Explore the continuation of the CAD Teacher VDCI course content for the BIM 321 course, Introduction to Revit MEP, as it delves into connecting registers in the system. Understand the step-by-step procedure of creating ducts, drawing flex ducts, adjusting the sizes as necessary, and preparing the system for return error.
Key Insights
- The BIM 321 course content includes a detailed guide to connecting registers starting with creating the duct and drawing the flex duct.
- It is important to adjust the size of the ducts after drawing in the system as necessary for optimal functionality. The Revit MEP system allows for easy size adjustments and automatic transitions.
- After setting up the system and making necessary adjustments, the next step is preparing the system for return air, before moving to the upper floors for similar operations.
Welcome back to the CAD Teacher VDCI video course content for the BIM 321 course, Introduction to Revit MEP. In the previous video, we went ahead and placed all of our VAV units. So what we want to go ahead and do now is we're actually going to go ahead and start connecting all of our registers in.
So the first ones I'm going to go ahead and start with is these guys over here. And what I'm going to go ahead and do is I'm going to move my section over just a little bit so I can see my other air diffuser here. Obviously this one here is the air diffuser back here, which is my return diffuser.
I'm going to go ahead and select this, and I'm going to go ahead, 11 × 10 is perfectly sized, so I'm going to go ahead and pick this, and it's going to start creating my duct. And I'm going to draw it to about here. The reason why I'm not going to draw all the way over is I don't want to make a hard connection to the air terminal unit.
I want to go ahead and make a flex duct connection. So I'm just going to pick, I'm going to hit escape, I'm going to select the duct, and you see the little grips that pop up here? I'm going to go ahead and right click on the one on the end that is open. So I'm going to right click once it turns purple, and I'm going to go to draw flex duct.
There. I'm going to go ahead, go over here until I get the connector aspect, pick there, and now it's connected. As you can see it's populated here.
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I'm going to do the same thing up here. Select this, click here, drag out, hit escape a couple times, select this, right click, draw flex duct, connect. Come up here.
Now I could do this in a multitude of different ways. I could just go up and draw all of my pieces in first if I wanted to. Again, it's up to you on how exactly you want to do it.
The nice thing is that if you do draw all these pieces first, every single piece coming out of the VAV we can line up together to be the same length. If you have a set length you want to go with, that's perfectly fine. Then I'm just going to go work my way back down.
Pick here, right click, flex duct, to there. Select here, right click, flex duct, there, and again I'm hitting escape after every time. There we go.
Escape, right click, draw flex duct there, and I've connected all those there. As you notice they turn into blue once they've been connected into the system. Now these ones are going to be a little bit different.
I'm going to go ahead here, I'm going to go ahead, click on the 17 × 14, which is going to be a little bit large. I don't necessarily want to use that large of a duct. So I'm going to come up here to the width and change that to a 14 inch.
Now I have a 14 × 14 inch duct. Pick here and come out to about there. There we go.
I'm going to hit escape a couple times. Pick here, right click, I'm going to draw flex duct over to this guy here, and there we are. It's going to automatically put in all the size and transitions that I need to connect to these guys.
I'm going to go ahead and hit escape. Now I need to go ahead and draw a tap off of this after the VAV. The VAV is what controls the air flow into this room.
This is tied into the thermostat. So I need to go ahead and draw my tap in after this. So I'm going to go to my systems and go to duct.
I'm going to go ahead and leave it, we'll change it to a 12 × 12 since we're only running to one. We'll change it to a 12 × 12. It's already at the correct height of the 10 foot 3 8ths because that's taking the last elevation that we drew at.
I'm going to go ahead and pick here, about there, bring it down. There we are. Everything looks good.
I'm going to go ahead and select it, right click, draw flex duct, and there we are. And everything is looking great. I'm going to come down to this one here.
I'm going to go ahead, I'm going to draw from this guy here, change it to a 14 × 14. I'm going to go ahead and bring it out, come up here, there we are, and I'm going to go ahead and draw my flex duct from here to there. I'm also going to go ahead and draw my taps out of here, one for this guy here and one for the guy way down here.
So I'm going to go to duct, I'm going to change them to a 12 × 12. There we go. I'm going to go ahead and just draw a short tap off of here.
It doesn't need to be any more than, say, 3 feet. Escape to end the chain. I'm going to pick about here, come all the way down to here.
There we go. And go back and draw my flex ducts. Right click, draw flex duct, there we are.
Escape here, right click, draw flex duct, here we are, and there we go. We've got all of our supply registers tapped into the correct system. Now obviously cost is always an issue when you're doing these kinds of systems.
With regards to this guy here, the reason why we have this as a 14 × 14 is because we need a larger size to pump more air through here to here. But we can go ahead and actually decrease the size of this duct here because we don't necessarily need the 14 × 14 to go all the way to the duct. So I'm going to select this guy here and I'm going to go ahead and change it to a 12 × 12.
As you notice, Revit automatically puts in my transition for me to get to the smaller duct. The only issue with this is that it's going to go ahead and leave the flex duct the same size. So I need to go ahead and delete it and draw the new flex duct.
So I'm going to go ahead and use my standard selection window. So I select just the items I want to delete, delete, and as you notice I deleted the connectors here too. Select this, right click, draw flex duct, and there we go.
I'm also going to go ahead and up here and change this one. This one's tapping off so this duct here can get a little smaller. I'm going to go ahead and do an SL or a split right after the piece here, right after this taps out.
I'm going to select this guy and change it to a 12 × 12. There we go. And as you can see, it automatically populates my transitions.
I'm going to go ahead and get rid of some of this information and then redraw my flex. Right click, draw flex duct, and there we are. And that's how we can go ahead and adjust the system after we've already drawn it.
What I really recommend for people to do is go ahead and draw your system in as you need to and draw your big main lines and then go back and adjust the sizes as necessary. I'm going to go ahead and zoom extents, control S, save the file. When we come back, we're going to go ahead and put in our system here for the return error and then we're going to go ahead and go up to the second floor and do the same thing.
See you then.