More Pipe Modeling Techniques

This video is kind of just a quick tips and tricks for modeling pipe in Revit. I'm talk about the create similar tool, parallel pipe tool, trim command, and pipe insulation. Okay. So to get us started, let's just draw a bit of pipes. So I'm going to enter the pipe modeling tool, p I, and I'm gonna make my diameter four. 10 feet off the deck seems fine. MP standard is alright, and let's go with heating hot water supply for the system type. Okay. So I'm just gonna start modeling a bit of duct. I want it straight.

Give it a turn there, and we're gonna go up like that. Okay. So that's my main. So the first thing that I wanna demonstrate is the create similar tool, and you probably know about it, but it's worth mentioning a lot of times. So I'm just gonna select this bit of duct, say CS for create similar, and now I'm in the exact same type of pipe.

It's at the same elevation, same diameter, same type, same system type. And I'm gonna click the end of this pipe here and just continue modeling like so. So super useful tool. And I'm going to even use more to prep for a further point in our tutorial. So I'm just gonna click here.

I'll make a few of these. And then I'm gonna drop down eight footer. I'm gonna make a couple down here that are lower than the main. Alright. We are set up.

Alright. So this is our main, but this is just heating hot water supply. We want our heating hot water return as well. So I could the slow way to do this would be to select a bit of type, a pipe, type CS, bubble that. Select it, type CS, come over here, change to heating hot water return, come here, model, click, click, click, come through like that. But you'll notice, you know, was going kind of fast. These offsets aren't exactly correct and it took a bunch of clicks. So I'm gonna delete that. There's a faster way to do it. And that way is in the systems tab, there's a parallel pipes tool.

So I'm gonna select that and you can see these are the relevant settings, horizontal number, vertical number, horizontal offset, vertical offset. By using this, you could create a whole array of pipes. But notice what happens if I mouse over this pipe, you see that there's a blue line to the right of it. Now watch what happens if I mouse over it and hit the tab key. The whole thing is selected and it's got that inference line off to the right.

Now watch what happens if I change the horizontal offset to two feet, you can see that it moves out further. So I'm gonna change that back to one foot, I'm gonna tab select that, I'm gonna click and it has created a parallel pipe to that pipe and the offset is a consistent one foot. And then to make it heating hot water return, just select any single bit of that pipe, I can change it over to heating hot water return, and there we go. Our mains are done. They're good to go.

Now you have to do this to continuous pipe with no breaks in it. If I tried to do it to a length of pipe that had a branch in it, it would have worked only up to that branch. So use this to get your continuous runs done and then start connecting things up. Speaking of connecting things up, let's start trimming some things together. So first, let's I'm gonna select that, say CS for create similar, put a bit of duct over here.

If I wanna connect these two, I can use the TR trim command. TR, click either one of these and the other and it trims it together. Very similar to CAD. Also similar to CAD is the trim accents tool. So these tools are in the modify tab. So the trim and extend the corner that we just use TR, that's this button. Then there's trim extend single element and trim extend multiple elements. Out of the box, they aren't set to TT and TS, those are custom keyboard shortcuts that I've added. I recommend you do the same because you wanna use them a lot. So type k s, go to the keyboard shortcuts, search for trim and click on trim extend single element.

I recommend TS, but do whatever you want. Click assign, trim extend multiple elements, t t click assign. That will assign the keyboard shortcuts to those commands. Okay. So now that we're here and we wanna get this connected to this, we can say t s for trim single, select the main, select that and it trims it in. And now of course, we have just gone through the center of this pipe. So this is kind of more of a design thing, but generally this isn't great. We'll have to go back and fix this later in the design because we've got our branch piping going right through our main, which we don't want. So avoid doing that. That's why we've got these over here lower than those.

But this is just for demonstrating the tools. So of course I can do TT for trim, extends multiple, like that, grab those. And then a way to do without keyboard shortcuts is you can just click and drag there and that will make that connection as well. Now let's do it for these which are lower. That prep so you can see what's gonna happen. So selecting here, I can just click that, I can drag it in and it will make that connection. I'll show you can it made that connection. I can do a trim single. I can do I'm gonna control z that. I can do trim multiples, that's TT.

This does not work in the three d view. So these are when you're making connections like this, this is one command that it's handy to have the plan view open for to be able to do. Cool. So we have used the trim trim command. And again, like if I wanted to start modeling on this, I would just start creating similar, going off like this and let's just do something kinda wild here like this.

And, you know, maybe I wanted multiple of this, so I could do systems parallel pipes and I could select that whole business there, and that's gonna create a parallel bit of pipe section box too small. So that's nice. It doesn't make that connection which is good because this that's not where it goes. So I can come in here, I can just delete that. I'm gonna select that, change it over to heating and hydraulic water return, And then I can just pull it in like like so.

Now I've got my branch all complete. Okay. And the final thing that we wanna cover here is pipe insulation. It's fairly straightforward in terms of the tools. So let's say we want all of this piping insulated, I'm just gonna go ahead and select that.

And then once you've got any amount of duct selected, up in the ribbon you have add insulation as an option. So I can just click that, it'll bring up and say, hey, which kind of insulation do you wanna add? So currently we've got eye which is just kind of a general, you know, this is insulated type and then also PVC jacketed fiberglass if you wanted something more specific. And then you can go into edit type to add more types and change the names and that sort of thing. We're just gonna go with eye and you can set the thickness that you want and just hit okay, and it has insulated all of the pipes.