Mastering Revit MEP Systems Tutorial

[Music] all right all right right hello everyone hello and welcome to another episode of bim after dark live this is episode 74 of the show which is pretty wild when you think about it my name is jeff also known as the rabbit kid thank you for joining us for those of you that have never seen the show before this is a weekly live stream that was started almost two years ago now as 70 episode 74 tells you every week and we talk about revit bim and any really related software um so i'm super excited uh for the topic tonight um i always get asked about revit mep um i try to do as much as i can on my own but i am no master of revit mep i can make some make some things and cause some damage but i by no means think that i'm a master so i'm super excited to introduce our guest soon um who was highly regarded by all of you in the audience so i'm super excited to bring them on and talk about mep systems in revit not just talking about the how to's and digging in but also globally the thought process of of really how you guys should be thinking about uh this tool that we have it's insanely powerful tool that we have at our fingertips if you have not subscribed to the channel here on youtube please subscribe to the channel that's how you'll know when we go live that's how you know when new videos are posted i've got a new series a residential revit series coming up that's going to also be a weekly publish not live but published videos so make sure you subscribe to the channel here on youtube and last but not least i would like to thank our sponsor of this episode twin motion so [Music] all right so twin motion for those of you not familiar with twin motion it is a real-time rendering software built on the unreal engine with incredible features such as a gigantic 3d scan library real time path tracing presenter mode a whole bunch of assets and scene states and a whole bunch of stuff i mean just check out my channel i'll post some links below for for some real details but what i decided to do this week is actually um highlight some some features every week um of twin motion uh just to give you guys a sense of some of the cool things that exist um if you're interested head on over to twinmotion.com after dark the feature i'm going to highlight this week is actually kind of related to mep because the way i use it is for underground utility visuals and so what you're seeing here on the screen is a twin motion scene that i created and the the feature is actually an x-ray material so when you apply materials to to objects in twin motion and these are all revit models being viewed in twin motion you can use what's called an x-ray material which can be super useful for things like underground utilities which you're seeing here i've used them for in-wall so for example showing systems in a wall pipes maybe behind a head wall at a hospital for example isn't it is something i've used them for so super simple super easy to use um you can see actually the flexibility of the software and all the all the scene states and all the visibilities there's a bunch of features that you definitely want to check out check out the the review i have uh here on the blog which i'll i'll uh i'll i'll link below and uh and definitely head on over to twinmotion.com to start a free trial today and let them know that you support this show as well as them and so with all that being said uh before i introduce my guest i want to also remind you that if you're here tonight at 9 00 pm eastern time it is live and so i will be checking out the chat and feel free to ask questions heckle whatever you want to do i will only let david know when uh it's something pertinent to not throw him off too much unless it's a really funny heckle then i'll let you know david but with all that being said i think it's about time we introduce david butts what's going on man hey man how's it going tonight oh it's it's it's great i i first thank you for coming on the show i appreciate it as i mentioned in the intro i am an architect i do revit architecture and i've been doing it for many many many years and i've just dabbled on the side of mvp so whenever someone asks me mbp stuff um i try my best but i'm i'm always willing to bring on experts and i got to be honest with you and if you guys out there feel like you are charismatic experts of mep and would like to join the show reach out to me because they're hard to find so thank you david for joining the show well since you're an architect i have something for you that i'm going to send to you because you can't be an architect without having a class right that's right and i wear much more hats these days now that i don't have much me too i mean i get a lot more sunshine up here than i used to but yeah i mean it's just awesome to be here i i'm just you know when you sent me the email i was like man this is awesome i've never had a chance to do one of these before and as many sessions i've taught over 75 classes today you and it's just kind of like doing something like this i like it because it's a little bit more intimate and we can sit here and really get into the details and talk about what's cool about the software that we use and how we use it every day yeah there's a lot of cool stuff that we can talk about 100 and yeah i appreciate you taking the time and you're willing to come on um yeah it's funny i i i've you know your name has always been around it's felt so familiar and so usually you know when that's the case in the revit world it's always been sort of like maybe it was a blog first then maybe twitter maybe on the forums but i feel like your name is actually from au sessions the most so so congratulations on that because i know you have tons of success uh speaking at au so congrats on all that stuff right and i've got a pretty diverse background i actually um started i've been doing working with autodesk products for 37 years now actually started on autocad release too so i'm an official old guy i mean you look at autocad what 1982 it's 40 years old now 40 years old and so 1997 i joined an