Setting Up Default Fittings To Be Used In Revit MEP

You can create and set up a number of different Duct Types and Pipe Types in Revit MEP by editing the properties of those Type families. Within these various Duct/Pipe Types that you create, each type can have their own default fittings that you will use for that Type. The key though, is to make sure that the correct fittings that you want to use are loaded into your project. If the correct fittings are not loaded into the project, you will probably not get the results you are looking for when laying out duct/pipe.

Once you set your Duct and Pipe Types, save those into your project template so that you can reuse those types and fittings for future projects. This will save you time and allow you to do more designing and less setting up.

To set up your pipe types, select a type in the project browser down at the bottom under families, and right-click and duplicate it and rename it with your new name. Then right-click and change the properties. Within the properties dialog box, you can change each fitting that that pipe/duct type will use by default when laying out a system.





Each type can be unique and have different fittings. This speeds up the design process because Revit MEP will automatically place the correct fitting based on the Pipe/Duct type you are using when laying out your routing. You shouldn't have to manually place fittings very often.






This goes not only for manually routing pipe/duct, but also for the automatic layouts that are generated. When you have Revit MEP layout a system for you, in the Settings, you can choose what Pipe/Duct type you want to use, and Revit MEP will automatically place the fittings that you choose to be the defaults for that Pipe/Duct Type.



If you go into the Mechanical Settings under Settings Pull Down menu, you can also create your own piping materials and assign Roughness and set the connection type and assign sizes for your own custom pipe. You can then assign other pipe properties in your pipe types to these custom pipe materials and settings.

Rectangular Duct - Tap - Beveled Revit MEP family

Kyle to the rescue again. Revit MEP has a lot of Duct Fittings and Pipe Fittings. They may not all be loaded into the default project template, but you can load them in from your Imperial Library.

If you haven't noticed yet, it is missing a Rectangular Beveled Tap.

http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=68220

(From Kyle)

This one has all sorts of bells and whistles, as I got engrossed with
fixing it one afternoon, and my trig hand was strong that day. It adheres to
SMACNA standards OOTB (Takeoff Length = 0.25 * Duct Width, 4" Minimum), but allows you to override both the length and the angle if desired, so this is
really all that you need. To accomplish this, there are a bunch of nested IF
statements that drive the dimensions, have fun going through it if you'd
like.

Below are some picks of some ducts that I connected using the Rectangular Beveled Tap Fitting.

From the AUGI thread, and if you an AUGI member, you can download this family by going to the link I posted.

On a side note, I loaded every Duct Fitting, and every Pipe Fitting from the Imperial Library in a template project, to see how large a file it would create, and the template project file was just under 20 meg with nothing modeled yet.

[Request for Feedback] Pipe Naming Conventions

Kyle Bernhardt with Autodesk Revit MEP's team is requesting participation in a survey to help them define how best to name Pipe Fittings by end users.

Kyle writes on his blog (Inside the System):

I wanted to solicit your participation in a survey we have developed involving Pipe Fittings, and how you as users think about them.

Pipe Fittings are a complex beast when it comes to describing them in a short concise manner. Many aspects about them, such as Material, Class, Type, Connection Type, etc., are factors for selection in a design.

We'd like to know more about what is important to you as users, so we can define a convention that best reflects that feedback.

With that in mind, I ask that you please fill out the following survey to provide us your perspective on this matter. It shouldn't take more than 5 minutes.

For those of you who are CAD Managers, I would request that you ask your end-users to fill out the survey, as they will most likely be the folks most directly impacted by choices that we make.

Thanks in advance to all of you.