I was wondering if anyone could help me out to which one is the proper one to use, Pipe systems or Pipe Types. We are having an internal engineering arguement at my company in reagrds to which way pipe should be drawn. I was taught and have been using pipe systems. Just recently there was a new hire at the company who has been using Revit for quite a dn while and wants us to use Pipe Types as the way to draw pipe.
Any input would help as to which is the better or proper way to draw piping in Revit. Thanks in adavacnec for the help.
There is a right time for both.
Pipe systems ought to be the standard. If your systems are set up properly and are properly modeled, every thing in that piping system will be assigned automatically. If you set up filters to provide graphic overrides based on the systems, you can very clearly see where your system is not modeled properly. There are instances where modeling it properly can seem counter intuitive, for instance in bypass lines and recirc lines. When you have one system bypassing to another system without a piece of equipment in there to separate the systems, Revit gets a bit confused, but there are easy work arounds.
The problem with pipe systems that I frequently run into is that they don't carry over well in multi-phase projects. If a pipe is being demolished in any future phase, the pipe will automatically be placed on an undefined system. If in the current phase you want to tag the pipe system or use a graphic override that reads the pipe system, you won't be able to. You will need a separate parameter that requires user input...the pipe type parameter works great for this.
If you only use the pipe type parameter and completely forego assigning systems, users will be able to model things improperly much easier. For instance, you could have a pipe on your hot water system be assigned the pipe type Chilled Water which could completely mess up your drawings and tags and result in a lot of problems down the road.