autodesk reseller and uh we had four architectural clients and my degree was in architecture and i'm thinking okay this should be easy and it was like oh no it's not easy at all and so in 97 i was one of the original architectural desktop gunslingers got invited up to henniker new hampshire in a one-stop light town drove up to the salt box style houses the dave arnold had and looked at that and i'm like you've got to be kidding me is this really where this stuff is started this whole object-oriented program and yeah it was and got to meet a lot of really cool people you know they've been in the industry for a long time and then um what actually happened to be in the revit technology corporation office today that autodesk acquired revit so i'm like here we go again you know we had architectural desktop that had been bought from from soft desk and now we're buying revit and it's like oh there's all kinds of discussions going on about how we're going to use this and i'm sitting here raising my hand going guys we have no engineering tools it's great that you have the architecture tools but where's my duck where's my pipe and as a reseller it was like what the hell am i supposed to do with this and it wasn't until what two revit version guy was it two when was i when was systems introduced well when when was the because it was never it was three different packages so when was the mep package was it 2010 no yeah 2010 2009 2010 is really when it became a feasible package yeah and at the time we didn't have any documentation so i actually wrote some of the first training manuals that um we were selling at advanced solutions and at cadre for years on this and then um it was really cool to get that stuff out there and have it out there and i learned a lot by just writing the package if i can't explain it to somebody else by writing it how's anybody else gonna understand it right right right so it was really cool i had a lot of fun doing this stuff and it was a really great time to be coming up through through the autodesk ranks at that point i'm sure so so yeah so uh i mean i guess we don't need to say much more as far as your bio is concerned and i'm sure i'm sure i'm sure many people can google you and and and find out the the rest of it but um i i think uh i think we should jump right into it because i'm super excited for the content so cool i think maybe uh i know you've got sort of a thought on on a sort of monologue that we can take take take in whatever direction we need to so uh if you want to just jump out there and then i'll i'll probably chime in with questions and and and interrupt you at good points uh to keep the conversation going but i'm ready i'm ready to just jump into this i'm super excited to hear your your perspective on systems and how we're going to approach this today so so let's let's talk about the systems part of this and and the thing to me is it's really fascinating about the industry as a whole is that you know the systems that we deal with there's a wide variety of these and i don't know if you have the image up now but let's take a look at this guy real quick i mean these are just some of the project examples that we work on and to me a system is a lot more than just a plumbing system it's more than just connecting pipe it's more than just throwing some receptacles in a drawing it's all about creating these relationships that you need with with the engineering documents that you have and here's the fun part about it a lot of people you're probably aware of this but mep really doesn't get the attention that it deserves because if you think about it with the systems that we develop if you look at a set of documents on a project who has the largest number of documents on the project it's not the architect sorry jeff you guys you come in third it's not you know but you drive everything we do right then we have structural okay it's nice to hold things up for us we're really glad that you do that for us but really when it comes down to it 60 of the drawings in a typical project are all about the mep systems the stuff you don't see in the stuff in the walls and and under the floor and above the ceilings and the things that just keep us comfortable you know keep things clean and so they're really important aspects what we do with design and it's just amazing to me the the lack of coverage that it gets for how important it is yeah and so as we look at this and how these tools work i think one of the things that got lost as these tools progressed wasn't really the features i mean because if you talk to people who started in revit early on they didn't use it why because it didn't have what they needed right you know i can't do piping with this it doesn't have the fittings it doesn't have the families right and we we heard that all the time and when i started writing the documents i said how do i explain this in such a way to get people to be engaged and so we started to solve by looking at what we call the four-step process right and that four-step process is really all about you know the way to work inside of revit so that you put this thing together correctly and so if you follow this process it makes it a hell of a lot easier to learn how to use the program so it starts off with something really simple and we're just going to flip through this really fast and we'll try to get to as fast as we can but how many of you guys start off a project by drawing a duct i actually had an engineer that's what he would do i need to know where the duct is going to go no you don't you don't even know what the duck's connecting to yet you know we gotta we gotta know where we're sending things to it and so we started off by calling it what the target source equipment is and so at the very start of a project in the early phases preliminary design you need to be picking what the equipment is for the project as soon as you can and even if it's just a placeholder we have to know that i've got to have air terminals i got to have lights i could have all this other stuff and by the way architects don't own the lights the electrical