Explore the process of setting up water fixtures using the Revit MEP software for mechanical engineers. Learn how to create and set up water lines, pipe sizes, system types and elevations, and how to copy and position them accurately for individual fixtures.
Key Insights
- The article demonstrates how to use Revit MEP to create and position water lines for individual fixtures. This includes setting up pipe sizes, system types, and elevations.
- It emphasizes the importance of precision in positioning and sizing within the software, detailing how to use various tools to ensure the correct placement and orientation of the water lines.
- The author recommends using the copy and rotate functions to duplicate and reposition the pipe setups, saving time and maintaining consistency across multiple fixtures.
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Welcome back to the VDCI video course content for Revit MEP for Mechanical. In the previous video, we went ahead and got our system squared away here with our hot and cold water. Now we want to go ahead and start putting in our drops to our individual fixtures.
We can see that we will talk about fixtures here in a little bit once we do these drops, but we can go ahead and start putting these guys in. We know where the water lines are going to go, so we can go ahead and put those in. So I'm going to go ahead and hop to my first floor plumbing plan, and we're just going to go ahead and kind of start off here.
We could go through and draw each one of these individually. What I kind of like to do is actually just make what my drop is going to be. So the size of the pipes and everything, and then I'll just take that and I will copy it around to the different locations, copy, rotate, whatever I need to do to establish my different drops.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to start off in this classroom 1507, and I'm going to go up to my systems tab. I'm going to go to pipe, and let's make sure to double check our settings. So our diameter, what we don't want to be a six inch, we want all these to be one inch pipes.
So I'm going to do a one inch. I'm also going to check my system type here in my properties. So make sure it's your domestic cold water.
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My elevation, I'm going to go ahead and make my elevation, let's say 10 feet for right now, and we'll double check this here in a second. So 10 feet. And then what I'm going to go ahead and do is I'm not going to actually click on this pipe.
I'm actually going to click off the pipe. We'll make the connections later. But what I want to go ahead and do is I want to go ahead and actually just draw in.
If I click here, I'm going to drag over and I'm going to kind of click in the center line of this wall, pick. Now I need to go vertically, right? So I want to drop down. I know I'm starting at 10 foot six.
Let's say that this sink, we want to go down to about three feet. So what I want to go ahead and do is I'm going to change my middle elevation to be three feet. What that does is, and then I can drag out and pick again.
What that does is by changing my elevation in the middle of my command is it creates a vertical portion. That's going down into the view from me through down through the wall. And then I create that short portion there.
So, and then here, so let's take a look at this in 3D. I'm going to tab, select it and take a look here. So you can see what ended up happening was that I ended up, I, here's my 10 foot portion.
Here is where I clicked and stopped it. And then I started my next three foot portion and it gave me my vertical there. I can go ahead and select and delete the fittings here at the bottom.
You could also do those from your plumbing plan if you wanted to. And there we go. So let me do that one more time.
So I'm going to go to pipe. My diameter will be one inch. My system type will be domestic cold water.
I'm gonna put it at 10 feet, pick here, drag over, pick around the middle of the wall, pick. I'm going to change this to three feet. And there we go.
Drag out, pick again. And it puts that vertical portion in, and then I can just delete the other extra pieces here that I don't need. Great.
Let's do the hot water line. I'm just going to do the same exact thing. So I'm going to go to pipe.
Still a one inch pipe there. I'm going to change my middle elevation back to 10 feet. I'm going to go ahead and change my system type here to be domestic hot water.
I'm just going to go ahead and just, I'm just trying to make these here, pick there, pick there. I'm going to change this to three feet, drag out, pick, escape, escape. And then I can delete the extra portions.
And there we go. So the really nice thing about this is now, is now that I have this created, I can go ahead and take these two and copy them around. So what I could do is I could just drag a window over it like that.
I'm going to go ahead here to copy. And I'm going to go ahead and take it around. Now, before we want to copy though, one of the things that you want to do is want to make sure that this is all correct.
And I think when we looked at it in 3D view, we had a few issues. So I'm going to take my working section, which I have here. Again, you might need to zoom out to find your working section.
It may be over here, maybe down here, who knows? I'm not sure where you moved it to, but I'm gonna take my working section and let's take a peek and see how this looks. And there we go. Well, we kind of have some issues here, right? So I can tell that my pipe here, these are too low.
These are below the ceiling. This one's just barely above the ceiling. We might want to move that one up a little bit.
So let's take these two. I can go ahead and select them here in my section. And I select both.
Let's go to, if I take this to 10 foot six, let's see, what is that? It's going to give me some error potentially. That's okay. It's probably something with a connection somewhere.
I'm just going to go ahead and delete elements. And then we'll go ahead and move it. And then we'll double check the entire system.
So 10 foot six kind of got us okay. I'm going to go to 11 foot just to get above the ceiling structure. Same thing here.
I think I'm going to take this one up to actually 10 feet. There we go. And there we are.
Perfect. So that we're now both in there. Now I want to get these two and I want to get these guys a little bit higher.
So I could, you could drag them up like this. The problem with dragging like that is it's not very accurate, but I could drag it and then I can come back into here. And let's say I want to make these 10 feet.
Oh, 10 feet too low. 10 foot six. Let's see.
Does that get up? Maybe we'll go 11 foot. Well, actually we need to want to be higher because we need to cross over these. We will go 11 foot six on these drops.
There we go. Perfect. Now these are a little bit higher so that when we connect it, it'll just tie directly into it.
There we go. I'm going to go here to back to my plumbing floor plan. And the problem is you may notice that when I move it to 11 feet here, I can't see these anymore.
Well, the reason why that is, is because it's out of our view range. Now I could adjust the view range so that I could actually see it, but I don't want to keep adjusting my view range. So let's go ahead and let's start working on our ceiling plumbing plan.
So I want to go my level one ceiling plumbing plan. And there we are. So from here, I'm going to go ahead.
I could just do that. I could drag a window across those. I could tab, select, hold control, tab, select, hold control.
I'm going to go ahead and hit copy. I'm going to use the center line of the wall. I kind of like that as my base point, just because I can always snap to that same center line.
And again, the location of these doesn't have to be exactly perfect. And I can keep working my way around. Center line of the wall, center line of the wall, center line of the wall.
There we go. And then I'm actually going to come down here also and do the same thing and paste them here. There, here, here, keep working my way around.
Now that I've completed those on both sides, I'm going to create one and just paste it off to the side here. And then I'm going to take this and I'm going to rotate it so that I can create these. So I'm going to select those again.
I'm going to go to rotate, pick anywhere, and I'm going to type in 180. Now I'm going to move this into the right position. If I just grab it, I can't drag it every direction I want.
So I need to use the move command. So I'm going to move. I'm going to select the center line or the endpoint here.
And again, take it to the middle of the wall. With those still selected, I can go copy now. And I'm going to copy this around.
Keep going all the way around. Let's come up to here. Put it there, put it there.
I'm just working my way around. Now it's really easy to go ahead and make these connections now. And we'll take care of the bathrooms and everything here in a second.
