说明
主要学习内容
- Discover how to use Fabrication Parts in Revit
- Learn how to create spool sheets using Revit Assemblies
- Learn how to annotate Fabrication Parts in Revit
- Learn how to create material takeoffs
讲师
- NBNicholas BowleyNicholas Bowley has 12 years of experience in the MEP (mechanical, electrical, and plumbing) design industry. He has been with IMAGINiT for 2 years providing consulting, training, and support services.
NICK BOWLEY: All right. So I think I'm going to go ahead and get started. The first thing I'll say is, I'll be in the software a little bit more than most people. Can everybody hear me OK?
AUDIENCE: No. It's your mic.
NICK BOWLEY: No? Well, maybe when everybody else quiets down, it'll get better. But my mic is on, so-- it's on. OK. All right.
So I'll go ahead and get started. So my name is Nick Bowley. Prior to starting at IMAGINiT, I worked for an MEP design and engineering firm for 12 years. Obviously, design is not fab or build. But since coming to IMAGINiT, I've been doing more on the fabrication and the build side.
Between me and my coworker, Scott Buchanan, what we do at IMAGINiT is we go around and we do implementations, consulting, training, and troubleshooting for firms all over the country, especially on the MEP fabrication side. So a lot of people are familiar with Revit. And so what I want to say about that is, the reason to be in Revit on the build side is to be better coordinated.
Everybody here is familiar with Navisworks and they do coordination in Navisworks. But you don't really do coordination as you're doing your layouts. But being inside of Revit, the advantage would be you're laying things out, retracing the design model, converting the design model, and coordinating that in Revit with the structural model, the architectural model, and any other consultants working on that. So that's why we want to be in Revit on the build side.
So this is a list of the topics I'm covering in the class. So a little bit of just designing using fabrication parts, detailing with annotations, creating spool sheets-- that will be toward the end-- and doing takeoffs with the spool sheets. Some of these topics may be a little redundant of some other presentations. But I think they all kind of complement each other. And maybe something that wasn't covered in one presentation will be covered here.
A lot of the topics I'll be covering might actually be a little bit fundamental. But I was assuming that a lot of the build MEP engineers maybe aren't even familiar with Revit at all. So I wanted to cover some basics and kind of welcome you into the software. Because I remember when I was learning Revit back in 2007, it was kind of frightening. I was a little afraid of going over budget or getting fired for doing something totally wrong and screwing up the whole project.
So this is a little diagram I made. And the important thing about this diagram is that I foresee a workflow maybe a little bit beyond what people think. And that is, for design engineers, they could actually take a fabrication model from a previous project and roll that into a design model as an as-built condition.
So I used to do a lot of health care. I used to do a lot of renovations. And we would go out and do a survey. But having an as-built condition model that was already created for us-- we can kind of roll that into a design model and get started. And then that whole model becomes recycled over and over and over again on a lot of projects.
I just wanted to throw that in there as kind of a process that might reveal itself, even though maybe it hasn't yet. But a lot of that will come with coordination between, you know, the fabrication engineer, who maybe did that previous project, the client maintaining the database, and then the design engineer actually asking for it and getting that file. So there is some potential cost savings there.
So most of my PowerPoints-- they're very basic. The main thing I'm doing with my PowerPoints is showing you what I'm trying to accomplish. And then I'm going to flip to the software and really just do things in the software.
So my presentation is very heavy on the handout. So if you have the handout available from the AU app and I do something too fast, go through the handout later on. I wrote it more like an instruction manual. So if I skim something-- do something too fast-- the handout is going to be really good to supplement that later on. And you can go back and give that to somebody at your office, and they can go through it almost like a training material.
So the first thing I want to do is cover the Design to Fabrication button. And there we go. So here, we have a design model. And I've got Revit native ductwork here.
So very simply, you can highlight that run. It'll filter out tags in air devices. And then there's a button here, Design to Fabrication. That was new in 2017, correct? Yeah.
Now, this may not be-- '16? All right. This may not work perfectly, depending on the content that the design engineer used. But simply click that button. Pick from the services that are loaded into your project already.
So here are my ductwork services. So that will be return, actually. Hit OK. And now, that's been converted to fabrication. Now that round elbow turned into a mitered elbow.
I could've picked a different service or excluded some things from that service. But ideally, that would get you a large part of the way there versus exporting a Revit model to AutoCAD and then importing that into Fab CADmep and then tracing the design lines. You're a large part of the way there.
Now granted, the design engineer doesn't always rack pipe correctly or they space things for clarity. But all you're doing is adjusting things at this point or fixing routing preferences, as opposed to remodeling everything from scratch. Oops. Wrong one. I already messed up. There we go.
So the next thing I'm going to do is covering how to use fabrication parts in Revit. So we can model duct and pipe using fabrication parts. We are going to use our fabrication services that we have set up in Fabrication CADmep. Hopefully, you took some classes on Monday if you're in here. And they might cover how to bring the services into Revit and how to get those set up properly.