engineer does right we have that great argument all the time no i get to place it no i gotta wear it you know you always have that great argument but let's let's define it real quick a target is something that receives air fluid or power right and that's what carries and defines load in a system so these are the most important pieces that you can have out there and so targets can be air terminals plumbing fixtures lights you know all this stuff can define you know what a target is and so you want to make sure that you're getting this stuff placed early and as accurately as possible and we know architects like to change things that never happens right the nice thing about working with revit you use some hosted elements you use some other things like that we don't use a lot of hosted elements but we do try to create some constraints to help things move along right so if we do that then we have to understand what the source is and the source is always one thing it's what controls the flow of air fluid and power back to a target and so let me ask you a trick question here and this let's see if you can figure this one out oh boy and everybody's going to laugh at this one because if you've been in my classes today you and i know about a dozen of you that are out here watching tonight right tom if you're here how much do we talk about this right when i have an air air terminal is the flow in or out of the terminal if i'm talking about airflow what's the direction you get a 50 50 chance of getting this right i would say it depends on if it's a supplier return you almost got it right that's what you call a noncommittal answer right right correctly the correct answer is n because you have air coming out of a vav box out of a out of a terminal unit whatever into the um into the air tunnel and so that's a that's a lost concept on a lot of people because they sit there and think that oh well flow's always out of the air terminal because they're thinking in terms of the room no think in terms of the system that's the key that you have to think about so you have to understand those sources because they're going to accumulate all that data that you put out to that particular device so it could be an air handling unit a pump or a tank power panel in the case of a circuit they're all forms of a system right and so the cool part about this is some items are going to be targets and sources like a power panel that could be something a vav box that controls area you know vav box becomes a target and so we want to make sure that we understand how that stuff works so you mind if i bounce over to rev real quick and i don't show you a picture of this so i'm going to switch over real quick just so you guys can see this so i've already got a few examples in here to show how this works and one of the things that you need to look at when you're defining the systems as we talk about you know what is it that we need to know for this particular item so i'm going to assign an airflow of 100 to one of these and i'm going to grab a couple more and i'm going to say okay what's the airflow going to be it's going to be 200 here and then i'm going to come back to this i'm almost going to be 150 here right all right so when i put these things together i have all these disconnected pieces right now and this is typically what happens in a drafting mode you typically don't put that information with this object right but to define the system you're simply going to grab the parts and say hey make a duct system it's going to be supplier and i'm going to call it supplier one give it a name i like to put the room in here you know where is it actually located all that good stuff shows up in here so when i create that system now i have that information about what that system is and it shows as a connected system and so it's real simple to define the system in this particular case and that's where it's going to carry the load right so if i look at any of the system properties it's pretty easy i can actually pick on any one of these guys and look at the system properties i can actually see what that particular device is i can edit it i can move things i can add things to that system and so i'm doing this very early on in the project right i want to get this stuff as grouped together as quick as i can as fast as i can same thing happens to lights i'm going to grab all these lights and i'm going to say let's create a power circuit for this i'm not going to associate it with a panel right now but they are going to carry load and here's a big piece of advice for you too if you have a fixture or something that you know is going to be continuous or it's going to be a common example as you set up content go ahead and pre-load data in here if you know this light's going to be a you know a 12 watt led bulb whatever it's going to be in that case it's a good idea to go ahead and have those load values assigned as much as possible i'm not a fan of the google when it comes to go and getting revit content and i know everybody does this right we all go out and grab i can't find it in the autodesk library so i go out and grab this stuff off of google and they bring it in they've got all this data with it and a lot of times it's duplicate data it's not the right data it's not what we need for our schedules and so you got to pay attention when you're actually placing this equipment that critical information so that's the first thing is that you've got to make sure that you get these devices placed and see there's no geometry there's no duct work right now right this should be the first step that you do on every mep project whether it's piping systems duct systems air system doesn't matter right no that's awesome that's and honestly uh that's actually you know as someone who doesn't and so i think all the architects out there who don't draw systems every day uh or model them every day um i think that's i mean that was eye opening for me i i you know i always think of of i mean i guess i live a lot of my life in the in the actual uh ducks and pipes these days and so you know the idea