Pipe design Tools

[PLIspas]

Hi,

I am a sprinkler designer and I have a few years experience already in using Revit for sprinkler design on what I would consider large projects. I have been using some workarounds for a number of issues we encounter in our design and mainly in presenting a final complete drawing. I wonder if there are better ways or what can be done about these in the future.

1. For sprinkler design we need to see the ceilings and ceiling elevation tags on our final drawing and I find very useful to see those as I place sprinklers and draw pipes. I can do that on an RCP (without the same inherit elevation and other helpful options I have available on a floor plan view but), the issue is that I want to see the pipes and proper orientation of risers and other things as on a floor plan at the end. Sometimes we need to see structural elements like web joists, purlins, drop pads, beams, more like on a structural framing plan and again I cannot see all of those on our floor plan or RCP unless the cut plane intersects said elements and even then I have very little control on what and how I see it represented. The way around these issues for me was to design mostly on a RCP view then show pipes and annotations at the end on a mechanical floor plan, and overlap on the sheet the RCP with a structural plan with a Mechanical floor plan and sometimes an architectural floor plan, aligned using a scope box so that we see on our final drawing all elements relevant to our design shown properly. Cleaning up and aligning annotations coming from all these plans like ceiling tags, and framing element tags with pipe tags and room tags that are only visible in different views are very time consuming and tedious. Why can I not see at least ceilings and ceiling elevations on a floor plan when in range and I chose to see those in VG? Or is there a way I don’t know about? If I can draw pipe in an RCP view why don't I have the same helpful placement tools available as on a floor plan (Inherit elevation, Inherit size)?
2. In a floor plan view or working section I cannot see the pipes perpendicular to my view, although they are in range unless intersected by the cut plane. I have small risers nipples at different elevations that have to be tagged on the drawing and hopefully they can be visible at the same time with proper room layout on a floor plan without having a thousand plan regions and different view ranges on the same floor plan. What is the reason behind having these not visible? How can I tag them for install and fabrication? I don’t think this was always like that but it is definitely the case in Revit 2021 I am using right now. 

[b.clark]

Hey Peter.

The usual culprit for not seeing your pipes in a ceiling plan is the Underlay set to None. Not the only reason... but the usual culprit when I get a file into support with a similar issue.

On your pipe orientation, your drops appear to be risers and risers appear to be drops due to the view orientation. In Revit, ceiling plans are treated as inverted. Definitely curious if someone has found another way but I have long now just used ceiling plans to show the head locations only and not the pipe routing. You can set up your view so that you can see the piping, but, yeah, looks a little weird. I use a Floor Plan type of view to show all routing. Curious what others have come up with.

[PLIspas]

Yeah, I did play with view orientation on a couple of occasions and underlay but I've only got weird results. It did not help my view too much I would say it behaved erroneous. I might have done something wrong but as you say I was and still am looking for other ideas and perhaps solutions. Using a ceiling plan view is probably mandatory for sprinkler placement but I also find it convenient to clean all the tags and arrange pipes around lights, diffusers and other stuff when things are "tight" in a ceiling plan view. I do have to copy all tags in a floor plan view and eventually show the pipe in a plan view only as you say but the tags are already "cleaned". (Moved around so that they are visible at the end while also the other elements and tags in a ceiling plan are visible and not overlapping.) I would do it in a floor plan but I cannot see ceiling elevation tags for example there. So I work mostly on the RCP view to finish up a drawing and then overlap everything.
Thank you! Your input is always appreciated.