Introduction to Placing Water System in Revit MEP: BIM 321 Course Video Tutorial

Welcome back to the CADteacher 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 plumbing fixtures copy monitored over and we placed our water heater. In this next video I want to go ahead and start placing in the water system.

So the first thing that we are going to go ahead and do is, is we are actually going to go ahead and bring in a water main. Now typically when we are modeling buildings we are only responsible for 5 feet outside of the actual building itself. We are going to be kind of starting a pipe off and then going ahead and bringing it in at a different location, or bringing it into the building and then stubbing it up and going from there.

So I want to go ahead and let's go up here to our pipe. And we are going to be using just the pipe type standard, but let's go ahead and take a quick look at this. I am going to go ahead and hit edit type and look at the routing preferences.

So as you can see we are using a copper pipe. They have many different types. They have copper, iron, ductile.

They have polyvinyl chloride, which is PVC, stainless steel, steel and carbon, and a lot of different things already here. We are just going to go ahead and leave this with copper. Then we have an elbow, preferred junction type T, and all these other different type of connections here that we can specify if we needed to.

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We could either choose an elbow generic standard, welded generic standard, so on and so forth. These are all automatic routing options. I am going to go ahead and hit okay, and then apply and okay.

Go ahead, please change your offset to negative three feet. We will go ahead and use a six inch pipe. That is going to be the main coming into this building, and then it is going to get smaller as we go.

So again we are using the six inch pipe. The offset will be negative three feet. And what we also want to go ahead and do is make sure our system type is set to domestic cold water.

That is the first thing that is going to be coming into this building. The domestic hot water has to obviously pass through the water heater before we can do that. So I am going to go ahead and start about out here.

I am going to click. I am going to drag and place it about there. Now you are going to see this warning.

None of the created elements are visible in floor plan one plumbing view. The reason why is because our view range is technically not see underground. So I am going to go ahead and hit escape to say I am done and close that warning down here.

And what I need to go ahead and do is adjust my view range. So let's go ahead. I am going to go to my view range edit in my properties palette for the view and let's go ahead and change the view depth to negative four feet.

Hit apply and hit okay. So as you can see our pipe is showing up now but it is only shown as a single line. The reason why that is because at a detailed level of medium which is what our view is at right now, the pipe is not shown at its full width.

Obviously we know that this is a six inch pipe. So it is not really going to help us a whole lot to have it shown as a single line. So what I am going to go ahead and do is I am going to go ahead and down my detail level and change it to a fine detail level.

And as you can see that is going to go ahead and give me everything that I need there. Great. So I want to go ahead and find one of my sections.

I can't seem to find one right here right now. So let's go ahead. Let's go back to our ceiling mechanical plan.

And the reason why we can't find them is because the view does not extend down to this cut plane. So ceiling mechanical. And we are just going to grab one of the working ones we already have.

I am going to go ahead and bring it all up over here and then double click to go into it. And I am going to go ahead and bring this view down so that I can see the entire side of the building. Great.

If I now go back to my first floor plumbing plan, it still has not yet to show up. It still has yet to show up because of the fact that I guess I have changed this in Revit. But because it is part of the mechanical discipline, it is not going to be shown in this specific area here.

That's fine. Let's just go ahead and draw a new one. So I am going to go up here to section.

Draw my section. And there we go. Let's go ahead and close all of our hidden windows.

And again, that's something that I guess they just recently changed. Typically, you could see the different sections between all the different views. But that is awesome that they have done that and that now kind of keeps, when you are working with multiple projects or multiple trades like this, it keeps everything nice and organized.

I am going to go ahead, close my hidden views and I am going to go ahead and double click here to get into my section. I want to go ahead now. Let's go ahead and change my detail level to fine.

So I can see the full width of that pipe. There we are. Beautiful.

I want to go ahead now. Let's go ahead and bring this pipe up. So I am going to select it.

I am going to do a right click, draw pipe. And it tends to be easier to draw heights and elevation changes of pipes in section view as compared to plan view because now I just have to change the offset and you actually have to know the height you are going to. I am going to go ahead and bring this up to about here.