All I'm going to cover is really just how to use those services or how to use these fabrication parts. So let's say, for example, you don't have this pallet right here, which is the fabrication service pallet. You'll find, under the systems ribbon, there's a fabrication parts button. That will bring up this pallet here. Hit this dropdown here, picked from your service that you loaded in from Fab CADmep.
Everything I'm doing is really out of the box. There's nothing custom, nothing proprietary, nothing really pre-set up. And for me, I usually appreciate that-- that it's not like [? canned too ?] much. So I'm going to pick down from this service here. And let's do ductwork first. So let's go first floor ductwork- supply duct-- and hit this dropdown here.
You can pick what type of components you're placing. So I've got ductwork, hangers, end of line equipment, flex duct and hangers, and things like that. So I'm going to just pick ductwork here. And then you simply place it on the screen wherever your cursor is.
Now before you place it, just a couple of tips. If you hit space bar, it rotates it. That's always been a big help for me and, surprisingly, a lot of people don't know that. If you have a building that's on an angle or a curved building, which happens a little more than I would like, you can simply hover over that curve-- actually, not with fabrication parts, so I'll show you that with a pump.
So I've placed two components here. And I could stretch them out and connect them and place elbows and then maybe align them. But that tends to take a little while. And if you were here on Monday evening, you saw that they've improved actually how you model duct and pipe. They had a little closing note about that.
But that is not out yet in 2017, so let's do it a different way. So here I've got two ducts. I want to connect them. So I can click on a duct and you route and fill.
Click on the two ends. And then I can look at my routing preferences and we can exclude different objects or include different objects. And we can use these little arrows to cycle through the available parts that we're using to create this run.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: I'm sorry?
AUDIENCE: How do you get the duct [? to be the ?] right length?
NICK BOWLEY: I'm not really worried about length right now because there's another button for that. So let me know if I don't answer that in a few minutes though. So we've got our run in there, and I'm just going to drag this out. So again, this is not the right segment lengths for the ductwork as you were pointing out.
To handle that, you can really just hover over a piece of duct, hit Tab, and depending on how much you're trying to select, the tabbing might actually be a little different. I mean, let me do something else really quick. Let's put another piece of duct in here, route and fill. And let's not do that actually.
But you can hit Tab. It'll grab the entire system. Now, when you hit Tab-- usually the first time you hit Tab, it'll select that branch. The second time will select the branch and the duct or piping it's connected to. And then a third time usually selects the entire system.
So you hit Tab to select the entire run. And then there's an Optimize Lengths button up here. And that's pulling from the lengths that are preset in your services. And that will redo your lengths for you.
So I don't really worry about the sections too much as far as when I'm just getting it in there at first, just because that button's available. I'm going to do some piping and then I'll come back to that. On the components side, I find a lot of design, build, or fabrication firms-- they actually like the Revit components. They're very easy to make. Yeah?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: Add a flange? Sure. I'm not really set up for that right now. And I don't have time for it, but yeah. It's really going to look at your services, however you're set up in Fab CADmep.
So in Revit, I find a lot of people-- they tend to make components in Revit as opposed to making things like pumps and equipment in Fab CADmep. It's really simple in Revit to make them. There is a large database in Revit for manufacturers, similar to from Fab CADmep. But making custom stuff in Revit is actually not that difficult, with practice of course.
So we're going to go ahead and we're going to use a fabrication component here. So I'm going to go to the Systems tab-- Mechanical Equipment. And I've got a pump. And again, I can hit Tab. And this time, I'll try it on the angled piece of wall.
And when you Tab on an angled piece of wall, it'll match that angle of that object. So again, I've done way too many curved buildings. And tracking those angles is always a pain in the neck. So I'm going to put these in. And so we're going to do another routing preference similar to what we did a second ago, basically using those same steps.
So I've got a pipe here and I want to connect it to the ends of these two pumps. And let me fix some of the things on that pipe. I kind of neglected the size and the elevation.
So if I click on that pump-- or on that pipe, use the same tool-- the route and fill-- click on the end of that pipe. Click on the end of the pump. It searches my preferences. Again, you can cycle through or just pick what you want it to come in with. Finish it out.
I can click on this pump here. And what I might actually do in this case is I can either draw a piece of pipe coming off that pump, either as a fab part or just a Revit pipe, and then convert it, which might seem like a couple extra steps. And then I just use the route and fill again. Make sure you hit the cut into button.
And then now, just the optimize by lengths. And then I had a pretty long segment, so it's not too many pieces. But that's very easy to do as opposed to coming out and then picking another elevation or cutting a section and modeling that. It's a lot easier to use the route and fill.
And again, maybe in the next release of Revit, based on what they showed us on Monday, things can get better with that too. I may flip back to my PowerPoint to make sure I'm doing what I planned. So we already did that. Oh, yeah.