of setting up the whole system first and then creating the arteries afterwards it's just makes sense right it's it's right because then all you're doing is connecting them and the routes they take that's a whole that's a whole another ordeal so that alone to me is a is a great great eye-opening uh touch on on how these things work so awesome yeah and like i said it's going to be a whole bunch of different things i mean you got pumps and tanks and power panels they're all going to be different forms of targets and sources they all have that relationship so it's really the next part about this that you have to understand is that the ability to create that target source relationship we talk about how the targets hold data but the equipment is going to accumulate that data right and so in order to do this there's two ways to do it one is by simply drawing duct to connect things together i'm not a fan of doing that right because at this point i don't know what that relationship is and so when i'm creating the target source relationship you have to understand that target's always define the system okay it's always going to be that air terminal it's always going to be that light it's always going to be the pump or the tank or whatever the thing is that defines the system and that's what's going to actually collect the load and it can be one or more devices you can create a system but like you just saw i grabbed all those lights at once and i created the power system in a really fast way to create that base relationship and the key is to make sure you go ahead and assign those load values when you do this so we saw that first step in there right and then we have to talk about what the source is we have to create that relationship now there are very few things in revit that don't have a source a plumbing system is a great example of something that typically doesn't have a source like a sanitary waste system really don't want to know what the source is in that kind of assistant right but in that case you know when i talk about basic systems like lights there's going to be a source that's going to be a panel air systems it's going to be a vav box so you want to create that part that so that it can track and summarize that load and there's one couple of notes on this too for you guys that are making equipment i'm going to give you a tip right now it's really important don't link your connectors you're going to thank me for this later but don't link your connectors because only accessories that are inline and fitting should ever have their connectors linked don't ever do it okay that's your two dollar tip for tonight send your checks to jeff and we're going to split them okay so so you're talking you're talking i don't want to move on that real quick because you're talking in the family of the equipment don't link the connectors is that what you're doing right in the family of the equipment like if i look at this vav box and i go edit this guy and i've seen people do this all the time i think i know what you're talking about but i want you to clarify because i think it's great i think it's a great point well here's the thing i i a lot of people know that i'm part of the directly program as an expert elite they make you commit to doing things for autodesk so and one of my things was to help start the directly program that takes about a third of all the support cases that come into autodesk okay so i see all these cases come flying by and i really only answer the mvp one so i don't take a whole lot of them right but when i get in here and i look this is one that's a real common one somebody will take this connector and they'll do this thing called link connectors don't ever do that because this is a pass-through you're actually passive if a device is not a piece of equipment you can actually screw up the data that goes on the other side the way you do this and i'm going to show you a really sophisticated family that we have that has a lot of formulas and stuff built into it like how to calculate watts how to calculate load a lot of stuff you can do with your families right but in this particular case i've done it very simple in this case i just said hey i'm going to assign another parameter to the connector on the other side and say that one's airflow rate so that's everything i have that's a target has that same shared parameter associated to it okay and then what i'm doing is taking the accumulated value that comes into that connector that's actually the equipment it's receiving all that data from the air terminals and i'm just saying total this up and put it here that's how you transfer a load okay got it that's what we did so instead of linking connectors you're just using a formula to take the value from one connector and put it to the other exactly and it's such a simple elegant answer right yeah it's perfect doesn't take a whole lot of work but you'd be amazed at how many people screw that thing up awesome that's awesome so to do that relationship is real simple man i just come over here and i grab a part and i say hey let's look at the system and i select the equipment now i go ahead and grab that component and now if i go back and i look at the system you can actually tab select it's a really great little tool too because if you're going to copy these guys right tab select pick it you see all the connected system there's our vav box everything's cool we're lined up we're connected we're together right and so i can start tracking load on all these devices i can split the system up we're going to talk about generating layouts in just a minute here okay let me ask a question before you move on from that because i'm interested um that was is there a reason why you would select the targets first create the system and then add the the source to the targets in this case because that's always have to pick the target first so you could if you selected the source and all the targets initially and said create system would it be a different outcome no it won't work it only works one way got it that's that again that's the other part