3D Pipe in MEP 2013

[tonyatrsm]

Ok, I have posted on here several times and read thru some other posts and STILL cant get a decent tutorial that shows you how to draw pipe. They just rush thru as if they are showing someone that is already familiar with it and I am just not getting it. I am doing 1/8" slope sanitary right now and read on here it's best to choose the piping environment instead of plumbing then just find a pipe that works just to get thru 3D coordination (previous post recommended using sanitary PVC DWV just to show the pipe for coordination purposes). Every time I try to add a wye off the side and attach to a floor drain it just points the wye straight up off the main and adds 15 elbows and small pieces of pipe just to get to a floor drain 4 feet away.And I set up which fittings I wanted it to use for elbows, tees, wyes, etc. but every time it goes to put a fitting in it asks me 10 or more times what fitting I want to use....very frustrating and I am getting nowhere on this project! Thanks in advance for any help you can give me...

[Keith.Brown]

There is no better tuturial than real life experience!!  One tip that I would give you is to make sure that you have the compass turned on.  It is an option while in the middle of the pipeadd command.  Once the compass is turned on, you can type P for plane and change the plane of the compass.  This will allow your takeoff to rotate easily in any direction from your pipe.  In addition, it appears as if you are using autoconnect.  i.e. you are dragging a wye out of the pipe run and then selecting the floor drain.  This is ok and will work but it is very picky when using sloped piping.  Make sure that you cycle through all possible routes before hitting accept.  In addition, to make sure that the wye is horizontal and at the correct slope, manually pull the wye out and add a short piece of pipe before trying to autoconnect. In additiion, make sure to split your view up into at least two views so you can see a plan view and a isometric view of what you are drawing.  It will make drawing in 3D much easier.  Final piece of advice when drawing sloped piping is to have patience.  It is much more difficult than non sloping piping.

[rb]

I use the rotate3d command a lot in order to get what I want. I run my pipe flat and then if I want it to slope get the main to slope and extend for the branches.