If for some reason, you don't want to go back to your service and you wanted different lengths on your ductwork-- so maybe, on one of your floors, the service elevator only fits like-- I don't know. This ductwork's pretty short as it is, but maybe it can't be as long as it is. I double-clicked on that duct. I can come in here to Length. And this is the same thing as far as modifying any fabrication part in Revit.
There are some instance properties that can be modified and tweaked from Revit, although a lot of those settings you're going to want to go back to your fabrication service to do back in Fab CADmep. So I could say, I'm going to change it up to a value. And instead of 4 foot 11-- maybe that's too long-- I'll do 3 foot 11.
When you do input in Revit-- in AutoCAD, everything is usually inches. So it's like 48, you know, 60 for 5 feet-- whatever. In Revit, it's feet. And that's really confusing and hard to get used to.
So when I input feet and inches in Revit, all you have to do is 3 space and then your inches. Typing in, you know, 3' - 11", it works. But I could've done two more ducts by the time you finish typing that. So just-- I know that's a very minor thing to tell you, but it's those little things that help you work efficiently in Revit. All right. It didn't like that one.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: What's that? Yeah, I could certainly type in 47, but I have to put the inch mark in there. Or I'd have to type in like 0 space 47, and that would do 47 inches as well. So 0 space 47-- 47"-- 3 feet hyphen 11 inches-- all that works. It's whatever is faster for you to type.
And for me, personally, I just like to type in the foot-- whatever that is-- space inches. And then I can even do a fraction of an inch with another space. But again, that's a lot faster. It's really just the foot mark I hate. It's shift foot mark, you know? Or a shift inch marks I hate.
So just a very minor tip, but again, some of the things I'm covering are going to be very fundamental. And then let's see if we can re-optimize those lengths. I went back, but-- oops. Sorry. There's always pros and cons to a live demo.
Another thing I like to do, or one of my favorite Revit commands, is Create Similar. I need another duct the same size, same elevation as that. I click on it. And you [? would really ?] right click and hit Create Similar.
I need another pump. I have no idea what manufacturer, what model pump it is. I just know I was told I need another one. Click on the pump. CS-- that will place you another pump.
If I go back to my piping plan, I need another pipe, same elevation as this one. I have no idea what the size or elevation is. I just thought I need to continue. Now placing another piece of pipe. It's shocking how many people don't know the CS command. It's very basic, but yeah.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: So if I wanted to, say, place another pipe down this hallway over here-- so if I wanted to do a copy, I would click on this pipe. Copy, pick my base point, pick my other base point, hit Escape. Then I got to do Rotate. And then I got to type in negative 90.
So that was a couple steps-- didn't seem like a big deal. But if I click on this, type CS, I'm starting the pipe command. I just hit space bar and then I put it over there. So it's just saving me from having to use the Copy and then Escape and then click on it again and do Rotate.
In AutoCAD, you might have a [? list for ?] [? team ?] from Copy Rotate, which might work better. But in Revit, I find CS is great. And it's not even limited to like pipes. There's things like tags, where you can't really copy a tag from one element to another because it needs that host to read. And the CS command just works better than a Copy.
So in some cases, Copy doesn't work at all. That is not to say you can't use Copy in Revit. It really just depends on what you're trying to do at that moment. Again, do whatever you got to do to get the job out the door.
One of the things that I love about Revit-- and I'm going to jump to a design model for this just to emphasize how bad things are. Let's see here. So here's a design model. And it's really the same model I'm working in. But again, one of the advantages to working in Revit is that you're going to see all of the other disciplines.
A really cool tool I like in Revit is that I can do a selection, and they added this button in 2016 called Selection Box. If you have a previous version of Revit, it's called Coins. Although if you're doing fabrication, you're probably not using this previous versions of Revit. But I did a selection. And what that did was it isolated those elements that I highlighted.
And it generates a 3D view of those objects. And then I use these little grips at each of the edges to isolate those objects. And I usually like to make this a shaded view just so I can see what's going on. So looking at this file here, I can quickly identify problems.
Hey, there's a cable tray running through my fan coil units. I've got-- let's make this a double line. I've got sloped drain pipe running through my ductwork. And you can probably expect to receive files like this from design engineers if you're not a design engineer.
But using Revit, I can quickly identify those problems. Or flipping back to my file-- let's move this up to a height I can create a clash. Oops. 13 space 6. So here I highlight the stuff that I drew over here.
Do a Selection Box-- isolates what I just drew. And then I can actually see I'm clashing with a beam. And then, while I'm in this 3D view, I can actually just click on it and then change in elevation and correct the clash. Or I can maybe route the piping in a different direction.
I don't always work in 3D. I usually just at least have it in a second screen. And then, as I'm modeling in plan view, I see what's happening in 3D. So again, this is one of those advantages into being in Revit versus being in a CAD application without the architect and structural engineer.
