Explore the intricacies of working with conduit in Revit MEP, including navigating the quirks of the software, achieving proper alignment, and adjusting conduit size. Learn how to create a detailed conduit layout on both the first and second floors, working through potential issues while ensuring the proper placement and sizing of conduit runs.
Key Insights
- The article provides a comprehensive walkthrough in creating a detailed conduit layout using Revit MEP, including the process of navigating to the second-floor plan and making necessary adjustments to the detail level and wireframe.
- Readers will learn how to rectify common issues in Revit MEP, like the software not allowing the drawing of a straight conduit run. The author suggests drawing the conduit upwards slightly before drawing out as a workaround.
- The article also covers the process of aligning conduits to the correct height, adjusting conduit sizes as per project requirements, and saving the changes made in the layout. The author shares tips on how to avoid clashes with other elements and how to make adjustments to the conduit layout.
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 got some things dialed here for our actual first floor conduit going up to our second floor. Now I want to go ahead, I'm going to go to my second floor plan, so I'm going to my ceiling plan level 2, I'm going to go ahead and zoom in up here.
And again these are showing like this just because of the fact that they are a course detail level, so I'm going to go ahead and change my detail level to fine. And then I'm going to go ahead and give myself a wire frame, there we go. Now I can go ahead, select this guy, right click, and what's happening is there are two pieces stacked up here, so I'm going to hit TAB, there's two little grips here stacked up.
I'm selecting the one below, I'm going to tab and then draw a conduit and that should come directly on the top. And it's not wanting to find it, so let's go ahead and look at our section view. So I'm going to close hidden windows and then I'm going to go ahead and double click into my section and window tile.
So let's go ahead and draw it from this location here, draw a conduit, there we go. And again it's wanting to just be, this is sometimes how conduit really is. And let's see what the problem is here.
So I paused the video for a second because it was acting really funny and this is just the way conduit is. I don't know why this happens this way. If I select here and I draw a conduit and I just try and draw straight out, it doesn't like it.
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But if I draw a conduit, go up a little bit, then draw out, hooray, it works. Again it's just one of these things that we have to get used to. I'm going to go ahead and take this guy and place it about here.
I'm going to go ahead and change my section to be wireframe also. And let's see how many conduit we can get here. So draw a conduit, again I need to go up a little bit, then over.
I'm going to go ahead and bring it down, select here, right click, draw a conduit, up a little bit, then over. There we go. And we'll align them all in a minute.
Draw a conduit, up a little bit, and over. And again, am I going to be able to see all of them? Not quite. So I'm actually going to go ahead and move my section so I can just see the ones I haven't drawn yet.
Go up a little bit and over. And again, I don't know why it does this. It's a weird thing that I can't just draw a conduit and draw over like that.
It's not saying there's a fitting for that even though I know we have one. It's just one of these Revit MEP bugs that you have to kind of get used to sometimes. Let me just grab my last section here.
There we are. Draw a conduit, go up a little bit, go over. And there we are.
I'm going to go ahead and now take my section so I can align these to the correct height. So I'm going to go here, rotate, 90 degrees, I'm going to go ahead and cut through all of them. And as you can see, they're kind of all over the place.
I'm going to go ahead and draw my detail line. I'm going to start from the center point there. There we go.
And let's go ahead and select this back so I'm not seeing the actual fittings themselves. I don't want to see the bends. I just want to see the conduit.
So hopefully it looks like this. I'm going to go align. Make sure multiple alignments checked.
I'm going to pick this edge here and now bring them all down. And that's all it takes. There we go.
And let's go ahead and run some conduit. The one thing I do need to be mindful of is where I am here. So I'm going to grab my section.
I'm going to go ahead and rotate it 90 degrees. And let's go ahead and take just a quick look at this corridor here. Again, probably the same kind of location or we could go up and above here which actually I think might work a little bit better.
But then we also have to remember the lines that are coming over. So our best bet is probably going to be underneath there. So the same exact location that we've done on the first floor.
So I'm going to take this guy, draw a conduit. I'm going to pop over here. Come down.
And again, I tend to draw these as I run them. Go down. Draw a conduit.
Go down. There we go. Draw a conduit.
There we are. Bring it down. Again, same process, come here, draw a conduit, drag down, there we are, only two more left.
Draw a conduit, and that one I kind of stacked up a little bit, so I'm just going to go ahead and drag that over. Again, I haven't aligned them or anything like that yet, I'm just placing the conduit so I can have it where I need it. I'm not really worried about running directly in the wall there, because again, I'm going to come back in here, I'm going to bring my section back up, and as you can see, see where everything is landing.
