Real-World Revit: Piping a Mechanical Room

IAN STRAWN: My name's Ian Strawn, and over about the next hour or so, I'd like to walk everyone through a real-world Revit application. I'm going to show all of you my personal workflow, and some tips and tricks that I found to help pipe a mechanical room. So, little bit about myself. I've been using CAD software for the last 14 years-- made the switch over to Revit about three years ago.

In that time, I've had the ability to work in a bunch of different industries. In pharmaceuticals, acoustics, and commercial HVAC. About four years ago, I started working for Victaulic as a piping coordinator in their construction piping services department, and my daily routine is modeling and coordinating for commercial HVAC piping, so I'm modeling and coordinating mechanical rooms.

So what I'm about to walk through with everyone is my process that I use on a day-to-day basis. This is what I use every day to get my project from start to finish. So what are we going to talk about today? I want to discuss the differences between the models for coordination and fabrication, and how we can quantify that with LOD, or levels of development.

Also want to talk about some best practices that are going to allow you to quickly get your pipe into the model. We've just got the job today, first coordination meetings tomorrow. I just want to claim some space-- we're going to go over a little bit of that. Want to understand how to create a model that'll facilitate successful coordination, because that's why we do this. We want to make sure we get all those issues figured out in the beginning.

And lastly, we want to talk about how we want to adjust that coordination model and get it ready for fabrication. So why are we doing this? A good coordinated model allows us to minimize issues in the field. So we can make that change in our models where our cost is half an hour, $50, instead of making that change out in the field, which could cost us thousands and days.

That, combined with a fabrication ready model that's as accurate as it can-- it's going to be an exact representation of what's in the field-- gives a more efficient install. What does this all mean? Why are we doing it? Money. Better profits for the company, everybody's happy.

So let's talk about the difference between coordination ready and fabrication ready. So in coordination ready model, we have elements that are placed there in approximate sizes, shapes, and locations. So when we first get started, we just want to get stuff in there. We want to take up space. Chillers are big, pumps are big, mains are big.

We want to get that in there so that way we know where it's going to go. Once we have that started and coordination process is rolling, all the trades are in there and we're going to adjust our piping to work with ducts, to work with fire protection. We're going to work together to make sure that we have no clashes, and the coordination goes smooth.

Get started for coordination, we're looking at an LOD model of about 200. And to finish and get it to the point where we're ready to start adjusting for fabrication, we're going to work to an LOD 350. And just in a second, we'll hit on what that actually means. Over on the fabrication side, our model contains elements that are fully coordinated and detailed.

So we've gone through the coordination process. Everything's set. We're clash free. We're ready to actually start building this thing. So we're going to take that complete and coordinated model and we're going to break it down into manageable parts-- into assemblies-- and we're going to put that through the fabrication process. Whether that's your shop, whether that's out in the field, however you do it this models now allow you to do that.

And to get there, we're looking at the LOD of 400 to complete that. So LOD-- what does that mean? Levels of development. Basically it goes from 100 to about a 500. 100-- just basic concepts, so we're going to talk about the 200 to 400 range. So in LOD 200, your model is basically generic. It's a round thing going down a room.

We don't know maybe what the size is. We don't know what the system is. Your shapes, and space, and orientation of objects are for reference only. So that chiller is going to be about there. The pump is going to be about there-- may not be the right size, but it gives us a starting point.

And all the information contained in the model at this point in LOD 200 is approximate-- it's just guidance. We're going to go through and we're going to make this thing actually work. Next is an LOD 300. This is where this model starts to get smart. So the model is now-- the model piping is now designated with a specific system.

So I can click on one of those pipes, and I'll know if it's chill water supply, chill water return, whatever. The size, shape and orientation of the objects can now be dimensionally set. So I can go and I can pull dimensions off of this piece of equipment, and I can move them around, and I know that they're going to fit. I know how big to make my pad based off of my size of my chiller.

