Placing VAV Units in Revit MEP: Connecting Ducts and Terminals

Welcome back to the CAD Teacher VDCI video course content for the BIM 321 course, Introduction to Revit MEP. In the previous video, we went ahead and actually brought in some ducts, and now what we need to go ahead and do is place our VAVs so that we can actually connect all this into the system. The VAV are the items that control the thermostats and the air flow into specific spaces.

We're going to need a VAV for each individual space. We'll need one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight VAVs for this first floor system. So I want to go ahead and I'm going to go to Mechanical Equipment.

That is where our VAVs will be stored, is in our Mechanical Equipment. So there, I'm going to go ahead and pull this down, and as you can see, we have our VAV unit here. So this isn't exactly the VAV unit I want to use, so let's go ahead and let's go to Load Family.

I'm going to scroll down, and I'm going to find my Mechanical, my MEP. I'm going to use Airside Components. Let's go to our Fans and Blowers, which is not located there.

Where I do want to go ahead and go is to my Terminal Units, and that's going to give me, if you scroll all the way down to the bottom, you can see all my VAV units. For my VAV unit, I just want to go ahead and use the VAV unit single duct. So please select VAV unit single duct.

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I'm going to hit Open, and that's going to load into the project there. Now, as you can see, I have my VAV unit here, single duct. I'm going to go ahead, let's go ahead and change that to a 12-inch, and there we are.

Now, one thing about these is that these are not, we have to also change the offset here. So let's go ahead and change the offset to 10 feet, right? That is the same as our duct here. I'm going to go ahead and place my unit about right here.

I'm not going to connect it directly to it. I'm just going to line it up with the center point, the center line of that. Okay, I'm going to hit Escape, and so we can take a look at this.

Now, as you can see, we have kind of this interesting thing going on here, where we don't, it's not in the right rotation. I'm going to hit Spacebar, and that's going to rotate it around, so my in is pointing to the correct location, my out is going to the correct location. Now, let's go ahead and draw a section to take a look at this.

So I'm going to go up here to my section tool, and come across. There we are. If you didn't draw from left to right to face this direction, but you drew right to left, just use the little blue arrows here to flip it.

And this is one of the biggest things that we're going to be doing in Revit MEP, is we're going to be working in multiple views at once, and it's one of these things that you kind of have to get used to, but it's a very good tool to have. So I'm going to go here to my section view, and double click. I'm going to go ahead and hit WT, and what WT will do, will window tile all of my different windows.

So where I have my reflected ceiling plan, second floor, I'm just going to go ahead and close that, and hit WT again. Now, one thing that you'll notice is that the duct is not showing up in the section view as it's showing up here, and that's because of our detail level. As you can see, my detail level here is medium, my detail level here is coarse.

So, go ahead and change your detail level to medium, and there we are. Now, one thing you're going to notice that might be kind of odd, is that the duct is not in the same location as the VAV, or the VAV is not in the same location as the duct. That is because the duct was being drawn from the center line here, right? We drew it from the center line.

That was where the 10 foot elevation was. Here, the 10 foot elevation comes from the bottom of the unit. So the easiest way to really get around this is, is I'm going to come in here, and I'm going to pick on this, and it's going to create a duct, and I'm just going to drag over and place it, exactly like that.

Then what I'm going to go ahead and do is I'm going to use my align tool. I'm going to go AL, and right now I'm not getting my center line. The reason for that is, is that because I'm in a hidden line visual style.

I want to be able to align this center line to this center line. I could also use the bottom if I wanted to, but typically if I was dealing with two different sized ducts, I would want to go ahead and use center line to center line. So I'm going to go ahead and change my visual style to wireframe, and there are my center lines.

Now I'm going to pick here, pick here, and it's going to align those two together. I'm going to hit escape to say that I'm done. So what I can do now is now that these are aligned in the correct location, I'm just going to go ahead and go TR for trim, pick here, pick here, and it's not defining an autoroute solution because of the difference in the type of ducts.

Let's take a look at something real quick. If I select this duct here, you'll notice that it's a round duct with Ts, but when we drew this, we used a rectangular duct with mitered elbows and taps. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go MA for match attributes.

I'm going to pick this, and I'm going to pick this, and it's going to take it and transition it into the correct kind of duct. Now I'm going to go trim, pick here, pick here, and those now come together. The one thing that we want to go ahead and find out though is what is the correct height for our VAV units now? Now that we've moved this one to the correct location, it's not really conducive to our workflow to just consistently sit here and go, okay, let me go align, let me go align, let me go align.

