HELP. Pipe Break Line

[Anonymous]

Okay, short and sweet,

Can anyone find or make a family for Revit '14, a Pipe Break Line that would work like the one in AutoCAD?

With that being said we just are looking to be able to insert it in the same way but be able to edit the line weights with the differant pipes.

Thanks so much for any help. 

[iainsavage]

Bear in mind that Revit is not drawing software like Autocad - it is really intended for modelling, analysis and information exchange and to create a digital version of what will become reality. For MEP it's about creating connected and coordinated systems which have built-in "intelligence" such as loads, flows, pressure drops etc. and are a digital representation of what the final installation should be like on site. Autocad is just lines.

To display an accurate 3D model in simple 2D views you need to be creative. That is either going to involve workarounds (like I suggested) or its going to mean more use of sections, 3D views, perspectives or multiple plans cut at different levels within a room.

To expect Revit to do this automatically is stretching things i think - if the built-in hidden lines settings don't do what you want then your going to have to work a bit to get the unique visual effect which you want for your projects.

......in my humble opinion

[rbarbosa8DQGJ]

Someclients are a pain in the ass... They do not like to be educated. They like to receive what they asked for...

Why some softwares sell the lie "we do better" when they don't? Look how isometric drawings are a request ignored when we talk to autodesk to improve it, to be done better in Revit.... Why not borow some tools from Plant3d? Why not make Plant3d export to IFC files?
So, to do somethings, we really need to reinvent the wheel, with "workarounds" here and there...

Sorry, is not about you. Your help was great! Is about autodesk ignoring ours ideas and suggestion to do a great software. That is why we always bump with someone saying "Solidworks is better, Plant 3d is better, PDMS is better..." 

[iainsavage]

Isometric generated with a few mouse clicks.

Pipes know what system they are on, what size and material they are, the flowrate, the pressure drop, lengths, quantities of fittings etc.

I'm not understanding the problem. This seems easy to me and gives you far more than just some dumb lines on a drawing.

[RobDraw]

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@rbarbosa8DQGJ wrote:

Is about autodesk ignoring ours ideas and suggestion to do a great software. That is why we always bump with someone saying "Solidworks is better, Plant 3d is better, PDMS is better..." 

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Every software has it's pros and cons. That's why there are so many of them. Each one requires workarounds to some degree. Revit is not a drafting program and we have all had to make some concessions to the way we present drawings. In fact, some of us have been forced to take on less drafty and more realistic ways of presenting our drawings and let go of the shortcuts that drafting programs let us use. Like the topic of this thread for example.

[RobDraw]

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@iainsavage wrote:

Isometric generated with a few mouse clicks.

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That's not really a true isometric. It's a 3D view. Traditional isometrics are 2D representations and schematic in nature. Pipes are offset and other tricks of the trade utilized for a clear representation. Some of these things cannot be done are difficult to implement in a 3D view.

[iainsavage]

Actually a true isometric is a 2D representation of a 3D model with the horizontal lines drawn at 30 degrees from the horizontal (60 degrees from the vertical) and when we used to create them in ink on paper (yes I am that old!) using actual pens we used a 30/60 square to draw them, including 3D plantroom views. If you click one of the corners of the viewcube in Revit or Autocad what you get is a true isometric view.

Although often used for schematics that does not mean that an isometric has to be schematic in nature.

Anyway, that's straying from the point which is that having gone to all the trouble of creating a full 3D model its actually very easy to then get an isometric view or if you prefer a pseudo-isometric view without too much extra effort.

I was actually agreeing with yourself and @Matt__W that maybe there are better ways to view a 3D model than just using 2D plans and it isn't all that difficult to achieve in Revit.

[RobDraw]

I was thinking about attempting to get plumbing (bathroom group) isometric drawings from a 3D view in Revit and having to jump through so many hoops to get an actual readable representation of the piping that it just wasn't worth the effort.

[iainsavage]

Attached are a couple of very quick examples. Took longer to copy/paste into paint than to setup the Revit views.

The top one is true 30/60 isometric.

The bottom one is probably about 25 degrees so not precisely isometric.

Admittedly its far from perfect, partly because the Architect didn't put in any plumbing fixture families but took about two minutes to set up and  by playing about a little bit I'd say you can quickly get a decent result. Transparency, lineweight etc would help.

[rbarbosa8DQGJ]

Some day, I expect Revit to be able to do this... 

[RobDraw]

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@iainsavage wrote:

Admittedly its far from perfect

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And far from the standards that I was targeting. Try doing that in B&W in single line and you will see how it is not that easy to make readable. Well maybe not, but 3D views have some serious limitations when it comes to this stuff.