Any elements should now be located accurately based off the project origin. What we mean by that is if we're going to share this file with the other trades, if we're going to try to place it accurately in a structural model and an architectural model, I want to make sure that I'm basing it off of their origin, so that way whoever I give this model to-- duct, fire protection, whoever-- they can coordinate again my model and it's going to be accurate.

So then as we go through coordination, we get towards the end-- bring this to an LOD of 350. So that means our model piping is now sized and located accurately per coordination. So we've moved around things where we had to, or made everything work. It's now good. We shouldn't have any issues once we get to the field.

Size, shape, and orientation of elements are now dimensionally accurate. So I can-- I know that where that bolt hole is that I need to mount that chiller at is going to be where it is. My dimensions should be perfect at this point. And secondary elements such as pull spaces, hangers, are now modeled and accurately, because we could have all of our piping good, but soon as we put a hanger in that may be going through a piece of duct, and that's not going to work.

So now, we've finished coordination. Everyone's happy. Everything's going to go smooth, hopefully. So now, we're at the LOD 400. This is where we take that coordination model and make it ready for fabrication. So now, all of our elements required for fabrication are there. So this means any little 3/4 inch taps-- if I want to make sure I have chain wheels and chain on my valves, because we all know they take up space and they need access.

All trade models have been coordinated, and all conflicts have been resolved. That's important. So we don't have to worry about making changes in the field. Finally, the models should now represent exactly what we're going to try to build. This way-- accurate. We can go back and forth between the model in the field and everything should be in there. The information can be pulled out whenever it's needed.

How many people have heard that before? [LAUGHING] Got the job Tuesday afternoon. By the way, Wednesday afternoon, it's first coordination meeting. What's important for us there is to claim our space. If we got big stuff, we need to get in there. We need to take up our space.

But before we can do that, we want to have some things in place first. So having a standard project template is really important. We can build into that template a lot of the monotonous setup that we're going to do anyway. And we can have it sitting there, we can have it ready for us so we can just get started right away.

So what does that look like? Basic pipe types and typical routing preferences, we want to have that stuff set up in template before we get started. This way, if it's something that we use a lot, we can go ahead and just copy it over, make a couple of changes, and I'm ready to go.

And just to preface this, I'm going to be walking through this whole demonstration using families. If you're using fabrication parts, the concepts are still the same. Some of the button clicks may be a little bit different, but you can still apply the same concepts to a model using fabrication parts. Also we want to add and preload typical families into our template.

What this allows us to do, if we have good content, is we don't have to start at LOD 200, we can start right at LOD 300. If I know my elbow centered end is exact, I can just start with that. I don't have to worry about making that change later on. This allows me to get to my end goal even quicker.

After that, once we have our template set and we get started, going to bring in our background files and our links, and set up our levels and grids. This way, we know what we're working with. We know the size of our room and we're going to orient it correctly.

Now, if we don't have that to start, which sometimes we don't, as long as we have some levels in there and we start using those levels, we can adjust it from there-- we can just when we finally get that information. So let's get piping in the model. We're going to get our model up to an LOD 300. We need to get ready for that coordination meeting tomorrow.

So we want to start by a rough routing our main piping. So we're going to start and say, I'm going to use equipment locations that I'm giving on my contract prints. We'll find out if they don't work, but we're going to start there. It's the only information we have, and it's our best starting point.

So based off of that, we'll route the mains. We're going to locate our penetrations where we're coming in and out of the room. And we're going to route our piping, and approximate locations, and elevations near our equipment. So we're going to kind of get it to where we think we're going to need it.

After that, we're going to make connections to our equipment. We're not going to connect to the mains yet. If your connection points are our T's, your mains will move around with you. But if you're using taps if you're building a header, taps don't like to stay connected when you start moving things around, so I personally like to leave that disconnected, get everything lined up the way I like it, and then we'll go make that change later.

