Breaking Ducts

[Anonymous]

I want to find an easy way to do duct breaks.

I made a duct break symbol attached to a cap, and it works great aside from the fact that the duct end line still appears.

I've tried using a masking region to no avail. How can I get rid of this duct line?

[Anonymous]

I've managed to get the Masking Region to work, sort of. I put in on a plane that was above everything else and set it to be in the backround. But now the duct end line is showing up as hidden. Is it possible to make it dissapear?

[CADTripper · Accepted solution]

Hi Engr4life,

Masking region should work fine. I have done it the same way but instead of placing it in the end cap family, I have used a dedicate Detail Item family. Please see attached file, you can use it if you find it useful, just edit some parameter as you required.

I did not use the end cap as pipe should be continuous and we are also utilising flow rates of the connected fixture/equipment within the system. If we use endcaps then that's the end of your pipe.

You have to modify the instance parameter "DIA" as per your pipe size every time you use it. You can also modify the parameter "Masking Length" in the family as far as you want. 

[Anonymous]

Hmm, ok this was done in 2015 I'm guessing and we only have 2014 on right now. I thought about doing a masking region detail, the problem that I encounterered was that the region in between two break symbols is being masked and thus defeats the purpose of having the break at all because nothing is visible between the symbols. How did you get around this?

[CADTripper]

The trick is when using the masking boundary as invisible lines leave the arc lines (break lines) as detail lines or whatever lines you want so it wont go off.

[CADTripper]

Or try to create first the masking, then the break lines on top it.

You can also use a combination of lines for boundaries when creating masking region so you don't need to create a separate detail lines on top of your masking.

[CADTripper]

See attached a couple of screenshots for your reference.

[Anonymous]

So when you put this in your plan view, and break a duct in order to show, for example, some pipes where the duct would normally be, why doesn't the masking region block out the pipes?

[CADTripper]

There may be some reason within your model why it is not working but the family I have sent to you works perfectly fine and the masking region is blocking out the pipes. I have attached another screenshot showing the mask is blocking the pipe. Pipe with the breakline is the same continuous pipe on the right end.

[Anonymous]

I can see the it works, and I can't test it whithin my model because I don't use 2015.

What I'm wondering, is if you were to now run pipe perpendicular to the pipe on which you used the break detail, would it also be masked by the masking region?

[CADTripper]

Yes it will be masked also but you can limit the masked areas by adjusting the masking length as I mentioned above, the "Masking Length" parameter. By default I set the masking length to 1mm away from the edge of the arc break lines just to cover the end line of the pipe. The more you increase this the more areas will be masked.