Piping Elbow for PEX

[lee.imbimbo86EM4]

Does anyone have an PEX Elbow Family?  What I'm thinking is just something that would use the generic family elbow, but allow me to change the radius associated with the elbow in the instance it's being used.  I figured this would really help when using the convention piping tool to route the PEX.  But if I could select an elbow and say that this one is 3", and that one is 9" that would be helpful.

I tried messing around with the generic elbow family and all I did was make a mess, so I'm hoping that maybe someone else had the same idea and wouldn't mind sharing with me.

[RobDraw]

Have you tried the manufacturer's families?

[lee.imbimbo86EM4]

The manufacturer's family is just a hard 90degree plastic elbow, that is hard plastic.  I'm more thinking of a family that would allow you to model the bend in the pipe more accurately.  It isn't an elbow in reality, as much as a bend your making in the pipe as you model it.  It is an elbow in Revit, but in reality it's just bending the flexible pipe.  So for example, for the bend for the stub out of the wall, this is often done with a plastic guide that makes a 3inch radius bend in the pipe, and uses a plastic guide to prevent over bending and kinking of the line.

The 3inch radius is generally considered the tightest bend you want to make in the mainline 1/2" pipe in a run.  But maybe in another case you'll just do a 12" bend.  I thought this family would be more easily made, but I'm running into some issue.  The attached family was where I started, but I've got two outstanding issues that seem to be holding me back.

(1) how to make the family match the angle of entry.  Right now it is modeled around a 90 degree, but ideally you could make that any angle kind of thing.

(2) I'm not exactly sure how to make the Pipe Diameter reference the diameter of the pipe it is connected to.

But if we could get this to work it would allow you to more easily treat the mainline run of the water supply line the flexible line that PEX actually is.  Whereas the Flexpipe tool is too clusty to work with, this would go a long what to making the straight piping tool more accurate for modelling piping like PEX.

[RobDraw]

What manufacturer did you use?

This question about PEX has been asked a number of times. Have a search in this forum and others as it has already been found or made.

[lee.imbimbo86EM4]

We are specifying around either Uponor or Zurn, but this is generic.  Again it isn't a hard plastic elbow, it's just a bend in the pipe.  It's a family that in theory could also be used for soft-copper.

[mikewp90 · Accepted solution]

I have built using the generic pipe eblow the ability to adjust pipe bend radius using an integer.

Standard elbows use 1xDiameter bends and long radius eblows use 1.5Xdiameters.

PEX pipe may be adjusted to use whatever bends you want down to a minimum. 

Now i cannot send you my company family file but i can illustrate how simple this can be simply adding 2 parameters and a if statement for the Center Radius.

Hope this helps!

[lee.imbimbo86EM4 · Accepted solution]

@mikewp90 thank you for sharing your formula structure.  I've attached my version of your idea for you and others to use in their projects.  I based my family around Uponor's specifications, which states that the minimum bend their system will allow is a 6x OD of the pipe rule.  I setup the family to have a instance parameter override that allows you to plug in the radius you want.  The actual radius formula then has a simple IF statement that says if the value of the custom field is less than 6x then it is to default to the 6x, otherwise use the value.  I hope this helps others, and thank you for your help.

[justin_wilburn]

Any way you could provide this in an earlier version of Revit? Cheers!