And we're also going to only detail one drop, because if I have four pumps that are the same, I don't need to detail all four of them. I can use-- I can detail one, use the Copy command, and just copy them over. I can also copy them over something that's similar, swap it out for a different part, and just tweak the lines a little bit, rather than doing the same thing over and over again.

Once I have all of my equipment drops in, I'm going to go back, I'm going to dimensionally move around and space my piping and my equipment so it looks nice. All my spaces between my mains are good, everything is lined up. And that'll get me enough information to be ready for that first coordination meeting.

And by no means are we ready to fabricate off of this or finish coordination, but we're ready to get started. So let's actually do some work. I'm sorry, I can't see that side of the room-- my computer doesn't fit on the pedestal, so I apologize. So this is where we're going to start with. We have a simple mechanical room. It's going to be four chillers-- or four pumps, two chillers.

And as you can see, we've located the equipment based off of where we think it's going to go, so we're going to get started. I'm going to go up, and I want to just bring in my pipe-- I want to roughly route my mains. And again, I'm not going to cover click-by-click exactly what I'm doing. This is more the broad concept to sort of show you how it can be done, and some ideas to get your brains working-- see what you can do with it.

So I selected my pipe. I want to go and set my size, and I think 10 foot elevation sounds good. I'm going to select my system. So I'm going to start with my condenser water supply, because I know this is my gas and water pump, so I'm going to-- oh, let's make that pipe straight. So I'm going to come across where my suction side is, and it's going to come out of the room, that I know.

I also know they're going to come off my discharge and come straight across. And at some point, I need to tie into that chiller. Same thing holds true with my condenser water return. I know it's going to come in about the same spot as my supply. It's going to run across my room. I need to tie into my chiller somewhere.

So condenser water mains are in. Now, I'm going to do the same for my chilled water. I know those are 8 inch. We're going to put them at the same 10 foot elevation. Grab my supply-- know that's going to come in from the building here, run across, tie into my chiller.

Last, I want to get my return in there, which I know my pump is eventually going to sit here-- I know my suction sides going to be here, so just run them across, down out of the room. My discharge will be about here. Set it over-- get it near my chiller. There we go. Those are my mains.

Quick, easy, and they're in there. We can adjust them a little bit, but I've got stuff in there. I'm taking up the space that I need. So after that, I want to go through and start to make some equipment connections, so I'll start with the pumps. I'm going to go into a section.

I like sections-- if I have a piece of equipment that has both connections or multiple connections on a single plane, making the connections in a section is a little bit easier. If I have multiple planes, like the chiller when we get to that, I do that. I make those connections in 3D, but that's some of the only modeling I really do in 3D. I just like the 3D if I need to see spatially where I'm at, but for the most part, I like to work in a 2D environment.

So I'm going come down, just going to select on my pump. Draw pipe off. That's my connection size. I know my drop is going to be 8 inches-- going to throw it up at some random elevation, and that's it. Just going to leave it like that for now. I'm going to leave it like that for the first coordination meeting, because I have my pipe in there-- it's taken up my space. I'm going to come back and detail later when I have time.

Now, for the suction side. I'm just going to go grab one of my suction diffusers. I'll go in here and I'll place it. These duct diffusers, they place weird, but you just come in and flip them. Set my size. Now, our pick of the family-- that right there, if I look at in 2D, it's telling me the size is invalid, because we don't make an 8 by 6, but we do make an 8 by 8.

Now that works. Draw my pipe. That's it. Let me switch my service-- a condenser water supply, and there we go. There's my condenser water pump. Now, for my chill water pump, I'm just going to Tab Select, I'm going to copy it, bring it over to my other pad-- there's my chill water. Well, it doesn't it look like your water yet, and I have a different pump.

The beauty of it is I can select this pump, come up to my properties, switch it over to the other pump family that I have loaded, adjust the pump, and adjust my connections so now I know that this is a 5 inch-- that's what my pumps telling me. And I know my drop is going to be 6 inch, so I can make that change.

