Dept. of Subtle - RME and Color Fill Legends

As an engineer using RME where would you expect to find the tool that allows you to create a color fill for Spaces/Zones? If you think the logical place is the Architect ribbon tab then you are correct!! It didnt' seem obvious to me when I was first getting acquainted with RME's shiny new UI. I was thinking Annotate...then maybe View? No...the Architect tab? Why not with the Spaces on Analyze?? Here's an image of its location and name.

An AUGI member suggested that the name could be clearer. The duct/pipe color fill legends are featured on the Analyze tab however. If I had my way all the color fill legend features would be in the same location on the Analyze tab, that's my vote! It's not necessarily the correct vote but there are two buttons there already and they only have to move one, that makes it easier??

Okay I admit that I'd really prefer that they were grouped together under View because they are added to views and other features that affect views are located there. Give me enough time and I could build an argument for the Annotate tab too. I'll stick with Analyze just so I'm not being wishy washy.

MEP Rough-In Families - Follow On Post

I received the following in a comment to an earlier post
.
The image above that I believe prompted these questions.

I'm trying to decipher the picture and I have a few questions

1) How did you connect the piping to the P-Trap?
2) How did you connect the toilet flange to the toilet?
3) how did you connect the Double-Y w/8th Bend to a vertical pipe?
4) Did you end the hot and cold water supply at a valve for each of the components?
5) Are you using Revit to calculate flow requirements or pipe sizes?
6) Is this process easier or faster than placing a new fixture?
7) How do you create a system with this method?
8) How did you make the rough-in connector.
9) How did you connect it to the fixtures?

I am just beginning to learn Revit and am not using it to it's full potential yet. So far, I'm still just drafting in 3D. I'm looking for anything that will help to speed up the learning curve. Sorry this is so long winded. Thanks for the help.

To start with the answer, this concept is derived from the fact that RME cannot connect to a family in a linked file. If an architect places a toilet in their file the RME engineering must place their own toilet to connect piping. This is an alternative to placing a toilet, instead placing the rough-in fittings where the toilet would require them to be. They still must be coordinated but the rough-in fitting, in my mind, is consistent with the work on-site.

Answers:

1) The piping and p-trap is part of the connector family itself.

2) The toilet is not connected to the toilet flange. They occupy the same location. The toilet flange has the data that RME needs to allow for connection and to create a system.

3) The tutorials that come with RME show how to do that.

4) Yes, the pipes stop at the hot and cold water valves at both the sink and toilet.

5) I am not doing pipe sizing, I am a consultant who does training so I don't "need" to. Engineers are telling me that the sizing is a bit too basic at this time to really rely on. This was a mock-up of an idea that I've pitched to several clients who objected to placing toilets and sinks themselves.

6) Not faster necessarily but, in my view, more consistent with on-site process.

7) A system is connected to the rough-in connector family, the data needed is defined in the family. The fixtures are in the separate file so they are inert, "dumb".

8) In the family editor. RME ships with several connector families to use for this approach, simpler than mine but you can extend the idea to your own needs. You can download my examples; Sink Connector and Water Closet.

9) The rough-in family does not "connect" to the fixtures, it sits next to, above, coordinated with them.

I hope these answers help you on your way!!

Steve

Dept. of Unfair - Revit MEP - Interference/Insulation

Justin wrote to me via a comment earlier today in another post so the inspiration for this post goes to him, thanks!

He wrote:

I've run into a little quirk and would like to pose the question. I'm trying to do multiple discipline coordination and ran into this problem. When we have a duct (Revit MEP) and use the insulation parameter to add onto it, "interference check" doesn't recognize a clash with only the insulation. Is this normal? Is there a workaround? As soon as the wall/beam collides with the duct itself, the "interference check" recognizes the clash. Any insight into this is appreciated. Thanks!

I replied. "Yes, that has been my observation as well, sorry!"

This one is insulation "being interfered with":


This one is the insulation and now the duct too:


I recommended that they contact Revit support to file a support request so that they either get another or get one if by chance they haven't already encountered the issue.

Yes, methinks it is "unfair"! Insulation deserves the same credibility that ducts get in Interference Check. Even better Interference Check ought to be "smart" enough to distinguish between a "hard" conflict and a "soft" conflict. My two tarnished pennies!

