireframe. When I do this, I'm just going to go ahead and bring this here.

Now I'm going to keep this guy up here for right now, because I know I'm going to cross these over at some point. So I want to make sure that I'm thinking ahead a couple of steps so that because if I dropped it, dropped this down to the same level, I'm going to bring it back up. We're going to cross over, then we'll drop.

So let's go to our silly mechanical plant. That's level two, let's go to level one. We're kind of not seeing some things.

We have that on there. We're not seeing it because of our view range. So I'm going to come back to our view range.

And this is kind of why we have these working views. I can hit escape, hit view range. I'm going to go ahead and change my view depth to just kind of up to roof.

And we should be able to see it there. Perfect. We've run these lines into this space.

But I need to go ahead and start actually getting my diffusers placed in here. So what I want to go ahead and do is I'm just going to go ahead and use my CS or my copy my create similar CS for my supplies. I'm going to go ahead and put a supply in each of these little rooms.

And I'm just gonna make this easy. I'm going to turn off for floors. I'm going to that's hidden, I need to go ahead and hide it on roofs again.

It just makes it difficult when I have those patterns visible. Hit apply. Okay, there we go.

So what I'm going to go ahead and do is I'm going to go ahead and put a supply diffuser in here. So I'm going to go grab one of these. I'm going to use that create similar.

I'm going to go ahead and put this guy down here. Let's see here. I'll put the supply here.

And we'll come back in a line later. I might do another one, say up here. Let's say that this room is so large, we want to go ahead and put two in.

And this room will also put two in. Now down here, I'm going to go ahead and put four kind of along it's going to space evenly, you can always count it out too. So I have 1,2, 3,4. On the fifth one, 1,2, 3,4, 5. The fifth one, 5. We'll kind of fill this up.

That one was one too many. There we go. And we want four in between them.

And that worked out pretty good. I'm going to go ahead and go to my align tool and start to align these guys. This might be an instance where I want to recheck multiple, but sometimes it's faster.

I know when I'm clicking, I'm just going to go ahead and work through it. Just keep going. There we go.

Align down. Get these all aligned. There we go.

We'll come up here. We'll align these guys and just work your way around. You know, we've been doing this for a while now.

You should be pretty good with this aligning and getting all these guys squared away. And there we go. Perfect.

Now I'm going to go ahead and place my return diffusers. So I'm going to select one of my return diffusers, CS. I'm going to go ahead, place a return diffuser here.

It's kind of wanting to pick the section. The section's kind of giving me a hard time. So I'm just, again, this is a working section.

I can just move it. It's not that big of a deal. It's never going on a sheet.

It's just my working section. And we might adjust some of these diffuser locations and see how it goes. There we go.

And we'll kind of put this one about. I'm not going to put the same amount down here, so I'm going to align it with this one here. Again, CS will align with that one there.

Down here, we'll align with this one here. There we go. That looks nice.

Let's go ahead. Let's go through and align these guys. Get them in the correct location.

I clicked the wrong line there. Just make sure you're clicking on the right reference that you want to align to. There we go.

And we're good. We've put in our rooftop unit. We've brought our taps down.

In the next video, we'll go ahead and finish out the system. We'll see you there.