ProjX Airside Modeling East Wing

Okay. So now we're ready to begin modeling air terminals and ductwork. So we're going to focus on this right wing here and first thing we'll do is we'll go to the mechanical warehouse to grab some air terminals. So as you can see, here we are in the mechanical warehouse view, the sheet view. We have the view activated.

Here's our options for air terminals. We have a lot of options, I like to only grab the air terminals that I know I need and I can always come back and get more air terminals if I need them. So for this project, I know that I want 24 inches by 24 inches supplier diffuser with a round duct connection and I'm gonna use Hold down control to select To add more to my selection. Also want a sidewall double deflection diffuser supply and I also want a rectangular duct, this is mislabeled. This is a rectangular neck 24 inches return And I think that's all I need for now.

I don't think I need exhaust because I've got ceiling exhaust fans. So I'm gonna go with that for now. So control C for copy, come back over to my project and I will paste in control V and just paste paste them here. So here they are and I can, once I've got them in, I can then delete them. Just because I didn't want those necessarily where they were floating around, I wanted to be a little bit more systematic.

My favorite way to add air terminals is from the project browser and I just scroll down to where they are listed here. So I'm going to zoom in on this space over here and I'm gonna start laying out my diffusers. So just click drag and drop and I'm gonna place diffuser here and here. In this video, I'm not gonna talk about or show the ceiling grid for now. Okay, so I'm gonna add to there, to there, I'm gonna add to diffusers here and then the electrical room is going to get a sidewall diffuser, I'm going to hit space to orient it, place it there and I don't actually want these arrows to show up on this plan, so I'm gonna right click and say, select all instances visible in view.

Then over here, I can toggle those arrows off. Alright, now I wanna place my return air diffusers, click and drag and drop them near the the doors. Alright, got those placed. Okay, so that is gonna be my air terminal setup for these spaces. Now, now or later, I could add the air flows, I'm just gonna go ahead and do that now.

Now there's a couple of different ways I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna tag, I'm gonna tag this here and again, I'm in a working view, so these tags, the graphics, these tags don't matter, these aren't gonna show up on sheets. I'm just gonna show you two different workflows. So this tag is showing the sort of equipment ID, so this one is called a, it's called a B three type diffuser. This is showing the next size and then this is the CFM.

So I can change the CFM by clicking in here and just saying what I want it to be. So let's say $2.50 for this one and I could say $2.50 for this one and I might say 500 for this one, so I could Here I could enter it there or I could enter it up here in the sub ribbon. So 500 and that changes that, so that's there, 500 there and then also with this selected in the properties window, I can see that 500 is set here. So just for example, if I change this to 400, changes in the tag and it changes up there, it's all the same data. And now a little bit more about this tag, this might not be the way you want your tag to look, there are options.

So we also you could also just have the tag in the next size, you could show just the next size in the airflow, you can show just the ID in the airflow and just the ID. So we've got options. This tag really has all of the information in there. Okay. And Oh and another thing about this family, if I want the next size to be different, that is this parameter right here, it's an instance parameter.

So I could also say for example, 12 inches and that would change the size of the next size to 12. I keep it 14 inches for now. Alright and then so I tagged these, so I could see them again in my working view. I could also multi select these in the office here and say these are a 150 CFM. I don't have to tag them.

Let's say this is 300 CFM. And these two, I'm gonna say these are 350 each. So this is 700 on the return and this sidewall is gonna be a 120 CFM. And finally, this louver is going to be, yeah, 400 CFM. Sounds about right.

Okay. So I've got my I've got my, diffusers laid out. Let's lay out the supply air ductwork. And so, you know, the part purpose of this video isn't to, tell you how to design ductwork, that's up to you, you're the professional in that regard. There you can get Revit to represent just about any kind of duct system you want.

We're gonna keep it simple and straightforward, in this video. So I've got my air handling unit selected and I'm gonna right click there and say draw duct and I'm going to go up and over and down and it looks like I can get away with it, so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to, I'm going to align this air diffuser to this duct by using the align tool. Out of the box, that's AL, I've remapped mine to AA, so that now I'm in align mode. I click the center line of that duct there and I click the center line of the air of the terminal, of the air diffuser and that's aligned. Now I just need to check the height, so we've got middle elevation nine eight and three quarter and this is set to eight.

I want these to be the same height because I want this duct to just to go straight into that diffuser. So I'm going to copy the middle elevation from the duct and paste it into the elevation from the sidewall diffuser and drag it down until I get my connection symbol and that will connect there like that. Okay. Now I want to add my branch ductwork out to the diffusers and I'm going to click on this bit of duct. I'm gonna say CS for create similar, but I don't want to use rectangular duct with a beveled tap.