And you probably would have caught this in Navisworks, but even there, you'd have to draw it a second time basically to correct it. So I really love these views. When I first started using Revit, we'll just say I was under-impressed or underwhelmed. I didn't really understand like, oh, it's 3D. Why do I care about 3D?
But once I started using things like this and coordinating better, I saw the value. I was like, we're not creating pretty pictures or anything. Why do we care about 3D? Yeah?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] Is there [INAUDIBLE] design [INAUDIBLE] fabrication in Revit. Is there a issue with those two [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: No. Any connector in Revit-- like pipe connector, you can actually connect to with a fab pipe. The only problem would be on the design side. If there was flow you were trying to track through that pipe, you're going to lose your flow when it hits the fabrication pipe.
But you know, if I have an air [? cleaner ?] with a duct connection, I can connect to it with a fab duct or a Revit duct. But again, the fab stuff, you're going to lose that design information traveling through the ductwork. But with the fab stuff, obviously, it's more accurate. And it's going to have a lot of-- more benefit on the build side.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: I'm sorry. Say that one more time.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: So actually, I only moved the pipe six inches, so everything that's connected in line, such as this elbow, gets moved. But things like this tap-- that gets stretched down. There's no stretch parameter in Revit. Yeah.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] pipe [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: Oh, I see. Yeah, I mean, I could stretch this out and make sure that if I'm moving it this way, it's not creating another clash. Or what I might do is split the pipe, put a gap, and then like add an elbow or something. Yeah.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: Sure. Yeah, I mean, you've got to look at the big picture and you don't want to solve one problem and create another problem. So yeah, having it in an isolated area that tight is maybe not the best idea if I can't see the extent of what I'm adjusting. So that's a good point.
So when you're in this 3D view, just on another note, when you're panning around, if you click on the object, it's really just like Navisworks at that point. But that object stays where it is. Again, that's probably a bigger deal for non-Navisworks users as far as knowing that. Going back to his question, he made me think of something else, which is-- let's see here.
When you bring in fabrication from CADmep, you cannot bring it into a model that already has a fabrication part already drawn. So I just wanted to kind of point that out just in case you go back to your office and you try to do something and you realize you can't. Let me do this twice.
So here's a file with no fabrication ductwork drawn at all. And when we use the add-in for import, it's looking for an MAJ file. And I think I have one on my desktop I like better. You know, it came in fine. Everything's fine and dandy.
But I just wanted to point out, if you try that at your office and you already have some fabrication elements in the model, you get an error message. And it's going to look like this. You cannot import fabrication job in a project that already contains fabrication parts.
So you'd want to end up importing that into the blank project, then simply copy to clipboard and paste it into another project. And that should be fine. So I just wanted to point that out for people who don't know Revit and maybe don't realize what that dialog box is telling them.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: I basically brought it into a blank project. So I imported the MAJ file into a blank Revit project. And then I'd just copy to clipboard and pasted it into my actual project.
AUDIENCE: Or a link and bind.
NICK BOWLEY: Yeah, you could do link and bind. But depending on your checkboxes, you might bind more than you anticipated. But yeah, link and bind works too. All right. Oops. I'm stuck in my zoom.
Let's go back here. That's fine. Good enough. All right. Let's talk about dimensioning in Revit.
My wife is a Revit user and she's not necessarily a fan. But one thing she loves in Revit is dimensioning. So I have a pump here and I want to put it 6 feet away from that wall. In AutoCAD, you would usually use like a construction line or you'd place it at the wall and then move it 6 feet. In Revit, what you can do is place a dimension after you drop it in there.
And to move this pump to be 6 feet away from the wall, you can't click on the dimension right now because it's black. You click on the object that gets modified. You see the dimension [? gate ?] becomes blue-- indicates it's editable. And then I can do 6 for 6 feet or, you know, 5 space 6 for 5 foot 6-- whatever you want to do.
So dimensions are really awesome in Revit in the fact that they can drive geometry, which in AutoCAD, it can't really do. In AutoCAD, I've-- again, I'm putting things in place I don't want it and then I have to move it after the fact. In Revit, I drop it approximately where it needs to be. And then I drop a dimension on it. That's really fantastic.
While I'm on dimensioning, another trick-- again, if you're already a Revit user, maybe some of these aren't that groundbreaking. But I could place a string of dimensions. And if all of these pumps were supposed to be equally spaced, hit the little EQ button there, and they'll be equally spaced. Oh, I want to tighten these up.
And now I can use the arrow key on the keyboard to nudge it. And they're all nudging together to remain equally spaced. And if I had to fix this, since I wanted them in between each of those pumps, I could place another dimension and then click in the middle of nowhere to drop it. Say, oh, that's supposed to be exactly 3 feet. Oh, it's not [? driving ?] me-- that one, for me. Why not?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: Ah, it usually works. Try it one more time, and then I'll move on to something else. Now, there we go. 3, Enter, and then it re-spaced it. I didn't lock this side, which is why it shifted that way.