Space Room Update Tool Available from Avatech

I approached Beau Turner with Avatech prior to Autodesk University 2008 about creating a routine to manage the relationship between spaces and rooms in Revit MEP. It has been a good month for extensions as I very recently posted that Autodesk released one too! While the Autodesk tool is good the Avatech solution does a bit more. Autodesk's is available to subscription members only while Avatech's is free to anyone! You'll have to judge for yourself.

Some features of the Avatech solution:
a) You can change only those spaces you have selected (filter first then run the tool) and choose that option.

b) Handle projects that use phasing.
c) Handle situations where there is more than one space in a room (common for analytical purposes) and provide a configurable setup so you can input your numbering standard (ex. Room 101 with 2 spaces becomes 101.A, 101.B (or whatever scheme you need to use via the config file).

d) Once run it will tell you how many spaces it changed/updated
e) Once run it will inform you whether there were any spaces that could not be updated (typical of UnPlaced Spaces created in schedules similar to Rooms)

f) This does not require a subscription account to access
g) This can be installed via batch script to multiple users

Download it NOW!
Scroll to the bottom of the page. Thanks Avatech, Beau and Matt!

Revit MEP - Space Tool Available via Subscription!

Well I complained about spaces and rooms and every other Revit MEP user I've met has too. In the "they are listening" realm of things they have and have provided a tool specifically aimed at helping RME users deal with the disconnect between space numbers and names and their counterpart rooms. As sports fans sometimes say, hooray!

I do hope that it will be rolled up into the RME product release for 2010 naturally so a separate installation of software won't be required for such a relevant task. I suggested that they provide a separate tool via subscription so it could be done much sooner than waiting for the next release and I'm sure others did too.

I'm really glad they did!

Thanks!!

Visit the subscription site to download your copy!

Stephen Roth, Revit MEP's Product Manager posted the following at the AUGI forums today:

I am happy to announce that a new add-in is available for the 32- and 64-bit versions of Revit MEP 2009. The Space Naming Utility software is an intuitive tool that automatically assigns the names and numbers from architectural rooms to Revit MEP spaces.

By downloading the Space Naming Utility software, you can eliminate the need to manually assign names to the spaces helping save a tremendous amount of time and simplify your workflow.

Specifically, it does the following:

1. Can both name and number the spaces similar to the enclosed architectural rooms.
2. Can automatically name/number all spaces in a model, or by specific level.

RME - Connectors and their "Arrow"

This is referring to the arrow that appears on a duct or pipe connector icon in the family editor. This arrow indicates where the pipe or duct is...it must point toward the connecting pipe or duct. You can flip this easily when you place a connector on a face but not as easily when using the work plane option.
Connectors placed on a "work plane" define their "arrow" orientation based on the "positive" side of the Reference Plane used. The positive side of a Reference Plane is the left side of the "head", where the name appears (when you assign a name parameter to the ref plane). This is true for Reference Planes we add to a family. The stock reference planes that you find in the template behave the opposite way, go figure...positive is to the right side of the "head".

I suppose the connection arrow is just there to tease you in this instance. When the connector is applied to a "face" the "flip" arrow works. Remember the connection arrow represents the duct/pipe...it should point toward the connecting duct/pipe. Actual Flow direction is defined inside the properties dialog of the connector.

Oh...if the arrow is "wrong"...flip the reference plane, drag the end control grip at one end over the other, don't mirror because Revit will want to delete the connector.

Another worthy tip, brought to us by AUGI member Truevis aka Eric, is to use the "Split Face" tool on a face to define a portion of the surface to contain a connector as opposed to adding another solid to do so which you'll find in many of the stock families. May you "connect" well!

Revit MEP - "One Line" Riser Diagrams

There is no purpose built workflow in RME for this task unless you consider detail lines and symbols (that don't exist in the library) as purpose built. I picture a concept where I can use a symbol representation of loaded families in a riser diagram view to define the overall relationship of the design elements.

We can do this now with a Legend View. Hold on, don't get excited...face based based symbols don't work very well in legends because they won't orient to the view correctly and you can't rotate the symbol into the correct orientation. Legend views do not support "rotate view on sheet" either so scratch Legends as a viable approach.

I imagine using "real" symbols of these components at first and then later worrying about placing the "real" element in the model. These real symbols would be complimented with annotation symbols that depict the inner workings of switch gear and fuses for example as well other such detail as needed. Then good old detail lines round out the feature. This way the symbols are not disconnected from the real elements and if they change in either location they will update the model. This makes perfect sense in my head...I'm just not sure it is coming out here...