So I'm going to go ahead and actually align all this stuff, so I'm going to go DI for my dimension. Let's go ahead and change my view so that I'm actually running, or I can actually see the dimensions. Select here, 2 inches, you have to make sure you put in that 2 inch mark, or you have to put in that marker, 2 inches, select here, 2 inches, select here, I'm going to select on this guy, 2 inches, select here, 2 inches, select here, there we go, and 2 inches, and then I can go ahead and delete those dimensions.
I want to kind of have all these out at the same location right now, so I'm just going to go align, I'm going to pick on the end there, and I'm going to go ahead and bring them all out, and aligning with that end of the conduit there. There we go, so as you can see everything is
looking pretty good here, I'm going to go ahead now and run them down. I'm actually going to go ahead and let's go, and let's actually cut one of these short, so all I'm going to do is I'm going to take this one here, because it's going to feed this room here, I'm going to slice it there, delete, oops, I'm going to slice it, and I can't just delete the connector, I have to break it first like that, then I can delete this.
To delete that entire conduit run there I'm just going to hit TAB, delete, so it's going to feed that room there, I'm going to go ahead, draw a conduit, and again, oh, now it's wanting to play nicely. It does things different in plan views versus section views, it's just one of these things. Again I want to go ahead, let's check that real quick, I'm going through it, so I'm going to grab here, rotate it up 45 degrees, draw a conduit, and again, it's wanting to work for us, great, rather than any piece being nice for once.
So there's that, I'm going to draw the conduit down, come here, and again, I know I need to slope it up, but I do not have, as you can tell, there's no slope tool tip there, so I'm going to place that there, I'm going to go ahead, let's bring this down, okay, I'm going to go ahead now and rotate that up by 45 degrees, draw a conduit, and again, it's just wanting to be a pain, so I'm going to draw out a little bit more at 45, come over, and there it goes. Let's go ahead and select that back, and again, I'm probably, if I were to cut just that, I'm not in the other guy at all. So I'm going to come here, right-click, draw a conduit, work my way all the way down, there we go, let's go ahead and suck that guy up here, and there we are, let me rotate my 45, right-click, draw a conduit, and again, it's just, it's one of these Revit MEP things that is just kind of a pain in the butt, but it's something we have to get used to.
Slide over, okay, I've got three, I've got two more offices down here, brought up just enough conduit, there we go, right there, and I'm going to just bring both of these down first, and then I can actually go ahead and route them as I need to. There we are, I'm going to go ahead, come to this guy, and go ahead, take this, 45 up, right-click, draw a conduit over, and again, it's just, it decides when it wants to work and it decides when it wants to mess up. So sometimes you just might have to draw that little piece of conduit coming out.
There we go, perfect, I'm going to go ahead, come down to my next one, this one, I'm going to go ahead, grab here, drag it up to my 45, I'm just barely clashing a little bit, so what I'm going to do is I'm just going to slide the entire group of conduit over just slightly once I get all of it dialed in. So as you can see, I'm just clashing ever so slightly with that corner, so what I'm going to go ahead and do is, is I have the ability to slide this conduit over just a smidge. So I'm just going to grab all of these runs here, like that, and I'm just going to go ahead and tap it over, and that should be more than enough, so I'm going to come back down here and let's just double check, and yeah, now I'm avoiding it, no problem.
Let's go ahead and run these last two, this one's going to go all the way down to the big room, there we are, I'm going to come here, right-click, draw a conduit, I'm going to bring this guy in here. Now, the one thing that we did do in the previous, in the lower floor was the fact that we ran like multiple conduits to that specific, these specific rooms. Well, let's say we didn't want to do that, let's say the client comes back or the contractor comes back and says, hey, we need to change the size, well, I'm not going to select every piece individually, just how I can with plumbing systems and just how I can with duct systems, I'm
going to hover over one piece of the conduit, select the entire guy, and then let's go ahead and up this to like a one and a half inch conduit.
I'm going to come here, tab, it's going to select the entire chain all the way through, all the way down to the first floor, and then I'm going to go ahead and change that to one and a half inch, so we can get a few more wires in there. Then I have to actually go ahead and adjust these just slightly because again, I do have a bigger conduit now, so my two inch sizing does not necessarily work. And there we go, I'm going to go ahead and zoom extents, control S, save the file, we've placed the conduit for the first and the second floor, when we come back, we're going to go ahead, tie that conduit into specific rooms or into the specific panel, excuse me, and then we'll talk about cable tray and we'll be good, see you then.