Explore how to create an efficient plumbing system using Autodesk's routing preferences feature. This article demonstrates how to load and set a reducing tee as a routing preference, allowing for smoother transitions between pipe sizes and removal of unnecessary reducers.
Key Insights
- The Autodesk routing preferences feature allows users to manage transitions in pipe sizes effectively. This feature permits automatic addition of reducers where necessary, resulting in more efficient plumbing systems.
- Users can load a reducing tee into their routing preferences to streamline their work. When a reducing tee is set as a routing preference, it automatically reduces the pipe size at the tee-off point, removing the need for a separate reducer.
- Changes in routing preferences apply only to new pipes and not the existing ones. However, users can select all instances of a particular item in the project and change them to the new preference in one go, further enhancing efficiency.
Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.
And in the previous video, we went ahead and finished tying in our hot and cold water system into our classrooms here. I want to start connecting the sanitary.
And there's a couple of things I kind of want to actually touch on before we get into it. So as we have been developing this model, you may have noticed the difference in pipe sizing, and it's automatically putting reducers and other things in there. If you look here, I have kind of this four inch and four inch fitting.
And this is a tea sanitary tea. And then it gives me the reducer to go to the three inch. And then I have my three inch line, so on and so forth.
Well, it's kind of a it's it's, you know, there are ways of doing that. And you could have a reducer here in the field, they may want to choose to have a have a sanitary tea that maybe has a four inch on either end. And then when it tees off, it automatically goes to a three inch, you know, just to make it a little bit more efficient and a little bit nicer.
And what is happening is that the reason why it's putting this here is because of the tea that we have selected in our routing preferences. If we go way back to our first, you know, when we first started talking about the plumbing piping, I'm going to go ahead select a piece of pipe. And I'm going to go ahead hit Edit type.
%20(1).png)
Learn Revit MEP
- Nationally accredited
- Create your own portfolio
- Free student software
- Learn at your convenience
- Authorized Autodesk training center
And I'm just going to look at this real quick. And if I go into my routing preferences, you can see that like my tea, my junction tea sanitary, PVC 40 DWV standard, I have all the sizes and everything, but it's there's nothing I can do here. And then I have the transition with a reducer.
So what I want to go ahead and do is before we step into the next part, I want to go ahead and load in a tea, a reducing tea, and then we're going to change the different type. So what I can go ahead and do is if I go to my Insert tab, I'm going to go to load Autodesk family, this is where all that Autodesk content is now. And this is going to be a cloud based system.
I'm going to scroll down and find pipe. I want to scroll down and I want to find my my PVC schedule 40 socket type DWV my drain waste vent. Click into there.
And I kind of this one's kind of tough to see. So what I'm going to end up doing is I'm going to go ahead and toggle my view type up here to be the list view. So you can see that.
And if I scroll down, I'm going to go tea reducing. Let's see here. Tea reducing sanitary.
Now there's a bunch of different items in here in the office that you work for, or in just your personal line of work, you may just decide, hey, I like to use this one or this one. That's fine. For the class, though, let's go ahead and use this tea reducing sanitary.
I'm going to go ahead hit load. I'm loading that in, but I need to set that as my routing preference. If I select this, I'm going to go ahead and hit edit type most like the pipe edit type, go to my routing preferences.
Now, when I have a junction, there should be tea reducing sanitary. So like that, I hit OK. Now when I create pipes moving forward, it's going to do that.
It doesn't change the ones I already have. It's only going to do on the ones that I currently do. But I could select this if I wanted to.
And let's see what happens when I change this to tea reducing sanitary. I go standard. Notice how when I changed it, it automatically removed that reducer there.
So what I could theoretically do here, and this kind of a cool little trick that I use on a lot of different things. So by selecting this and changing it to reducing sanitary. There we go.
It removes that extra fitting piece and my system becomes that much more efficient. So what I could do is I could select this guy, right click, select all instances and entire project. It's going to select 96 in the process of this course.
We have created 96 of those little teas. What I'm going to go ahead and do now is I'm going to change this from the tea sanitary to the tea reducing sanitary. It's going to take some time to do that because it's adjusting a lot of elements.
It's changing 96 elements, but it's also removing 96 elements because of all those little reducers. Check that out. So it makes our system a little bit more efficient.
We could have done that and that could have been something that we set up at the beginning, knowing that, Hey, I'm going to have these transitions. I'm going to set this up, but I wanted to highlight it here. Now as we start to draw our pipe in, what will end up happening is that we can go ahead and just connect it.
So I'm going to start looking at my end of the lines here. And since I've aligned these and because I've aligned them, what I can actually end up doing is I select here, right click, draw pipe, and I go straight out and I'm just going to connect to say the end point of this here. I want to make sure you're at kind of a 90 degree.
Didn't get it there. That's fine. It's going to take a little bit, but you just want to make sure you get to the snap.
Let's see. Where is my snap? Let's find it. It sometimes takes a minute and it's not necessarily always the easiest.
You can always orbit around too. If you'd like to we find that 90 degree first. Let's see.
And there we go. So it gives me the reducing T to go from the three inch to the one and a half inch. Now I could go through and do that for all of these.
If I wanted to draw a pipe and this, and that one, that one's snapped really easily for me. Let me go here, draw pipe. This one seemed to snap easy for me.