But it did let me do that and they remained equally spaced. Now, you don't really want to print the equal dimension. You can delete it. When you delete it, you get a message that says, even though you're deleting it, it's still constrained to be equalized. And you can hit Unconstrain or you can hit OK.
But the dimensions in Revit are really fantastic. And on the build side of MEP, we place a lot more of them than design engineers do. So moving on back to the fabrication stuff, one big difference or one problem I had in Revit 2016 is, if you look at this list of parameters down here, we had a size parameter in 2016. And that was about it for fabrication parts, versus in 2017-- oops. Sorry.
I get stuck with my zooming command. I did, didn't I? In 2017, we went from having four categories that maybe is usable to 24. So the list on the right here is the list of parameters in 2017 as far as what we can tag versus 2016.
So in '16, I was trying to get some design and build firms into Revit. And it really wasn't happening because they couldn't tag anything as far as, like, bottom of duct, length of duct, things like that versus in '17, it's more usable. So they've improved that by, you know, six-fold.
So every year, Revit comes out-- I don't know. Maybe it's a little optimistic, but I might expect improvements kind of along the same lines, where things are pretty drastic and great. But did you have a question over there?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: Is one of the parameters in the list?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: Oh. So that would be basically the invert of an object-- could be anything. Could be a slab, could be fabrication object. It might be redundant of bottom elevation.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: I'll have to check that, let you know as far as what it's doing as far as, like, maybe like wall thickness of pipes. If it's doing anything different-- I'll have to check that.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: OK. Yeah. So anyway, the point of this slide is that we have that many more parameters to pick from. And then going back to Revit, let's make a custom duct tag. So if I try to load a tag into Revit as it is, we don't have much by way of fabrication tags.
And it's not really a big deal because we can create them very easily. So we have bottom of duct tag. We have size tags, slope tag, but they're all kind of separated. And I don't see any pipe tags. But it's OK.
You could start with one of these tags and then modify it. And let me go back and open one of those instead of what I was doing before. I hate diving into this.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: All right. So here, I'll start with the size tag. And modifying a tag family in Revit is really the simplest family you can ever modify. So definitely don't be afraid to modify these.
So I click on that tag and I click on the Edit label up here in the ribbon. And all those parameters that I was showing you a minute ago-- they're available from this list. So if you want to use bottom elevation or if the spot bottom elevation is more accurate, you can pick one of those. Add it to the list. So if I wanted duct length, we could certainly add that as well.
And what we're doing is we're creating a custom tag. Do we want these to all be in a line? Maybe not, so I'll hit the Break button here and that way, it will be three lines for three parameters. Hit OK.
Now, I don't want to override a parameter that might already exist in our project. So auto load under project and close, then save it. But I'm going to save it as duct size, you know, BOD LEV. So I'm kind of describing what that tag is doing. Sometimes, I'll combine all my tags into one, but I don't want to do that here. It's too much.
So then I did a save as. And now, when I go to tag my ductwork, I've got that tag to choose from. And it looks like I need to change my elevation here. For those who don't know, very similar to CADmep, when you change your object's size-- this may not be a good idea. Yeah, didn't think that was going to be a good idea.
So I just used CS on that tag, by the way. When I change this object's size, the tag updates with it, not unlike Fab CADmep. So there is that parametric relationship, contrary to Vanilla AutoCAD, which is just, you know, lines. But we made a custom tag family and it took seconds.
And while I was in there, I could have changed the font. I could have put brackets around the elevation. I could have put BOD in front of it. So if I come back in here and edit label, I could say, oh, you know, let's say BOD colon-- or I don't know if you'd put that in there. But L for length-- whatever you want.
Whatever your company standards are, you can match them. Sometimes I'll talk to people at offices, and I'm like, oh, you don't know Revit. What have you heard? And they hear Revit looks like trash. And I'm like, well, it looks like whatever you want it to look.
You can match your CAD standards very, very close with very few exceptions. So we just made a custom tag right there. And again, it's very easy to do. All right. So let's apply some color filters to this.
You'll see that my supply ductwork is blue. If I came in here and I picked a return duct, it's going to be green. And if I came in here and picked an exhaust duct, it's going to be pink-- whatever. The way or the reason that that's happening is by using a filter in Revit. If you're using a view template, you're going to come in here to the properties where it says View Template.
And you click on the template that you're using. And you get a dialog box that looks like this. And again, we were working with filters, so I'll hit Edit Filter. And these are the filters that I made. So we're searching for something with a rule.
And all I did was I came over here and I applied a color to that object. And let's go examine one of these filters just so you understand what the rules I set up for are. You could use different rules. I could've used service name-- fabrication service.
So over here, I'll just hit New. I'll just do supply duct. So I'm creating a new filter right now just to show you the steps. So here's my supply duct filter I'm making. I'm going to go down the list to MEP fabrication ductwork, then hit this dropdown. Fabrication service equals-- and then supply ductwork.
