This article further elaborates on the VDCI video course content for Revit MEP for plumbing. It explains the process of setting up your BIM 322 file for plumbing, including determining the point of contact, creating the distribution system for hot and cold water, and placing fixtures.
Key Insights
- The article explains the process of starting with the plumbing in your BIM 322 file. This includes determining the point of contact, where items are going to be coming in, and starting to run your sanitaries.
- It further explains the process of creating your distribution system for hot and cold water. This can start with your equipment and water heaters and could then proceed to adding fixtures such as toilets, sinks and lavatories.
- The article provides detailed instructions on drawing your first pipe. This involves selecting the correct system tab, pipe type and setting the correct elevation for the pipe. The article also highlights the importance of adjusting the view range of your plan to ensure visibility of the pipe in your plan.
Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.
Welcome back to the VDCI video course content for Revit MEP for plumbing. In the previous video, we went ahead and took some time to take a look at a sample project, just to kind of get our heads wrapped around plumbing scope of work and how it works. And I still have that open here.
I'm going to go ahead and close it. So since you might have been jumping between different views, those kinds of things, let's go ahead and use the Close Windows here up at the top. This will go ahead and close any inactive windows, and you should have possibly two files open.
So this button will close any windows, but it will not close a file completely. Since we had our project open previously to opening this file, this one stays open. So I'm going to switch over to my plumbing model here, which is my BIM 322.
And I'm going to go ahead and just close out of this. Don't worry about saving anything. You don't need to.
Great. So you should be back in your BIM 322 file with your name, and really, kind of where do you want to start with plumbing? I mean, there's a couple of different locations that we could start. We could determine the point of contact where items are going to be coming in.
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We could determine that and start running our sanitaries. We could have our equipment and our water heaters and start creating our distribution system for the hot and cold water. There's many different locations we could put in the fixtures, right? We need fixtures.
A lot of times in the previous sample model that we looked at, you noticed that they didn't actually have the fixtures there when I turned off the model. That is because they did not copy-monitor or place their own fixtures in the file. They just used the architecturals as a background.
They did have some fixtures with regard to like the washing machine boxes, things like that, but they didn't have like the toilets and the sinks and the lavatories and those kinds of things. In our instance, we're going to start with just kind of a general point of contact. We'll start off with the water system coming into the building and putting in some families.
So what I want to go ahead and do is we're going to place our first pipe. So on my Level One plumbing here, what I'm going to do is we're going to say—and again, traditionally most of the time the Plumbing Engineer would be responsible from the edge of the building to five feet out. If you take this and have an edge around the building, they would have that to five feet out.
And then that would be where they would draw their pipe to. Obviously, they coordinate the elevation of the point of contact, but beyond that five-point or five-foot spot, they would go ahead. That would actually be part of the Civil Engineer's scope of work to take it beyond that five-foot mark.
We do have a mechanical room back here, so I'm actually going to go ahead and use that for our water heaters and everything. And we're going to kind of make it simple. We're going to say that the water and the storm drain or all the services and everything are coming in on this side here.
So to draw our first pipe, I'm going to go to my Systems tab. I am going to go to my Pipe, and we're going to say that the water is obviously coming in underground. So pipe type, we have just the standard.
We'll go ahead and use the standard. And actually, you know what, we'll stick with the standard for right now. And then we'll create kind of a—no, you know what, let's do it right now.
I'm going to go ahead and hit Edit Type. I'm going to go ahead and hit Duplicate. And let's go ahead and name this Copper just like what the other one had.
We're going to create a copper pipe type. Now we've created that pipe type. We could technically just go ahead and start using it.
I'm going to just double-check our routing preferences though. I'm going to come down here to Edit. So our copper K, boom, these are all fine.
We'll use welded. That's fine for right now. And our pipe segment, that's really what I wanted to check.
Let's say that we don't want to have any copper pipe that's going to be, say, under half an inch. Let's go with actually three-quarters.
So make your minimum size three-quarters of an inch. Your max size here, let's go ahead—we're not going to have any copper pipe over, say, six inches.
Right. This helps to keep other team members kind of in line so that people aren't putting pipe sizes that aren't going to be used, but it also just helps shorten the list of pipe sizes available to pull down from. Elbow, all that kind of thing—that's all good.
I'm going to go ahead and hit OK. And I'm going to go ahead and hit Apply and hit OK.
Now, right now, it's wanting to put—so my pipe type has been changed to Copper. Now it's wanting to put this guy up high though.
I'm going to change the middle elevation. I'm going to say I want it to be negative three foot six. So what that is doing is it's going to put it below my level plan.
Because we're saying that the water is coming into this room, it's coming into the building at minus three foot six. That is like, say, what civil gave us as that size.
So I also want to check the system type. I'm going to come here. I don't want it to be Hydronic Supply.
I want it to be Domestic Cold Water. So you want to check your elevation. You want to check your system.
And let's say that this pipe here, this is—let's say for this building, this is going to be a four-inch service coming in because it's a school, needs a lot of water. What I'm going to go ahead and do is I'm going to click here. I'm going to drag down, click again.
And you're like, wait, why is nothing being seen? Remember we're drawing underground right now. We have to adjust our view range to be able to see that location. So I'm going to hit Escape, and I've drawn that piece of pipe and it is there.
If I go to my 3D view, it should be seen. There it is. As you can see, I can see my pipe there, but it's not visible in my plan.
I need to adjust the view range of my plan so that I can see that pipe. I'm going to go to my View Range, Edit. I'm going to change my view depth to say—I can go Associated Level.
And let's say I wanted to go minus four feet. Let's go minus six feet just in case. I hit Apply, and you see my pipe comes up.
Now what's the difference here between the primary range and the view depth? Well, if I hit Apply and I hit OK, notice how I can still select on this, but if I drag a window over it, notice how it does not select. And that's because it is not in my primary range. If I wanted to be able to drag a window to select that, I'd need to set the bottom of my primary range.
So let's say like negative four feet. I'm encompassing that negative three foot six. I hit Apply and OK.
And now I can select it as that, but I could always just click on it if I want to.