Now, I'm going to do the same thing on my suction side. Make that 6 inch-- watch what happens. They change the sizing, but it doesn't move that end connection. Same thing's going to hold true if I highlight the whole thing. 6 inch, same thing. But if I highlight it, come up and use one of our tools-- our resize selection tool-- I make that 6 inch, it resizes it and it shifts it over-- keeps everything in line.

So I'm almost done with my chill water pump. I just gotta come in, change my system-- chill water return, and there we go. There are my two pumps. Real quick, we've got our space taken up. I'm going to jump back to my 2D, Tab Select, Tab-Control Select, Copy, add two, and now I have four.

And that's how I'm going to leave my pumps for the first coordination meeting. They're close, they're almost connected, but the size is there, because I got to get this done quick. I got to get a lot of stuff in and get it ready. So now, I need to jump over to my chillers.

Here's where I talk about connecting a 3D environment. So I'm going to come down. I'm going to select my chiller. Click on the connection. By clicking on the connection, it automatically sets-- it automatically inherits the size and the elevation. So I come off and I hold down Shift-- see it's kind of placing it wherever? If I hold down Shift, it's going to keep it straight.

Hold down Shift-- I think 9 feet sounds good-- we're going to go up to. That's close to my mains. You notice as soon as I pull my cursor off of the bar, it ghosts to the image of the pipe up, and then if I hit Apply, throws the pipe in.

So now, I'm going to hit Escape, because I don't want to just continually-- continue with that pipe command, because it's going to be-- it's going to do weird stuff with my elevations. If I just come down and select again-- do the same thing. This time, I'm going to come out, route over up to 9 feet, Apply, and then I'm going do the same thing on the chilled water side.

Straight out, up 9 feet, Apply. Straight out, over, up to 9 feet, Apply. Now, I don't need this piece of piping here, I just know I'm going to go in that direction with it. So then I'll come up to my Tools, use my Delete Pipe.

I'm going to select the side of the pipe that I want my fitting to move towards. Just come in here-- delete that, delete that. And now I'm ready. Now, I've got my drops in, and now we're going to go back and we're going to talk about aligning them. So before I align them to my mains, I want to make sure my mains are in the right location.

And before I copy this chiller over for my second chiller, I want to make sure all that stuff is done and aligned so I don't have to do it twice. So let's jump back into our floor plan. So now, I know that I need to have my mains lined up where I want to have my mains lined up with my pump drops.

So I'm going to go and I'm going to use my Line tool. Going to select my suction, align that. Select my discharge, align that. Do the exact same thing on my second set of pumps so that my mains are aligned. I'm looking right here-- that's a little too tight for how I want to design this. So let's go back into my section, and I think if I just set this as an eccentric reducer flat on that side, we'll be OK.

So I'm going to come in here-- I'm just going to delete all three of those pieces out. I'm going to use my Line command again. And if I come onto my pipe, you see it's selected-- it wants to select the center line, but if I just hit the Tab, brings me to my edge of my pipe, and I can do the same thing up here. So now, we're aligned flat on the side. And if I select this pipe, and grab the node, and just pull it into the other piece of pipe, it's going to throw the decentric reducer right in there.

So now, I think I'll have enough space once I align that over. So I'll jump back, and I could either come into this pump, draw a new section, do the same thing, or just Tab Delete it, Tab Select, Copy, and there you go. Now, the last thing I want to do is align my main with the new center of my drop, so I'm going to use align.

And this parts a little tricky-- I just happen to know where it is. I know that this is my pipe. And if I come over to my center line, I'm going to hit Tab. And you can't see it, but it has a tiny little dot there, and when I select it, it moves it and aligns it.

Sometimes, that can be a little trial and error. You may have to try it two or three times to get the right dot, but eventually it'll get you there. So for me, that looks good. I'm OK with that for now. So I look at my four mains here coming across-- they're going to feed my chillers, and I know that this is the only one that I really can't move. I've got some ability to move the other ones, but this one needs be pretty stationary.