And you can do that a couple of ways. I could do Contains. And I think you guys pointed out that Contains wasn't there before and it is now. So you just make a very simple rule.
If we're doing like all supply piping one color, then I could just do Contains Supply instead of specifying, which was your example earlier in the week. So I make that rule. And then I simply add that rule to the list. And then I can apply a color. I already had that rule, so I don't want to create any confusion. But--
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: No, but I can do that in Navisworks with a very similar set of rules. You use the appearance profile in Navisworks. You'd make a similar set of rules. I think it's like CADmep Plus is the element type. And then service equals supply-- whatever. Yeah, go ahead.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: For Revit ductwork, that's fine.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: It doesn't work for the fabrication systems that way. This is kind of like quasi-2010 Revit for the design engineers, like what we used to have to do. But yeah, we have the system overrides from Revit systems for design engineers with graphic overrides. But for the fabrication service, we don't really have that yet. So we're going back to filters, which is what I used to do back in like 2010, 2011. Yeah.
AUDIENCE: Can you add like your parameters [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: So that wouldn't be for a part. That would be for the whole system. I'll try that in a second. I'll poke around a little bit. I won't spend too much time on it just because I have a lot of other stuff I have to do.
In this same filter, I can uncheck filters too. So I use the filters to exclude objects. So if I'm creating an HVAC piping plan versus like a drainage piping plan, I could create filters for drainage piping versus, you know, chilled water piping. And I can uncheck and check what I don't want to see because they both fall under the MEP fabrication pipework.
So you can't just turn off the category. You have to create a filter to turn those off. All right. Let me-- oops. Let me check his one idea out. So I'm going to-- you know, I want to save your question for the end if that's OK.
AUDIENCE: That's fine.
NICK BOWLEY: OK. So again, everything I'm doing, it really is laid out very nitty-gritty in the handout. So if I did something, skipped something-- if you missed something, go to the handout. It's all there.
So let's jump into the spool sheets before I run out of time. I'm actually doing pretty good on time, so maybe I should chill out. So for the non-Revit users, when I toggle between the ductwork plan and the piping plan, I'm just going in the project browser down here at the left. And I find fab HVAC piping. And then it's all there.
Everything you model in Revit-- it exists in the real world, except for tags. I could show piping on 100 first floor plans. It doesn't matter, but depends on the rules for the view. So I just toggled to the piping plan. Sorry. I'm getting all tripped up by my little shortcuts here.
And what we're going to do is create an assembly. And I was actually afraid that a lot of their classes were going to cover this. And I know it has been covered before. But what I've seen this year a lot is a lot of people have assembly add-ins, and even Autodesk revealed one on Monday night. But it's probably important for people who aren't familiar to understand what an assembly is.
And then, if you look at a third-party application for assemblies, you'll actually know what the advantages are to that. So I'm not saying you don't need an add-in, but let's understand how to do an assembly as it is out of the box first. Ah, hate that. Let's uncheck that.
So I'm going to do a selection here. And I'm going to make an assembly out of that. I'm going to filter out my pump. So then, I'm going to hit the little filter here and uncheck mechanical equipment. So there, I've got some piping.
The assembly button is up here next to the group button. And it's similar to a group, but not a group. I wouldn't really copy an assembly around in Revit because each time you do, it makes like a new assembly. So it's not a group. It's an assembly.
So your preferences for naming might vary, but I'm just going to call this spool 1 dash 100 maybe. So I'm naming my spool. And you can find this all the way at the bottom left corner of your project browser. That assembly gets created there.
I'm going to right click on that. And I'm going to hit Create Assembly Views. From here, I get a list of view types I can choose from. What scale do I want my views at? I actually like half inch equals a foot.
Do I want a 3D view? Sure. Do I want a plan view? Maybe. Let's just stick with the 3D for now.
And I do want a schedule. So right now, I'm just going to make one schedule through here. And then I'm going to duplicate that schedule. And just in case you forgot, my goal is a sheet that looks something like this. So basically, I'm going to create this right now with the steps that I'm doing, just for people who don't know where I'm going yet.
So I'm getting a 3D view. I could get a plan view. I could get sections and elevations. But let's just stick with this. And I do want a sheet with my title block.
So the checkbox for sheet-- and when I hit OK, down there at the bottom left corner where that spool was, I get a plus sign. So there's my 3D view. There's my schedule. There's my sheet.
So if I go to my sheet view, I'm going to click here. And I'll just rename my sheet. I'll just call it-- just naming it. And again, the advantage to showing you this is that maybe you'll understand the value of maybe some of those other add-ins people are offering out there.
So I've named my sheet. Now I need to drag on my 3D view. So I just found it on my project browser, held my left button, drag it, and then click to drop it there. Now, I have a schedule here. And it's only really set up for one thing.
And this is going to leverage a new feature in 2017. I'm going to take this schedule and duplicate it because I have a couple other schedules I want to use here. So I right click Duplicate. Right click Duplicate. And so one of these is going to be a fitting schedule.
