Learn how to enhance the design of 3D elements, such as a water heater, by adding extrusions and connectors. This article provides a step-by-step guide for adding basic connectors such as a hot water in or a cold water out to your design.
Key Insights
- The article provides a comprehensive tutorial on adding extrusions to an element in a 3D project, with specific emphasis on a water heater model. The process involves creating a small tap for the connector to attach to the extrusion.
- The tutorial also provides in-depth information on the process of adding connectors to the extrusions. It highlights the importance of ensuring the correct system classification and flow direction for the connectors.
- The author emphasizes that the design process could be more complex depending on the project requirements. They highlight that other factors, such as gallons per minute going through the connectors, can be taken into account if necessary.
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.
In this video, we're going to go ahead and put some other extrusions on our element here, our water heater, and then we're going to go ahead and add some connectors. So I'm just going to, we're going to kind of be basic with these connectors here.
We're not going to get too much into the electrical connectors or the mechanical connectors, but we're going to put a hot water in or a cold water in and a hot water out. And we could kind of, maybe we'll put an outlet in for a drain if we so desire, but we're going to put a couple of them in here. We're going to go ahead and put a hot water or cold water in on the top so that then we have our cold water in and then we'll put a hot water out on say like maybe the front side.
So from here, what I can go ahead and do is I'm just going to make a small, uh, because I need to add the connector to a different extrusion. And because only a solid face can only have one connector, we want to create a small tap for ours. So what I'm going to do is when we will create, I'm going to go to extrusion and I'm going to go and draw a small circle.
I'm going to pick about, Oh, let's just do it right out of the middle. And I'm going to go ahead and give it, let's give it a two inch diameter for this piece. And there we go.
I have finished. Now we need to kind of go ahead and look at this in 3D. So I'm looking 3D.
%20(1).png)
Learn Revit MEP
- Nationally accredited
- Create your own portfolio
- Free student software
- Learn at your convenience
- Authorized Autodesk training center
Now I don't see it because I'm in my hidden line. I'm going to go ahead and go to my wireframe and you can see that it's inside of my other cylinder. That's because when I drew it, I was looking at the floor plan and it has a height of one foot.
So to kind of get this in the right location, I can go ahead and just drag this up. I'm just going to go ahead and drag it up. I could also, if I want to align it to that edge and I could actually lock it there.
Or if I go to my front view, see this here. If I drag this off, it wants to remove the constraints because I locked it, but I could align it in this view to that same tank height parameter. So what I could do is I could go to my align tool, select here, pick this edge and lock.
I'm going to go ahead and make this about two inches tall. It doesn't need to be. So the extrusion start is going to be at six foot six.
I'm going to have the extrusion end at six foot eight. So that keeps it that two foot tall. If I wanted to make sure that that always moved in place, what I could do is I'm going to create a reference plane to like there.
And if I wanted to adjust that or lock it in place, I'm going to create a dimension. So under annotate aligned, pick here, pick here, drag over. I'm going to select this guy, make it two inches.
And then I'm going to also lock that dimension. So again, I drew in my dimension. I selected my reference plane.
I'm going to click on the dimension value and change this to zero space two for two inches. I'm also going to go back, select my dimension and lock it. And there we go.
Then last thing I need to go ahead and do is I need to align this extrusion to that edge. If I were to change this height right now, let's see here. Let's go seven foot.
See how it didn't move with it, but my two, my reference plane did because this is staying at the same location. So what I want to go ahead and do is I'm going to go to my align tool, select here, select here, lock. Perfect.
So let's go back to our plan view. If it wants to, there it goes. I want to go ahead.
I need to create an extrusion coming off. This is the backside. So I could either go to the front or the back, depending.
Then this would be my left side. This would be my right side. So I'm going to go to my front view, kind of just where we were.
I am going to create an extrusion, a circular extrusion, and we can go up a little bit about here, drag out. I'm going to again, make this two inches and I can go ahead, hit finish. Let's take a look in 3D.
So one of the things that you kind of have to look at is how are you looking at this in 3D and how is this actually showing? So hidden line. So you can see it's inside of that right now. I'm going to go back to my wireframe so I can see that I could drag this out just so I get a better idea of where everything is at.
If I go ahead and line now, you can see it's actually inside of that. I'm going to go to my floor plan. I want this to be coming out the front.
So what I'm going to end up doing is I'm not going to just drag this to the edge of this guy here. What I'm gonna do is I'm going to actually bring it a little bit inside and then bring this guy down and we'll just leave about that. I'm not going to worry too much about locking this guy in place.
And there we go. Perfect. So let's go to our 3D view.
Let's take a peek. So you can see that we have our water inlet here and we have our water outlet there. And that's kind of really at the basis of it.
That's what we need. Now you could get further and further into all of the flows and calculations, which is really established through the connectors, but from a hot, we need cold water in, hot water out, and we're good. Now what I want to go ahead and do is I need to create the connectors.
So I'm going to go ahead and create a pipe connector. I want to place it on a face. So I'm going to select here.
There we go. And then I'm also going to click down here. So those are two separate connectors.
So you can see this one and this one. I'm going to take this upper one. This is my cold water in.
So my system classification here is going to be domestic cold water, the flow direction. Now, currently it sets a bi-directional. I'm going to set this one to in so that it's always flowing in down here.
I'm going to select this connector. I'm going to change this to domestic hot water and my flow direction here will be out. And there we go.
If you wanted to get more into it, you could see how many gallons per minute are going through on both of those. So there are other factors that we're not taking into account right now, but they are there if you so desire to use those. And that's really all it is to establish those connectors.
If you needed more connectors, if we needed a mechanical duct connector, if we need an electrical connector, we would just create more of these little stubs to be out there. Now, you may notice that this doesn't look like it's actually fitting properly. What I'm going to do is I'm going to join.
So I'm going to select, I'm going to use the join command, select this, select this. And there we are. It gives me that edge.
So again, one more time, I'm going to undo real quick. I'm going to go to join so I can join these two solids together. And that helps to create that edge where those two intersect.
Great. I'm going to go ahead and save this. Let's go ahead and load into our project.
And there we go. So you can see, I can go ahead and I can put my hot water heater in there. And we might need two for this.
We'll go ahead and put two in there. Boom, boom. Perfect.
I'm going to go ahead and save this. And in the next video, we'll go ahead and tile this in. See you then.