So I'm going to throw some dimensions on these four pull it out the side here, and I'm going to try 1 foot 6. So I select the pipe that I want to move, click to my dimension, type in 1 foot 6. It moves it-- eh, that looks good. So we're going to come down here and do the rest. 1 foot 6, 1 foot 6.

I think that works. I like my mains there. So then I come down and use the Align command again. I'm going to align my chiller drops with their main. Align, align. And once I have all four drops aligned, I can come back, Tab Select-- I can Copy my chiller over. Just like that, I'm ready for coordination. I'm ready for that first meeting.

Now again, it's not going to get you fabricated, it's not going to get you through coordination, but that first meeting that you have tomorrow, you'll be good. You can talk about something. So let's jump back. So what's the next step? Now, we need to revise the model.

So we took up space. Now, we're going to start working with the other trades, and we're going to figure out what we have to move, what they have to move, and make everybody happy. This is where we talk about the LOD 350. So the next couple of steps here, we're going to shift our pipes, drops, and equipment based off of that first coordination meeting.

So what we've learned, we're going to come back in, we're going to adjust the model first, make the changes that we need, and then we're going to move onto adding accessories and other smaller equipment. So I'm going to start breaking down and adding my valves into my pump drops. I'm going to add things like air separators. We're going to get all that stuff in there.

All the stuff that's going to take up more space and we need it for fabrication-- now, we're going to start to get in there so we can get to the end of coordination. And most importantly, we're going to make sure that we have full connectivity. This is where Revit really shines over the, what, 12 years that I spent working AutoCAD, because in AutoCAD, we could just make it look right.

In Revit, we want to pull the information out. We want to know exactly how long that piece of pipe is, and we want to throw that to our fabrication software, and we just want to cut it. So connectivity is the only way we can do that. That way, we know if it's connected, that pipe dimension is exactly what that pipe is going to need to be.

So let's walk through what that looks like. So after our meeting, we found out exactly where these penetrations are. So I know that off of this column now, my condenser water supply is 3 feet 6, and my condenser water return is 1 foot 6. So now, I have that, and because I like the way it looks, I just want to align.

That looks nice to me. OK. So it was a pretty uneventful coordination meeting-- that's all we got out of this first one. So now, we want to go and start adding all those other accessories that are important to coordination, that are going to take up space, that need access, that we're going to eventually need for fabrication. So let's start with an air separator. Come into our mechanical equipment. I'll grab my air separator, spin it around, and I'm just going to place it.

So we know sometimes, on an air separator, we have our inlet and outlet are different elevations, so how do we tackle that? So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to draw some pipe off of this. I'm going to come off at 6 inch, and I know it's going to go up to 8 inch to match the size of my main, and I'm just going to push that pipe in there.

I'm going to do the same thing on my outlet. 6 inch up to eight-- place it. So now, we need to bring it into this main. So what I like to do is I come up to modify, and I used a split element. Split it a little bit past the ends of the pipe that I've just placed, and then I just Delete that out.

Then, I come back and I'm going to align my little detail here in with my main. And now, I have to adjust its elevation. So it's in line in the x and y-axis. I need to bring it up into z. So I'll check this pipe-- that's 10 feet. So if I select that, make it 10 feet-- removed.

And now, I know that my outlet is 8 foot 10. And because I don't want any weird offsets in here, I'm going to change this main to 8 foot 10 as well. And then all I'm going to do is go back and use my Trim Extends command. Trim my pipe back together, trim that back together, and now I'm still fully connected.

I'll do a little cleanup here. We'll go back to our tools and grab our Delete Pipe. Bring our reducer right onto our air separator. And now, we've got a flanged air separator, but I've got a grooved reducer. So again, because we're dealing with families, we can just select those two. Come over to our Properties-- just swap them out-- still keeping connectivity.