I want my take offs for the purposes of this to be, round duct and I wanted to have a balancing damper. So I have a duct type called round straight tap balancing damper. So I'm gonna choose that. Set my diameter to eight and I'm going to click here at the center line and move it up and it's going to create that tap with the damper. And I'm going to continue to do that around for the rest of these.

There we go. Okay, so I've gotten the tabs off and now I want to do the flex duct connections. So I'm going to type FD for flex duct, going to make sure that the system type is set to supplier and I just click here at the end of that branch and then connect to the connection point of the air terminal and it makes that connection. It's connection, make the connection, make the connection. Alright.

So we've got our very simple straightforward duct system and because we've added air flows to these duct terminals, the duct actually knows how much CFM it has going through it. So if I click this branch here and look in the properties window, it says that the flow is 250 CFM. And what that also implies that I can, is that I can use Revit's duct sizing tool. So I'm going to tab select once and select, so I've got this whole branch selected and I can gonna going to come up to the duct type sizing button and press it and you can type in whatever you want here, whatever methods you want, I do friction by point zero eight inches per 100 foot and I'm going to say okay and it's made a decision to size this to be 10 inches. If I look down here in the friction, it's point zero three seven, you know and if it were eight, that's point one, that's over the criteria we set for it.

So it chose the, it chose the correct branch according to the criteria. And that we can tell it to do, to size this whole system, so I'm just going to hit tab twice to select the entire system and I'm gonna say duct pipe sizing, say okay and it's sized the whole length of that. But now you'll notice of course that this run here, it's sized this whole thing according to you know, eleven twenty CFM when this is the only segment that experiences eleven twenty CFM. We'd like to you know, narrow down. So the way to do that, the way to tell Revit to do that is to use the split element tool, which I have set to SE in my keyboard shortcuts.

So I'm gonna give it a slice here and here and there and then I'm going to re tab select everything and say duct pipe sizing again and it's going to size this down and you'll notice something here, it didn't use a transition. This is an error in some versions of Revit I've come across when it, it it fails to give this transition. Sometimes it does give the transition you want, sometimes it doesn't. The solution is simply to box select that union, delete it and then use the trim tool TR to trim those bits of duck back together and it does the right thing. Revit is still getting some kinks worked out of it.

Okay and then we can inspect this here. This one for some reason, it didn't really make this much smaller. So we can, so we could tweak this manually. I always recommend that you check the duct system over, make sure you're happy with it, make sure you're happy with the sizing, make happy with the sizing of it. Okay, alright, so I'm happy enough with that for now.

And I could also tag this so I can keep an eye on it, so I'm gonna hit the TG button, that's the tag and I'm going to hit space bar to rotate it. So this is now telling me the size of the various bits of duct. Okay. Alright. Let's do the return error side.

So I'm gonna start drawing docs off the return error side. Need to come over here and I need to branch off and come up to meet these. So retain it and beveled tab, that's actually what I want. So I'm going to go, I'll start here. And I need to be careful because I don't want to tell ref to try to connect near this air terminal, which it might do.

So sometimes you have to kind of go around an obstacle and then come back and nudge it to be where you want. So if I clicked here, it wouldn't let me make it because there's not enough room to make an elbow. So I'm actually gonna I'm actually gonna come all the way over here to the far side of all this stuff and click and it'll make that. And then I'm gonna finish that. Then I'm just gonna grab it, I'm gonna pull it back there and I'm gonna hit create similar and I'm gonna start drawing from my return error grid out here and then I'm gonna move until I get that inference line.

Here we go. It's So it's saying this segment is being drawn from the wrong side to connect to the location you indicated. What's going on there is I think that there's just not enough room for it to place it and that's because the duct is too big. So I'm gonna say create similar, I'm just gonna say, okay, let's make this an eight inch by eight inch, bit of duct and let me draw that there and let me do it and make that connection. Okay, Do the same thing for here.

Now this is tricky because we've got a few things overlapping, but I was able to use tab to get that selected. Alright. Now you notice of course that this is a very, the sizes are all wrong here, of course, right? But that's just because I can use the duct sizing tool to get these at least within the ballpark correct, quickly and easily. So I'm gonna tab select this branch and this and hit duct pipe sizing, hit Okay and it makes it a lot more reasonable.

Alright and then I'm going to put that and say create similar again, Start from here and I'm gonna finish it there, hit escape a few times. I'm just gonna use the trim tool, TR to trim those together. And then I'm going to SE slice element there and I'm I'm actually not done adding because I need to add some ductwork from here. So this is our outside air intake. So I'm going to come off of there and now I think this this is I don't know if this is the right elevation.

Okay, it is, we lucked out. So that's nine eight and three quarters. This is nine eight and three quarters. So now we can bring this in. So there's two ways to do this. Well, there's probably more than two ways to do this. I can just drag this in like that, that'll create that tap. I could also use the trim extends tool, TT and click the main and then click that duct and it will trim it in like that. Okay, so now this whole duct system is ready to go, ready to be sized. So I'm gonna tab select the whole thing, say duct pipe sizing, click Okay and there we go, it's size deforming.