So I'll just call it a pipe fitting schedule. And the next one will just be a straight pipe schedule. And the other one will be maybe a weld schedule. [? Hang ?] [? in ?] there.
So with these schedules, this one here is a weld. And it has a view template assigned to it for pipe welds. If I come to the pipe schedule, I can click on that view template and I can choose the pipe schedule. And now, again, this is something new in '17. We can actually include other options other than the appearance in a view template in 2017.
So existing Revit users may not realize this yet. But in 2016 and earlier, the only thing you could do in a view template for a schedule was this appearance tab here. And that was like the gridlines and your font for your headers and things like that. But in '17, we can do formatting, appearance, and even what fields I'm using.
So I have premade a schedule in a view template. And all I'm doing is assigning it to a copy of a schedule. So again, I click on that. Assign it to pipe. Click on that so it says pipe fittings schedule there.
But it doesn't actually show pipe fittings. Click on that view template for pipe fittings. Now the whole schedule just changed itself. Now, I can't pick to make three schedules when I create the assembly view. But I just made one of them.
I duplicated it, renamed it, and then assigned it a view template. So somewhat fast-- I'm not going to say it's faster than CADmep. And again, Autodesk kind of revealed something on Monday. And again, there's a lot of third-party applications that streamline this. But I just want to show you what the basics do out of the box.
So I'm not showing anything special-- nothing you can't do today. And hopefully, that works out well for what you're expecting. So now that I have these schedules, drag and drop. Just dragging them onto the sheet-- very simple.
So at this 3D view, I need some tags. So let's make a custom tag for that. And you know what? Let me show you some of the properties of these schedules before I do that. And I do have time for it. So yeah.
If I go to this weld schedule and look at the properties for it-- and again, all these properties are very listed out in the handout. If I look at the fields, I just have a count, parameter size, fabrication fitting description, and I'm filtering by fabrication fitting, contains weld. Maybe that rule isn't going to work in all cases, but you can come up with a similar rule at your office.
One difference between this weld schedule versus a pipe schedule is that I have the Itemize Every Instance unchecked. Because this is unchecked, it's going to look at whatever my sorting properties are. So anything with the same description of the same size will get combined into a single row because Itemize Every Instance is unchecked. If that was checked, every single weld will show up as a line and you're going to kind of get a count of one for every single weld.
I really love schedules in Revit. Although, well-- anyway-- so then for the pipe schedule, if I look at that same property for sorting, Itemize Every Instance is checked because I'm numbering every pipe and every fitting. And I do want to get a line for every pipe. That way, I can retrieve things like pipe length and other information.
So right now, my item number column is actually blank. I haven't actually filled in my item numbers. So let's go ahead and do that. And let's create a custom tag for it.
So if I want to tag my piping-- I actually already had the tag made, but I'll just open one of those for you just to show you. Oh, yeah. If you want to tag a 3D view, you have to lock it. It's a little [? half ?] [? C ?] icon with a padlock on it. Lock it if you want to tag it.
Make sure you like the orientation and then view before you lock it. You can still unlock it, but when you unlock it, you lose your tags. So you basically want to make sure you have that 100% decided before you start tagging. So I'm in this view. So I just double-clicked in the view-- just kind of like going through a paper space viewport.
And I can go to Annotate, tag by category, and you know what? I don't think I loaded my tags yet. There's a couple ideas on how you can go with this. You can use a multi-category tag or you can make the tag over and over and over again. I actually like to make the tag over and over and over again.
Like that's good. What's going on here? Do I have to edit the assembly to tag them? No. All right.
Let's use the multi-category tag. It's probably going to work better. So I'm actually going to use a multi-category tag, otherwise I was going to use the tag all command or tag by category command. And all I'm doing is clicking on the pipe. I had the Leader option checked.
And I'm using a free end. You might prefer attached end. You could use the tag all command, which will tag every piece of pipe. And then you'd just have to move them for clarity. And you'll notice these tags are blank.
They're pulling the same information that was in that schedule, which was also blank. And again, this might seem longer than Fab. But now I can click on this assembly, edit assembly, and click on each piece of pipe and find the item number parameter. Type in one. That's an old tag. All right. Let me fix this tag.
So-- oh, yeah. OK. All right. I'm starting to get messed up now.
But basically, you'd be Edit Assembly and then renumber those. Then it'll update in the tag. I kind of got my parameters mixed up. I was doing some updates the other day, and it kind of jammed me up. I was switching from marked value to type mark. And that was maybe not the best thing to do at the last minute.
So I'll just go with the marked value for now. So click on the elbow. I was trying to use item number, but apparently my tag is out of date, so it's actually using mark and then fills in the number there. And then, ideally, that will update the schedule as well if I didn't get my parameters mixed up.