But now, we're into our supply main a little bit, so I'm just going to grab my air separator. I think 6 inches ought to do it. There we go. So now, our air separators in. So now we have that. That's our one main in-line piece in our mains, so let's go and start working on our equipment. Let's detail out these drops.

So I know, again, I'm going to only detail out one of the pump. There's no reason for me to go through and detail each one individually. I'm going to come in and grab these two pumps, Tab Select them-- just get rid of them. I'm going to come back into my section. So I want to put my valves on my drops.

I'll come up and grab the valve. Place that. Place them anywhere-- I'm going to adjust the elevations later. Do the same thing with my check valve for my discharge. There we go.

For coordination, that's what I'm going to want my pump drops to look like, but now I want clean them up a little bit, because I don't want all these gaps. I don't want my reducers not being where they need to be. So again, we come back to our Delete Pipe. Throw my check valve right up on my butterfly valve. Bring my reducer down to my pump.

And now, I need to change my last connection over to my flange. And there we go. And now, because I like it-- I like when everything is nice and level-- I'm going to grab my valves. 7' 10" I think-- no, we'll-- let's try 7' 6". So we'll just Control-- we'll grab everything here. We'll come down to our offset, set it at 7 foot 6. Now, all of our valves are in line.

So what I'm going to do, I'm going to jump back out to my 2D. So those look good. We're going to Tab Select-- Copy them over again. Oh, I missed my snap point. Copy, Paste, and there are our four detailed pumps. Now, we'll go back and we'll connect this to the mains in a minute here. I just want to get the rest of my equipment done.

One thing we noticed when we were in that section, though, is that the inlet side of my pumps, my mains at 8 foot 10 and my outlets at 10 foot. I don't like that. I want to be able to rack those two mains, or I want to skid mount these two pumps. So I'm going to drop this line down to 8 foot 10, but I want to come back up to 10 feet here.

So I'm going to make this offset a rolling offset. Easy way to do that-- I'm going to get rid of that elbow. I'm going to bring this main back down to 8 foot 10 to match, and then I'm going to take this section-- I'm going to flip it. And I want to make sure I can see down the center of both mains that I want to tie into.

So my section box should cover it. And then what I'm going to do, I'm just going to select that elbow, that coupling, and the piece of pipe that I want to rotate. I'm going to use Revit's Rotate command, and instead of trying to grab this thing and move it around, I just like the Place button. Lets me place it right on the center of my lower main.

And then my next click is going to be the center of the pipe that I'm rotating, and my last click is going to be the center of the pipe that I need to tie into. So when I select that, I'm now at the exact angle of tie-in. I don't care what that angle is, I just know I need to be able to tie into that, put a 90 degree elbow on there, and make it work. So now that I have it, I can come back into my 2D again. We use the Trim command, select one end, grab the other, and ties it together.

So we didn't have to worry about figuring out exactly what angle we need to rotate those elbows at, because we really don't care in the end. We just need it to come together, and that's a real quick and easy way to do it. So now, we want to go ahead and we want to detail our chillers. So again, I'm just going to get rid of it. I'm going to go back into my 3D view just because it makes it a little easier to see.

So now, during our first coordination meeting, we decided that we didn't like our chiller drops taking up all that space. So we want to bring our supplies in and just align it with our returns. So one of the ways we want to do that is align it in, but when I align it in, I'm going to have the tie into my main at a 45 degree angle. I'm going to tie into the main at a 45 degree angle, and I'm going to use headers here, so I want to bring a tap in.

It's not necessarily the easiest thing, so what I found the best way to do that is to actually attach these first. So I'm going to come up to my Modify tab, and I'm going to use the Trim Extend Single Element, and what this allows me to do is select the main I want to tie into, and select the pipe that I want to tie into it with. And you'll notice, if I click on my main, if I hover over a pipe that's actually aligned to it, I get that dashed line. If I hover over a pipe that's not, I don't get the option to click on it, so I can't really like-- I can't miss.