[iainsavage]

To be fair that took two minutes to create, the dog needed a pee and my tea was ready so I rushed it a bit.

I suppose it depends if you have exacting draughting standards that you cannot compromise on. In which case, yes Revit probably won't meet those needs.

If you consider drawings to be a form of graphical communication and are willing to compromise on the artistic quality as long as the design intent is effectively communicated then you might consider something like the attached example (once fully tagged etc) to be sufficient and worth the trade-off in time invested (minutes) and information obtained versus quality (not perfect but good enough?).

In terms of the example posted by  @rbarbosa8DQGJ  I would say Revit could get pretty close to that with a fairly small amount of effort, the problem area being dimensioning because the dimensions appear on the "floor".

[RobDraw]

Mr. Savage, you can get on your soapbox and talk down to me like that all you want but you're making assumptions that do not apply. Your first example is a part of any decent modelers workflow. In my world we use those as working views. So, yeah, I know how easy it is to create then modify visibility settings, and crop them to suit the demands of the task at hand. I do it my sleep.

When testing how feasible it was to create multiple isometrics like the second one you posted for a project which had quite a few different configurations, it was determined that it was too much manual work to make them acceptable. Not having pipes break at intersections was a big factor in the decision to not utilize 3D views for piping isometrics. That and other manual overrides just started to add up compared to alternative more automatic and flexible solutions. In fact, we started utilizing sections to convey the same information.

So, for the exact reasons you stated to use a 3D view, we opted for sections as faster and required less work if they needed to be modified. Thank you very much.

[fabiosato]

Hello,

On the other hand, the model will allow to use VR or AR interfaces, were we can read the information attached to the elements of the model. AEC is in a process of disrupting changes in some areas, and 2D documentation may be replaced by 3D printed elements, or pre fabricated items.

[iainsavage]

@RobDraw , I don’t have a soapbox, I was not talking down to you and I’ve no idea why you have taken this so personally.

I was actually agreeing with yourself and @Matt__W regarding different ways of seeing the model and trying to illustrate what is feasible to, hopefully, assist others who may read this thread.

[RobDraw]

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@iainsavage wrote:

@RobDraw , I don’t have a soapbox, I was not talking down to you and I’ve no idea why you have taken this so personally.

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Maybe I misunderstood the part about you responding to me and explaining about taking a pee and having tee while you were making an isometric as being sarcastic along with the other part about my standards being too exacting for using Revit. Not sure how else to interpret it though.

Have a good day!

[rbarbosa8DQGJ]

What about dimensions? tags, annotations? BOM?

[rbarbosa8DQGJ]

What about layers to dwg? Still, there are clients that want receive in dwg. So... 

[iainsavage]

In the very rough example which I posted, those are all tags that you see, including those with flowrates, pipe size, system reference etc.

I'm sure you already know, but for the benefit of others, before you annotate a 3D view its orientation must be locked.

You can customise tags to your particular purpose, for example if you want every valve to have a unique reference then the tag would read the "mark" value perhaps. Or use keynotes etc.

You can quickly tag all items or groups of items using the "tag all" option on the annotation ribbon

Text can be added as you wish. You can rotate the text to align with the isometric axes but I don't think you can slant text at +30 and -30 degrees as you would probably normally do in Autocad (maybe someone could clarify this but I can't see an "oblique" option). Unfortunately you don't seem to be able to rotate tags to isometric angles, only horizontal or vertical.

As I said, dimensions are a bit of a problem. You can dimension between items or from end-to-end of pipe sections etc but Revit appears to want to place dimensions on the bottom extent of the view so instead of appearing along the pipe they appear below it as if on the floor. 

Hope this is of some assistance.

[iainsavage]

Sorry I missed the bit about bills of materials.

The way I do this is simply set up schedules and filter, sort, enable totals etc.

Once it's set up you can place it on a sheet and/or export as a CSV file which can be read back into Excel or other software.

[rbarbosa8DQGJ]

Since we discussed about this, Plant3d and Revit does not interoperate in a good level. There is no way to export to IFC file between those two softwares, so I created this idea: 

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/autocad-plant-3d-p-id-ideas/plant-3d-and-revit-integration-via-ifc-fi...

Vote for it. 

There is a way to use PCF file format to export/import from and to Revit. Is not that easy but maybe will help you.

https://blogs.autodesk.com/revit/2017/07/26/exporting-pcf-files-from-revit/#comments-section

https://blogs.autodesk.com/revit/2017/07/27/exporting-pcf-files-from-revit-2018-part-2-assemblies/

I also posted an Idea to make this PCF export/import more easy.

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/revit-ideas/make-isometric-piping-more-easy-with-pcf-file-export/idi-...

Vote for it.