that people get fouled up they think that the system gets defined by the equipment no it's the other way around it's hierarchical from the bottom up right and people think well i've got to start up here at the main air handling unit then i have to go to the vavs then i have to go to the air terminals that is not how it works it's always working from the bottom up got it awesome not sure there is a question in the chat real quick before we move on about the links about the linked connectors um from jason who uh who asked if the connectors are preset and calculated wouldn't revit do that automatically not necessarily no i found and i tell you i've experimented with this a million different ways and i just the most consistent and predictable way to get this to work is when you're working with an air terminal or any anything that's a target you know you see the direction it's going to draw there shows the direction that the duct's going to be drawn in right you know you can use a flow configuration a preset or in okay you've got a bunch of different office you know a bunch of different values but if you're doing it preset in this case i can actually go through and say how i want this to be assigned i want to assign the flow and the value so preset represents that value that you see but the key is to make sure that you're using flow direction in now i have seen this work with return and i know some people on return system exhaust systems they want to have this thing set to out you can do it both ways but i've had better luck with calculations with it being in on all these connectors got it okay because this goes back to your first point it's just your first question of in it's always in yeah it's always in it's the system relationship it's not the physical airflow and that's what powers people up it's not the physical fluid flow right right yep it's the direction of the relationship that's the key part to figure out about this all right so so cruising back over to this guy unit and looking at how that system is defined it's the same thing with the light fixtures so if i if i pick the lights i already see that they're part of a circuit and i go ahead and select the panel name and one thing autodesk has done a really good job of in the last couple of years is they have finally spent a lot of money on electrical you know how long did it take and i'm a really good friend of martin schmidt 12 years right it's taken 12 years yeah i have been wearing martin out about this thing right and it's just kind of like finally he's like fine tired to listen to you complain about it get everywhere and help us develop it so i've been working with a couple other people to help develop the electrical tools for the last few years and we finally got instead of just breaker connection we got feed through lugs you know we've got better load calcs that are going on we have the ability to do circuit name schemes those are all things that help but again it's the exact same step that you do with air system you create the lights as the targets and then you select the panel as a source and then when you do your panel schedule the load's already going to be there because the load's already on the lights right so those are just a couple of things and how the system works and that was the missing step from cad yeah we didn't have that in autocad mep okay so let's jump through this because we want to get to them fairly quick so the next step and this is the most important one how many of you guys are interested in generative design there's actually it's funny you should say it so remember there's a nine second delay so i'll be i'll read them as it comes back but just before you said that um justin in the chat asked about was it justin somebody asked somebody asked about dynamo and mep [Laughter] but just a general question but uh but i'm so i'm assuming there's probably some interest i would say uh and i'll wait for the chats to come in but i would venture to say that most people are interested in it as a concept but i don't think similar to when dynamo first came around i don't think anyone sees where they can use it yet you know and it took it took a few years for people to see and then all of a sudden the flood gates opened i think i think generative design is at that phase personally i mean that's my opinion so you've seen the technology curve right you got to get past that chasm and then the peaks been around for a million years right we haven't made it to the chasm yet okay not with dynamo and general design i think we the potential is enormous like lisp in autocad right and net and everything else that came out of that and so we're not quite there but here's the funny part about it you know autodesk was doing a little bit of generative design back when they first put automatic layouts in revit and it was a great example of rules-based design it's how do i make these ducts behave the way i need them to behave and it's still not smart like they can't recognize when they're going through a wall or how to avoid that column right in front of them right they're just not that smart and i see that all the time people coordinated drawings how many times have you seen people draw ducks or steel every single day don't you people look at this stuff in 3d i'm sorry every single day of my life but this does do connecting geometry for you and this is really you want to get the systems defined first and then worry about the connecting geometry don't draw your ducks first because unless you know what the loads are going to be now yes it can define the system relationship if you don't take that step but to me i much rather grab everything said let's define those relationships first when you get more into 2022 and you start seeing the analytical systems you're going to understand why you want to do this okay another discussion another story talk about that hopefully in september but we have automatic and manual layouts that you do so you can draw duck your own on your own right you can do all these layouts on your own um before you do any of this make sure you're