So I'm going to do that with all four connections here. And then I know I need to move this-- the two supplies, but I want to keep this tap connected. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to use my split again. I'm going to split those pipes, and then delete that fitting, so now I have a disconnect here.

So with that disconnect, I can come back into a section, and I can align my supply with my return. I jump back, grab another section, align my supply with my return. Oh, wrong one. And I'll jump back to my 3D view. So now, my drops are aligned, but our taps aren't, so I know I'm going to try to rotate these on a 45.

So what I can do is come down here to my piece of pipe, Tab once just to get up to the tap. I don't want the main, I just want the tap. With that selected, I can come up to my Vic Tools, I'm going to use my Rotate Selection. It's different than the Revit Rotate. Revit Rotate gives you a point to rotate around, and if you're trying to do that in the section view, if your section is off by a quarter of a degree, that rotation is going to go haywire.

So with the Rotate Selection tool, all it's going to ask me to do is pick a piece of pipe that's going to act as the axis for my rotation. So if I click that main, I want to rotate on a 45. I click Rotate. Now, I can rotate that all the way around if I feel like it. Click Rotate, and now I know I'm on a 45.

I'm going to do the same thing with my condenser water supply. Rotate, select my main, rotate it over. And now, my connections are on a 45. I have to come back, trim the other.

So now, my connections are made. I don't have to worry about trying to drag this pipe and be at the exact right spot to bring it into my main, because if I'm off by a little bit, it won't connect. So now, my pipes are connected, so let's detail it out. I'm going to throw a valve on these as well. Again, I'm not considering where the valves are at, I just want them on the pipe.

I can come back and we'll clean it up a little bit. Rotate these around. Flip them over-- make it so that we can actually get to them. Do the same thing here-- flip it. Now, I'm going to need as much pipe in these drops as I can get. If I need to have a flow meter or something like that in there, I'm going to need upstream, downstream diameters.

So I want to put these two valves directly upon this elbow so I can get the most pipe out of this drop. So again, I'm just going to go back to my Delete Pipe tool. One, one, and now we're there. So I want to align my other valves with these.

Now, we've got some weird offset, but that's OK. All I have to do is come down, select it, copy it. Select my two valves and just paste it. So now, all my valves, even though they're at some weird 1/28 of an inch height, they're all going to be in line.

Now, last thing I want to do is I'm going to throw a control valve on here. So my customer decided they have a flange control valve that they want me to use. So I'm going to come back-- my system has my pipe accessories. I'm going to grab that flange control valve, and I'm going to just place it.

Again, don't care exactly where it's at right now. I just want it on the pipe. Rotate it around, clean it up. And because the flange valve, I can't use my coupling, so I'm just going to grab those two. If you accidentally select something you don't want to in a set, if you just hold down Shift, you can get rid of it from that set just like that.

So now, I have those selected. Again, since it's a family, I can come into my properties and I can just switch it over to my weld neck flange, and there we go. Let's put these the same elevation. Grab them both, set my offset-- 6 foot 6 sounds good to me-- and we're all set. And the entire time, all these changes that I've made, I've kept connectivity.

So now, I want to copy it over. Well, if we've tried to copy taps over, they sometimes want to disconnect. So instead of copying the whole thing, what I'm going to do is I'm going to Tab Select once to get up to my main, select it, and I'm going to hold down Shift, and just get rid of my tap and my first connection.

So once I've done that, I can copy it over, and I can just trim everything back to my mains again. So I'm going to jump back to my 2D. We still have it-- it remains selected. I'll hit Copy, copy it over. Jump back into my 3D again. I'm going to come back to my trim commands. I don't know if you noticed-- I love my trim commands.