Now that I've babbled about that here's another thought I've been tossing around for the interim. I can create interior elevation views of electrical equipment rooms. These views can be stripped down to just show the electrical stuff. They can be arranged on a sheet with a basic no frills view title. Once all the required equipment is visible on the sheet detail lines can interconnect all the various equipment "close enough"..."eyeball"... so that when the sheet is printed it looks convincing.

We can eliminate the elevation symbols from cluttering real project views by placing them in a floor plan view that uses a ridiculous scale like 6"=1'-0" since it would never fit on a sheet. The elevation symbol will use the "Hide at scales coarser than" parameter and not show up at any scale coarser than the "nutty" scale I used. Here's an over simplication of the concept...

To compliment this basic layout using the actual model we could create drafting views of the internal workings of fuses and breaker assignments etc, place them on the sheet near by and use detail lines to sketch a "balloon" and leader back to the riser diagram to indicate where the enlarged diagram is referring to. Like this technically incorrect oversimplification.
If needed a 3D view can supplement the diagram but you can't tag the elements in this view (madness!) so text would have to be coordinated against the tags used in the other view(s).

Revit MEP - Panel Schedules "Location"

[EDIT: This issue has been fixed in new versions of Revit MEP]

The graphic issues related with panel schedules and the needs of electrical engineers has been pretty well documented in various discussions at AUGI so I won't pick on them too. This issue however I don't recall seeing brought up yet.

We now have Spaces instead of Rooms so "we" have more flexibility over where and how they are used, not to mention that Zones are aware of Spaces too (the subject of another post). Panel schedules (Distribution Board Schedules to others) however do not derive their location from Spaces rather they only derive this information from a Room. This seems an oversight to me since otherwise I have no reason to create any actual rooms in the RME model. Especially since the Heating and Cooling Loads tool only detects Spaces now and that Copy/Monitor no longer includes Rooms.

Here's what I'm referring to on a panel schedule.

Speaking graphically, I think that I can get a panel schedule looking "decent" now apart from some more information that most engineers indicate they want included (conduit size, wire size specifics etc.). The width of the overall schedule is controlled by one important grip.

This grip will adjust all the columns together and keep things more or less orderly. It would be good if this width was easily defined so each schedule could be consistent as well as snapping to each other like other schedules do. View templates don't extend to them either. Of course we can sketch some detail lines to use as a guide to get them "close enough" but it would be nice not to have to jump to so many little hoops. All right I did say I wasn't going to pick on them...but it is sooo easy. *-)

Revit MEP - Tick Marks

For those of you who don't use wiring and show tick marks in your electrical plans...nevermind, sorry!

Tick marks are based upon external tick mark families. The stock families are found in this folder.


On the off chance you don't know what these are here's what they look like in use.

There is a separate category of family usage called Wire Tick Marks.


This means you can use a different tick mark than those supplied. Such as "the squiggle".

Or "the ground".


If you haven't noticed these options they are found under Settings menu > Electrical Settings > Wire.


Hope this "tickles" your fancy...

Acuity Brands Lighting - Content Update

According the date on their blog I've been napping for month and missed this. Tim Hogan posted this "Starter Set Expanded and Improved" post on August 1, 2008.

The post starts with:
Based on your feedback from the models we released last month, we’ve made a round of improvements and expanded the number of models now available.

Pipe Materials

A fairly common comment from someone using the Piping/Plumbing features in Revit MEP is, "Where is Cast Iron?" Fair enough! Where is it? It ain't there! Getting it there is a matter of editing the Pipe Sizes.xml file (default location: C:\Program Files\Revit MEP 2008\Program). At least that's true for past versions. The information is now embedded in Revit MEP 2009 and accessible from a dialog found under Settings menu > Mechanical Settings. This is the dialog you get:


You click on "Sizes" at the bottom left of the dialog and you get the information displayed on the right side. You can now add Material, Connection, Schedule/Type as well as Sizes. Using the check boxes offered, you can filter the list of sizes so only appropriate ones will be offered to you when you use specific types of pipe. You also use this to allow RME to use the size when calculating "sizing" for you.

Keep in mind that the Project Units of your project will affect the pipe sizes displayed on the Options Bar too. You adjust this via Settings menu > Project Units and then choose Piping for Discipline. Like this:


Similarly Wires Sizes and Duct Sizes are embedded within RME.