Sanitary Pipe Calculations and Venting

I wrote THIS POST years back regarding adding vent pipe to a sanitary system of pipe and fixtures. I'm happy to write that it's simpler now than then.

Just use an endcap family (made to look more like a vent cap) the vent pipe at the top and your fixture count should propagate all the way to the building connection as expected. That of course assumes you don't have open connections somewhere else along the way. The example above shows vent pipe using a separate type and a view Filter based on Type Name.

Use the Show Connections feature to identify them if any exist. I won't be shocked if you find some.

Revit 2017 - Space Naming Utility Update - It is Available Now

The other day I poked Autodesk about this feature. As it turns out it is deployed slightly more automatically. The catch is that the latest iteration of Autodesk Desktop Application (I'm going to call it AdA) must be used to see these updates.

My first problem was that AdA wasn't working. It just displayed a blank white screen. I also noticed that there was no Autodesk (A icon) in the system tray for an active service. Eventually I used the wisdom of The IT Crowd; turned it off and on again. That restarted the service and AdA started working, displaying information.

The second problem was there were no updates to choose from. I logged out of A360 and closed its system tray instance. I also logged out of A360 via Revit, since I had it open. I closed the instance of AdA in the system tray too. I had a browser open looking at my Manage portal. I thought that maybe my access settings were wrong. I logged out and closed the browser too. Then I logged back into A360 and launched AdA...voila, updates appeared. It made no difference earlier that I used the right-click Check for New Updates option for AdA in the system tray repeatedly.

Once I got it working again this appeared in AdA.

This a tiny bit better.

People will still have to pay attention to be alerted to download and install it. If they don't have enough control over their computer they'll still have to get EyeTee involved. I'll have to see if I notice more people have it installed in the coming months.

Once it has been downloaded and installed you don't have to rely on AdA to pass it along to others in the office though. You can just capture the downloaded installation file from the location defined when you downloaded and installed it the first time (C:\Autodesk by default).

It is also a bit tedious that every one of the updates is a separate installation; must be run and completed before starting another. If you attempt to run them while another is running you'll run into messages about something already being in process.

By the way, when you run Revit after installing all the available updates you may be greeted by "Security - Unsigned Add-in" warnings. Nice...

I've got my Space Naming Utility! Do you? I hope so!

...and thanks to Paul Aubin for the heads up!

Space Naming Utility for Revit 2017

Hi Autodesk Revit Team! It's me Mr. OpEd again. Imagine me with a pointy stick, I'm poking you in the eye...metaphorically...with words on a blog.

Since the AutoCAD team just made 2017 available I can infer that we'll be seeing a new release of Revit in the very near future.

Let me just go on record now.

The Space Naming Utility SHOULD be built into Revit 2017 so that it is installed automatically or better yet, it's just on the Annotation ribbon as a native feature, NOT an add-on.

I might as well let ya'll know now, and AGAIN, that it is utterly reeeeee-freeeeeekin-diculousssss if it isn't!!!!!

If the rationale for keeping it separate is that not many people use it perhaps that's because it is a separate application??!! If the ribbon UI is supposed to improve the odds of discovering features it sure would help to be ON the ribbon. Built IN.

Capisce? The berating will continue until the SNU is part of Revit. I know there are much more important things in the world to be upset about. Yet, someone must continue the fight for equal status of the SNU!

If I take a pessimistic stance, you could, at the very least, make sure it is available for download from the Exchange Apps site as soon as we can actually download and use Revit 2017. Yeah. That would be good...

Revit MEP - Detail Callout Bias or Gotcha

Many of Revit mEp families use a nested annotation symbol to provide the standard graphics we are used to seeing in electrical documentation. Here's a little example of a few of these families.

If you created a Callout view and these symbols vanish my bet is that you've used a Detail Callout. Here's what a Detail Callout view of the same families looks like.

It's definitely a quirky thing, but these nested annotations in outlets don't show up in Detail Callout view. Feel free to start trying adjustments to Visibility/Graphics, Detail Level, Discipline and more...I've been down the road already. I'm pretty sure we're looking at a bug, or at least a conundrum brought about by the way these nested annotations work.

This view type is also fussy about creating other elements, like a room/space for example. As such I understand that this view type is intended as the last stop or end of the road with regard to drafting up a detail, for detailing not modeling with. It's just odd that these annotation elements won't appear in the view.

If you want an enlarged plan to show these annotation then avoid the Detail Callout, use the Floor Plan type instead.

Revit MEP - Conduit Run Schedule is Biased

I think it is a Reviteristic (read quirky or bizarre) that a Conduit Run Schedule will only see types that are created based on Conduit without Fittings. I'm pretty sure we'd all like schedules to include runs that use Conduit WITH fittings too. I understand that the fittings make it harder to provide a summary of a run but that's kind of the point isn't it, to do the things that are hard for us?

If we follow the help documentation advice to add a shared parameter to conduit and conduit fittings we can create a schedule that summarizes runs via a Multi-Category schedule. Unfortunately the very desirable and important Length parameter dies to us in that context, no joy there.

Revit MEP - Piping Offset from other Elements

When we sketch a wall we can provide an offset value on the Options Bar and then use the Space Bar to flip the side of the reference points we provide during sketching.

That flows pretty well (pun intended). It's not so fluid when using the Duct and Pipe tools. The Offset feature is hiding in the Justification Settings dialog AND the Space Bar concept doesn't work. We have to provide a negative value or be careful to start sketching in a specific direction to get the opposite offset.

This makes sketching pipe with a specific offset value relative to walls and other elements tedious. I think it is very likely (even much more so) to want to create pipe and duct taking into account adjacent elements like walls and structure AND provide an offset while doing so...it would be a lot more fun if there wasn't this extra little dialog hassle to do so.

Revit 2015 R2 - MEP Circuit Sequence and Recently Used Panel

New Feature - Circuit Sequence

Somewhat related to yesterday's new electrical feature there is also a new Electrical Setting called Circuit Sequence. There are three choices: Numerical, Group by Phase and Odd then Even (a common request, to fill one side of the panel and then the other).

This helps determine how the next circuit that gets created is assigned to slots in a panel. Subtle but an important addition.

New Feature - Most Recently Used Panel

When we create a new circuit Revit now offers a list of panels on the ribbon, on the System Tools panel. It remembers the Most Recently Used Panel so creating a new circuit and assigning to a panel can be as little as two clicks. One click to select the electrical element and another to click on Power. As long as the correct panel is display in the drop down list box you can move on to another task. As you can see my favorite electrical panel is in the list already.

Subtle stuff makes me grin!