And there we are. I am going to go ahead and do a WT for my window tile and let's go ahead and see where that pipe ended up. So it ended up not exactly in the location I exactly wanted.

I am going to go ahead and tap it over and tap it down. I want it kind of right in this corner. And there we are.

Beautiful. Now I am going to go ahead, take this guy out. So draw pipe.

And it is going to draw parallel with my level here. So I am actually going to go ahead and take it a little bit higher because I want to go closer above the ceiling. And then I am going to bring it out and over for right now.

So obviously this pipe up here we can't see it because it is above our view range. It just looks like it is going straight up. So let's go ahead and take a look at our water heater because we want to tie our water heater into this guy.

We have our out and we have our in. We have a one inch in which is going to come from right here. So what we are going to end up doing is we are going to end up connecting that into our water main here.

We have a half inch out waste that we will actually have to eventually, it is an off flow and then we have an exhaust duct here. So I am going to go ahead, I am going to click into this area here. And sometimes you got to kind of find the correct connector.

As you can see they are kind of stacking up. It is kind of one of the issues that I have. But here we go.

I am going to go ahead and actually we need to go ahead and take it up just a little bit. So I am going to go create pipe. So again all I did was I selected in my section view, selected this guy here, create pipe.

I have to go up a little bit and I am going to come over. I am going to exaggerate it a little bit just like that. And then we go back to my plan view.

I am going to go ahead, take this pipe, bring it back a little bit and I am going to draw it down. So draw pipe and there we go. This hasn't quite connected quite yet.

The one thing I am going to do in my plan view here is turn on my wire frame mode. So I am going to go ahead, turn on wire frame. And as you can see I still can't see the center lines of these pipes.

I want to be able to see the center lines of them. It is going to make my life a lot easier. So I am going to go ahead and go into my VV.

I am going to scroll down, find my pipes and find center line. And then hit apply and okay. And there we are.

Awesome. Now I can align using the center point of the pipe there. Then I can go ahead, I can drag that back a little bit, drag it in and there it is.

It is connected very nicely. Since we don't necessarily need such a large pipe going up and above, I am actually going to go ahead and change this to a four inch pipe. We are going to make that one a little bit smaller because it is tapping off here.

We don't necessarily need as much water flow there. And we have gone ahead and finished that all up. The one thing that we do need to be wary of though is when we change a pipe size, it doesn't change all the pipe sizes down the line.

So I am going to go ahead and just delete this information here, select, do a right click, draw pipe, drag over and there we are. Again these are hot and cold water pipes so they are not necessarily needed to be sloped right now. The ones that will need to be sloped will be our waste pipes when we get there.

The last thing I want to go ahead and do in this video is go ahead and start our hot water pipe. So I am going to come from here on my plan view. I am going to draw my hot water one inch out.

Come here and you will notice that this error happens. No auto root solution was found. The reason why this happens is because of the fact that I actually have to bring my, in my section view I have to bring that pipe up first before I can just tap out.

So I am going to hit cancel. We actually have to start from our section view first. So I am going to go here.

I am going to do my one inch out. I am going to come up and come over. As you can see since it was already deemed as a hot water connector that was already fine.

So I want to go ahead and bring this over so that it runs up with my cold water. So I am going to kind of rotate it around. I am going to draw pipe, bring it over, bring it along the wall, there we are and I am going to go ahead, there is that, I am going to kind of tighten this up just a little bit and then here I am going to zoom in, select the correct pipe.

You may have to use tab, you may have to tab quite a bit. Sometimes these pipes can be a little bit hairy to pick, sometimes you have to use a window also. There we go.

I am going to do a right click, draw pipe. I am going to go ahead and take it straight up and there we are. I want to go ahead and increase the size of the entire hot water pipe as it is.

I don't think a one inch will be enough for right now. So what I am going to do is I am just going to tab to select the entire system, select it. I am going to come here, change it to a two inch and there we are.

I have now changed that pipe all the way around to a two inch pipe. I am going to go ahead and zoom extents, control s, save the file and I am going to go ahead and stop this video here. When we come back, we are going to go ahead and start running our hot and cold water piping to the necessary locations.

See you soon.