I don't have too much more to do. The last thing I want to talk about is sending it from Revit to CADmep. And one thing that Autodesk kind of wants to make sure people understand is that it's not really an export because it's already a fabrication component. So when you look at the add-in and it says Export Autodesk Fab Job Pile, it's not really an export. I would probably more so call it like a save as than an export because nothing's going to happen to these objects.
But this is going to save as an MAJ file. Oops-- there we go. So make your selection and then hit the Export. And again, it's an MAJ file, but there's no mapping that has to be done. Contrary to the RME to Fab button that's there-- that was before the Design to Fab button where, when you did that, you had to do the mapping in Fab CADmep when you brought it in to make sure that it was set up properly.
So now, if you do your selection, you're saving an MAJ file, and you won't really get any surprises when you go to Fab CADmep. Now, granted, you might still have some things that are Revit objects like these pumps. Or maybe, there is some ductwork you haven't converted yet. So in the case of pumps, I'll still use the RME to Fab button here. But a pump would be a graphical element.
So you just hit Store Graphical Elements. And then, if I had Revit native piping instead of fab parts, I would select those. And I would store those as the design line elements and then export those. Let me do that for the ductwork once and then we'll probably call it at that.
So here I have a selection of ductwork. I'm not going to do the entire project, but I just Tab to select all that ductwork. It actually selected a lot, and that's OK. And I'm going to do a filter and I want duct, duct fittings, pipe, pipe fittings-- maybe I'll do those in a separate export. Hit OK and then Store Design Line Elements.
Do the same selection again. Filter-- and this time, I want air terminals and mechanical equipment. Go back to the add-in, Store Graphical Elements, and then you export it as an RAF file. So-- but you don't really have to do that as much these days because we have this Design to Fab button.
So I'm kind of foreseeing now, you would only have to do that for graphical elements like pumps, possibly valves you haven't mapped yet. So with this button, you don't really have to use the RME to Fab, except for equipment basically. With the time where we are, does anybody have any questions? I know there's one question I still have to get back to. Yeah.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: Say that one more time for me.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: Try them in S.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: Oh, OK.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] elbow [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: The elbow's not attaching to the ductwork?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: All right. Let me try one really quick and maybe you can talk me through it. So you had-- got a duct, got an elbow there. And then what do you want me to do with that elbow? Put another duct on it?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: Oh, yeah.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: Oh, yeah.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: So if you don't use a slip and drive elbow, it won't connect to the slip and drive ductwork?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: Yeah. All right. Which one do you want me to pick here to try?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: Sorry.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
AUDIENCE: Oh, well.
NICK BOWLEY: All right. Let me try the other question I skipped earlier. So I'm going to go to Manage, Project Parameters, Add-- I wanted to add a parameter for a system abbreviation.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: The--
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: Yeah, well, I'm just--
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] service, so he can look [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: I still want to see if I can add another-- well, yeah.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] We don't do that. [INAUDIBLE]
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: Yeah. So it's not necessary to even create that parameter because it's already there. It all comes back in from Fab CADmep.
AUDIENCE: But I think [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: OK. Well, let's try it then. Yeah. So let's try it anyway.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
NICK BOWLEY: So I add in the parameter, but each component doesn't store the same info. So it's like, you'd have to add the-- t you can add the parameter to other things on that system, but each component stores it separately. So you'd have to go through like each component and edit type.
And I don't know if you heard them, but that parameter specifically already existed. And it'll pull it in from Fab CADmep. So that one specifically, you don't need. I was still testing it anyway just to see what the effect was.
AUDIENCE: I have a question related to something different. Like, you were talking about the mapping of the part. Does that work both ways? Like--
NICK BOWLEY: You want to talk to these three guys. They're the experts.
AUDIENCE: Oh, no. You mentioned it.
NICK BOWLEY: They're the experts. They actually already covered that, which is why I'm pointing you to them. But it's not a two-minute answer. So I'll just say, it can be done. But it requires like some Excel and search and replace and then I'd have to open Fab CADmep.
So I would definitely recommend maybe they can help you with that just because they can probably have the information available. They can probably tell you what class to get the handout for.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] by clicking on it, does it bring in the Revit family, you know--
NICK BOWLEY: So the components that are showing up on that right side there, that pallet-- yeah. When you bring it from Fab CADmep to Revit, nothing changes.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: It's the same parts and pieces. So there's no mapping to come into Revit.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] like air terminals, right? Because--
NICK BOWLEY: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: --depending on the situation, the air terminals are greyed out.
NICK BOWLEY: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: Right?
NICK BOWLEY: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] mapping that [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] Revit side. [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: Yeah. Yeah, I thought you were asking about going and mapping the Revit components to the fab components.
AUDIENCE: Oh, I know how that works.
NICK BOWLEY: In which case, they had the workflow for that. Yeah.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NICK BOWLEY: Yeah. I lost half the room. All right. Well, thanks guys. And if you have any questions, you can just come up and bother me while I'm standing here. Otherwise, thanks for joining me.