So what we're going to do is we're going to take a look at this guy here by selecting it. I can see that my offset should be 9 foot 4 and 5 eighths for the correct height of the duct. So I'm going to come up to here.

I'm going to go to my mechanical equipment. Let's use that 12 inch VAV again. I'm going to go ahead, and it was, what was the number again? It was 9 foot 4 and 5 eighths of an inch.

So mechanical equipment, VAV. I need to be able to place it in my floor plan view. 9 feet 4 and 5 eighths of an inch.

Lock that in. There we go. I'm going to go ahead and line it up here.

Right now I can tell that my inlet is on the wrong side. So I'm going to hit my space bar to rotate it and place it about here. And there we go.

I'm going to go ahead and draw a little piece of duct off the edge here. And I know I need to go ahead and actually match attributes to that. So I'm going to go MA, pick here, pick here, and there we go.

Let's go ahead and pull our section up to make sure we're doing the correct thing. Again, the reason why I like working with these two views open next to each other is because as I move this section around, the view automatically updates. Everything looks good.

I'm going to go ahead, TR, pick here, pick here, and it's going to trim those two together. I want to go ahead and place my VAVs for my other ducts here. So I'm going to go back to my Systems tab, Mechanical Equipment.

I'm going to change this from this VAV here. I'm going to change it to an 8 inch because it's slightly smaller. It does not need such a large VAV unit.

Come over here. And I'm going to go ahead. I need to change the offset.

So I'm going to go ahead. Let's go 9 foot 4 and 5 eighths of an inch. It looks like the inlet's on the right side and everything's good to go.

So I'm going to pick here. Now, one thing I do want to do is we've kind of changed the size. This duct is smaller and also this VAV is different.

So I want to go ahead and bring my section down just to make sure that everything is correct, which obviously right now it's not quite there. So what I want to go ahead and do is I'm just going to use my Align tool again, AL, pick here, and I need to draw my duct out first. This is one of these things that you'll kind of notice as you start to work with Revit MEP is that you kind of have to do a few things sometimes before certain things will work for you.

So I'm going to go ahead and select this, draw my duct out. There we go. I'm going to go ahead, AL, Align here to here, and I'm going to go ahead and do my Match Attributes so that those are the same size.

I'm going to go ahead and do my Trim, pick here, pick here, and there we are. Now let's see what the offset for this guy is. So as you can see, it was supposed to be two inches higher.

So there's a couple of different things I'm going to do. I'm just going to go ahead and take this guy. I'm going to do a CO for copy.

I'm going to copy based on the center line and take it up to here, CO. Again, this just kind of has to stop me from having to put in all this information here. I'm just going to go Multiple and just work my way up.

And I know they're not in the exact correct location right now. We can go ahead and fix that shortly. I'm going to go ahead now, select this.

I'm going to bring out a duct here, select here, click on this here, bring it out to there. I'm just bringing it out just slightly so I have something to align with. Right to there and here to here.

But again, I'm having the same kind of issue. I want to use the center lines because now I'm starting to deal with two different sizes of ducts and I need to use the center lines to align to. So let's also here go ahead and change our Visual Style to a Wireframe.

And even though we've changed our Wireframe here to or our Visual Style to Wireframe, our center lines still don't show up. So there's another location we need to check. Let's go ahead and hop into VV real quick.

So I'm going to go VV and under here, please scroll down and find Ducts. I'm going to go ahead and pop this little guy out here. And as you can see, our center line option is not checked.

So please go ahead in your VV, please check Center Line, hit Apply and then hit OK. So as you can see, we can see our center lines now, which makes it really easy for us to align these things together. So I'm just going to come here.

I'm going to go AL, pick here and pick here, pick here and pick here, pick here and pick here, pick here and pick here. Again, even though, yes, they look very, very close, I'm still going to align them. Just to make sure, because Revit MEP is kind of funny that way where it doesn't like to do certain things.

Then I'm just going to go ahead and hit Escape. I need to go ahead and I'm going to Match Attributes to make this duct and this duct the same size. So I'm going to MA, pick here to there, pick here and there.

And see how my paintbrush is still black? I could just go down the rest of it and pick the rest of them. There we go. And then I'm just going to go ahead and go TR for Trim, pick here and pick on the piece of duct, pick here and pick on the piece of duct, pick here and pick on the piece of duct, pick here and pick on the piece of duct, pick here and pick on the piece of duct.

Escape, Sam, done. I'm going to go ahead and Zoom Extents. Zoom Extents, Control-S, save the file.

And when we come back, we're going to go ahead and connect everything together for this supply on the first floor. I will see you then.