A way to control cable/pipe length

[eriktoom]

Hey, 

is there a way to see the cable length somehow when drawing a wire in a 2D-plan? 

The thing is that I need to forward an information on what is the cable quantity in meters needed for the project. As the projects tend to be big and cable types vary it seems too time consuming to do it manually. I imagine ventilation designers have to do that as well somehow. 

[hmunsell]

couple questions...

• for Pipe are your referring to Conduit?
• when referring to 2D do you mean a Drafting View or a Plan view of the model?

For Cable length.... if you circuit the item or device Revit will give you the estimated run length. of your using Revit 2020, this can be refined by using the Edit Path tool.

[iainsavage]

Use a schedule.

Sort by type/size/system or whatever and have Length as one of the fields.

Untick “Itemize every instance” and you’ll get the total length for each row.

[eriktoom]

I tried to circuit few items and under the length it says ''Not computed''. 

Btw I have created my own electrical panel family as well which I cannot tie up with my circuit. Maybe this can cause the ''Not computed'' value?

@hmunsell I am actually talking about simple Wire tool that can be used in a 2D plan view. 

I am using Revit 2021.

[waller-zoellmer]

Use the revit family "cable tray" and work in 3d.

And work with schedules to see the length of the whole cable tray not only the horizontal lenghth.

Revit is too expensive to do half of your calculation by hand with calculator. Revit IS the calculator.

[eriktoom]

@waller-zoellmer 

So this would mean designing cables both in 2D and 3D in order to get the information?

[eriktoom]

Okay so why the cable length was showing ''Not computed'' was because the circuit was not attached to electrical panel. So I created a distribution system for the panel first in order to attach it to a circuit. 

Now I see the total length of a circuit. But what if my circuit consists of multiple wire types (3-core, 5-core)? Can I make it to show the total length for a 3-core and 5-core wire? 

[hmunsell]

Interesting ... I never noticed that it didn't give a total length without it being connected to a Panel. I guess when i make circuits there always connected to a panel so it never saw that situation.

for multiple cables. You would need to have separate connector for each cable type. for my instrumentation families i have 4 connectors built into the Families. one for each potential connection type (Analog In/Out, Digital In/Out). when connecting the equipment, the engineer/designer picks the correct connector for that they need. I believe They could be on the same "circuit" at the panel, but would need to be a different connector on the device connecting to the panel. 

[eriktoom]

If you see the picture attached below you can see a whole circuit. Between the elements there are 2 different types of wires (green and blue). Revit generates the total length of the circuit but is there a way of sorting the length by wire type used?

[waller-zoellmer]

Try to sort the schedule by family-type.

Set a header and a footnote and a separating line.

[eriktoom]

I tried to sort by wire type, but no result. It still gives me the total length of the wire that is applied in the electrical circuits properties under the wire type. I imagine there has to be some way as this is not a unique situation when it comes to electrical designing rather than a normal thing (cable between a light source and a switch for example).  

[eriktoom]

I created a small test project. There is an electrical panel, 3 sockets and 2 wire types. If you see the Electrical Circuits Schedule you can see it displays the total length of a circuit. Sorting is set to be by wire type but no result. 

[eriktoom]

Imagine that I am working in a module house production firm, which I do. When it comes to specifying cable lengths you have to be quite precise. Moreover, you have tell the total cable needed per apartment. For example in the last design project that I had the total cable I specified was 18 000 meters in length. Yes, 18 km (or 11 miles). That is just for the one cable type. Other though can vary from 100 meters to 3000 meters per project i.e. Let's take this 18 km cable length - now when it appears that this cable was used 16 km in total then that's a big miss. First of all I want to get it more precise. Secondly, I need to know how to control the length of less common cable types in my project. 

In most cases I imagine that the best go for me is to use Edit Path and set the Path mode to All devices and control the path offset accordingly. This could give me a quite precise result.

But when this circuit consists of different types of cables I'm in trouble. What I have thought is that maybe I can draw these cables myself with a wire tool and give them an estimate length that will be seen also in the Schedules. But I think this cannot be done, am I wrong? I have created several wire types but I think you cannot assign an instance parameter to it. 

[s.borello]

short answer is no... I don't believe revit does wire or cable in 3d, strictly annotative.  You could try with conduits I suppose, then at least you could schedule everything. 

[eriktoom]

@s.borello That's alright. Cabling in 3D would be perfect but I know Revit does not do this unless you draw them by yourself like you said. I am giving my production team a simple 2D drawings. Isn't there a way to attach a cable length parameter to a 2D wire that could be changed? 

[hmunsell]

you can try a "Line Based family", but i believe those can only be straight lines (No bends or curves) so it probably wont work for you.

As an other option, you can use a Railing to represent the cable. create a railing profile that is 1" round  (or what ever you want). a railing can have bends, curves and adjust to different elevations. once its placed you can use the railing tag to get a total length. I use this method for my EGRESS paths in my Arch models. it wont schedule as cable but should give you the functionality you are asking for. 

[eriktoom]

I discovered that it has an easier way out. You can use Project Parameters that you can tie up with the family objects. So what I did was:

1. Open up Project Parameters

2. Insert an instance based parameter with your desired name (Discipline: Common; Type of Parameter: Integer; Group parameter under: Electrical)

3. Choose a category that you want to have this parameter tied up to.

I repeat these steps until I have inserted all the cable types that are going to be used potentially. 

Now every time I need to add an information on a different cable type I just add a value under a created parameter (see image-1). And of course you can add the information to the schedules as well.   

[hmunsell]

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@eriktoom wrote:

 Isn't there a way to attach a cable length parameter to a 2D wire that could be changed? 

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ok, so it sounds like your still not pulling from or adding the information to the drawn content. Your making a project parameter to fill in manually that has no real relation to what was drawn. Don't get me wrong, that is fine if that is what works for you. We have a handful of schedules like that, that are category based, but are basically all manually filled in. 

[iainsavage]

Absolutely agree @hmunsell .

I would trace over the cable route with pipe (or some other 3D system), different pipe type for each cable type and then filter the pipes out of the views on the sheets.

[eriktoom]

I don't get it. @hmunsell Yes right now my only solution was to write in the cable lengths manually, which is too harsh. @iainsavage are you suggesting to run over the entire house with a pipe in order to get precise lengths?