Now again, you want to double check these, confirm that you're happy with the sizing and particularly with rectangular duct. You might need, you might want to make some different decisions about the aspect ratio than Revit will choose for you, But you can always keep an eye on the friction and the specs over here in terms of airflow velocity, etcetera. So you can keep an eye on how it's doing that for you. Okay, so we've got our duct layout. But one issue that we have here is if we go to a three d view and we look at our duct system, you notice that we've got some intersections here.

We've got some interferences. We've got duct going through duct. Revit won't yell at you immediately, you have to go to a separate mode to ask it to look for clashes like this. Otherwise, it won't bring you give you any errors which is actually a good thing. So if the level of your drawings, if you're drawing deliverables are just two d and you verify that this will fit and this is fine, you don't have to fix this.

If this is a DD level, know, you aren't required to make these models coordinated unless of course you are and often we are, of course, we have to be presenting drawings that are constructible and so you might verify just by sketching that this is actually in a constructible space that this design will work and that's fine or you might actually need to model this in such a way that it physically fits. And so I'm going to demonstrate how I would go about tweaking this layout to fit. So let's go into a section to see what's going on here. So we've got our two working sections and I'm gonna go into my horizontal section and see what we've got. So we've got this sort of roof lid thing.

It's kind of a funky space because we're in a warehouse space but we've got to fit these ducts in between the ceiling, the top of the ceiling and the bottom of this roof lid here which is probably like a two by six or two by eight floor kind of deal. Okay. And so we need to move some ducts up and some down. So what I think I'm gonna do is I'm gonna move the supplier ducts down and the return air ducts up. And I'm gonna go into my three d view and first thing what I'm gonna do is, I'm thinking I wanna come here and then I wanna go down.

So I wanna move all of this down and transition up to enter into the AHU and then here I want to come up. I wanna come up, come straight out the AHU and then I'll come up. So first what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna fix the supplier. So I'm gonna make a cut here and select that segment so that I now have So that this bit of duct is split off from this. So when I move this duct, it's not gonna move the AHU up as well.

And I am going to go back into my horizontal section and here we go. So I'm going to I've tab selected, so I've got my main selected and I'm gonna go to that section again. And Revit behaves in an interesting way here. I want you to notice what happens. So if I hit the up arrow, you'll notice that the main moved up but the tap did not.

See, I'm moving it around and the tap is not moving. Let's get that centered again. So I move kind of far out and I hit control up, which is a big move, it moved the main and the tap. So what that is, what Revit is doing is if you move the duct, the main duct just a little bit, it won't move the taps with it and soon it'll start give you these warnings, the tap must be attached to the duct. But let's get that recentered, but if you move it by a lot, you know, I might have I might have gotten it confused.

I'm gonna control Z a few times, get us back, so we're not messed up. And select that again, but if you move it a lot, it moves everything together. So the trick is to move everything together. So what I'm going to do, so I want this duct to be close to the bottom here and I'm concerned that if and I can't just tap my way there, because it will lose these taps. So I need to move it in one big go, so I'm gonna see if I can do it by using the move tool and giving it one shot.

So I'm going to go with move tool, click here and click there and it's moved everything together. So we're good on that regard. Okay, now we just need to make So we've now got a bridge of this gap here. So I'm going to go to the new floor plan and here's my vertical section. Can I go to my vertical section and I'm just going to click there, right click, draw a duct, go up like that?

There we go. Now I need to address the return error. So I am going to make a cut here and here and I might have to nudge things around to make it all fit. Box like that. So I'm just gonna have that bit selected and I'm gonna go into my horizontal cut section.

Again, I wanna move this up tight to the bottom of the ceiling. Gonna use the move command. Let's see, I don't think I think it's too short of a space. Yeah. So it's giving me that warning, it wasn't moving the taps with that duct.

So I'm gonna hit control z, so I undid that. The the solution here is to move it a lot up and then a lot down with the net being the short amount of distance you wanted it to move. I'll explain what I mean by that. So here I go, I've got it selected, I'm gonna move it up a lot, so it's moved everything together and then I'm going to move it a lot back down but to exactly where I wanted it, which was fairly close to the underside there. So now I don't have that clash, my return air duct is over my supplier duct, so I'm happy with that.

Just need to bridge this little gap here and I think I'm gonna have to move this back a bit to give myself space to work. So back to the vertical section, gonna grab that tap in that. I'm gonna move it down a bit. Give myself some space and I'm gonna that a little bit longer. Draw a duct. That won't be enough. You need to go at a shallower angle. Come out there. Duct. You do that and then I'm gonna use the trim tool to trim that together and there we go.