So I use that same Trim Extend Single. And again, you can-- may have to work with a little bit of a weird angle, but it won't connect to it. You won't even get the option to connect to it if it's not lined up. So we'll run through all four of these connections again. And you see me connecting-- or clicking on the bottom of the pipe. I can click on top of the pipe too-- doesn't matter, still going to connect.

So now, we've got both shoulders fully detailed, and connected up to our mains, so let's do the same thing with our pumps. So now at the pumps, we can use this other Trim-- the Trim Multiple. So now, instead of one click for the main, one click for the drop, and then we can go onto the next, with Trim Multiple, I can select my main and then every subsequent click connects the pipe into that main.

And then I don't have to get out of the command. If I just click outside of it, it deselects my main, so I can come back and select the different one. And I can do that now with all four of my pumps. And again, I don't need to click the bottom of the pipe. I can click the top.

Connect it in-- same thing over here. So now, you can see those are all connected-- fully connected. Now, I don't want to have to kind of cut and groove this little tiny 4 inch piece, so again, we're going to jump back to our Delete Pipe tool. Delete, delete, delete. Now, it's nice and clean.

Last thing we want to do here-- I'm going to select my entire model, and I'm going to cap all the open ends of my pipes. I don't have any caps on here yet. I want to get them on there so my initial build materials going to be accurate. So I just select it all. Filter out so I only have my pipes-- cap my ends.

These don't need to be capped because they are going out to other areas. I delete those, and there you have it. That's a model that now is ready for completed coordination. You have all the information that you need in that model to accurately coordinate it, and get you to the point where you're at your final step, which is refining the model for fabrication.

So fabrication-- this is that LOD 400 that we were talking about. We need to fine tune our piping and equipment location spacing to prepare for installation. And what I mean by that is if we have-- if we throw a dimension between our pumps, and we find out it's 1 foot 11, and 15/16, you're not going to get that measurement out in the field. Let's make it 2 feet. Let's go through, and we'll refine that a little bit to make sure it's accurate.

We're also going to add small details, like instrument taps, mounting hardware, chain wheels, chain, things like that, that we know we're going to need on our build material. So now, it's going to be in our model, so our model is 100% accurate. And last, again, we want to insure that model has full connectivity. If it's not-- doesn't have the connectivity, we can't be certain that our pipe and our dimensions are accurate, so we want to make sure connectivity is there. That's of the utmost importance.

So to bring it all together, if you need to get a model from initial project handover to fabrication, it all starts with your preparation. We want to make sure that we have a template set up and ready to go so we can just get started as soon as we get the information that we need. Next, we want to work with good content, because the better the content is, the easier we can get further down the road.

We don't need to start with that generic LOD 200. We can start with the LOD 300, and it's one less step we don't have to take-- we don't have to convert it. Once you have your projects setup and going, you can start routing pipe and establish your basic locations.

So we can start moving around, get your equipment in, just taking up space. And we're going to leave the small details till later. I'm more concerned about a 24 inch main than I am about a 3/4 inch threaded ladder. I can get that thing in wherever. I need my big pipes in there. I need to take up my space.

And lastly, making use of all commands and tools that we have available combined with any tricks and tips you can learn along the way will help us get started quickly, a lot more accurately, and most importantly, get pipe into our model. And that's it. Anybody have any questions? Yeah?

AUDIENCE: Are those levels of development-- is that a company standard, or what does it mean?

IAN STRAWN: It's based off of-- well, the question was is the level of development I'm talking about a company standard? It's based off of standards that have been worked on sort of around the world to kind of come up with basic guidelines of what an LOD should be. So it's guidelines as to, if it's an LOD this-- LOD 200, this is kind of what we're looking for. LOD 300 is kind of what we're looking for.

I know in Australia and [INAUDIBLE] they've sort of determined these a little bit better than we have here in the US, but I think it's something that's starting to come along more and more, and people are starting to adopt it a little bit more as levels of accuracy to work to, and actually have something we can quantify what we're looking for. So it's not internal, but it's trying to become more of an industry standard. Yeah?