reviewing the mechanical settings and you want to include what the main and branched up and pipe types and elevations are for routing if you're going to do automatic routing if it's a fairly simple route sometimes it is faster to use these tools the system sizes are also set in the in the mechanical settings so that's what's going to set the external sizes all that other stuff that you have in there so let's bounce back over here again real quick and just show an example of this so if i look at the wiring you see how this stuff is selected one of the things i really love about this stuff is that when you when you start really messing around with it you get all kinds of cool stuff like hey draw the wires for me you know so as i as i tab select through this let me see if i've actually cut that yeah grab okay i don't have the wire turned on it's a visibility graphics issue here and i'm controlled by template templates you didn't see this but believe me we just drew all the wires right right but i can also label all that stuff as well too well let's do it with the duct and see how that works and before you really do anything with the duct like if i go to manage and i go to mep systems and or mep settings i go to mechanical you want to check things like what are my heights going to be so like if i'm doing supplier i want that duck main to be at 12 i want the the branch to be at 12 and i want to use flex duct coming off these pieces and again this is that rules-based design that we talk about so if you're really thinking about getting into gender design this is a great early example to learn how this works right simple for somebody's understanding the basics in there and so i go ahead and pick that and now when i say okay i want to actually have this thing do an automatic layout i just select the system and say generate layout and i start to get these preliminary layouts that i can cycle through so the blue represents the main branch and the green main duct and the green represents the branch and so you can cycle through all these options until you find the one you want you can also go back and check your settings and so you just say finish the layout and it creates the duct for you now you still going up getting some weird things that might show up like oh i've got an open duct here and they've improved this tool to say hey cap the open end so it's no longer an open system but now it's a closed system this is what we call a well-formed system in here okay because it's closed it doesn't have any openings and it can calculate its sizes correctly so you look at the time that it took me to go through these steps right the amount of time it took and i'm not going to tell you that automatic layouts are going to be your solution for a lot of things but if i'm doing like a lot of classrooms and a lot of repetitive type rooms it's a great way to get started and then i can pick this whole system up and copy it if i need to because it's well formed it will create another system right so you don't have to draw it from scratch you just copy it same thing we do with autocad right yeah exactly so so actually this is i think it's a good point um where uh there were a couple conversations and i don't have to read the whole chat there but um about the the calculated values and using um using it for analysis um so it sounds like i think the question was kind of along the lines of you know do you trust or use the the the calculations and the analysis within it within revit i'm using it more than i used to i'm getting a little bit more comfortable with it and part of it is is that you got to understand the rules that it's using when you get in here to set these things up like the calculation method products they're very clear about what these use colebrook is something that we use on a regular basis right right and so from most basic systems you can do duct sizing in this there's been a big debate about a lot of the duck sizing programs that are out there right now do they work right are they really representative especially some of these older ones that we trusted for a long time but now that we're in the stem environment it's probably better not to have to take this stuff out of the environment to something else out of my silo into something else right right and then feed it back so it's gonna it's definitely gotten better i trust it more than i used to but again it's all in the user man if you don't make this system well formed and complete your connections right you don't connect it right and you you fudge it you're never going to get a good calculation yep and that's exactly what i was going to bring it back to right the the if you follow the process you're talking about now you can have more confidence in the system because you've you've you've done the correct steps to get there exactly so and actually somebody commented i think tony i think his name i can't read from here was saying that you know when it's set up correctly um you know as long as you understand you can probably get a good percentage of it done and i think that's kind of where i would be if i was if i was doing this every day is probably you know understanding that this can do a lot of that initial calculation but there's always going to be just like anything really generative design um you know usually it's it's getting into a point and then there's a human touch that's involved almost all the time right that's that's sort of the end the end level there so yeah and there's always the ability to tweak things man i mean i like the fact that i can sit here and say hey i'm gonna drag this duck and move these things and everything seems connected because it's a system right it knows that it belongs to each other and so we belong together i don't know what a great song is right and you don't want me singing everybody i said they're gonna please stop right and if that was tony conchata who asked that question he's going to give me a lot of crap tomorrow because he's my my co-worker and colleague over again at fleming that's not another shot so i think you're okay right now that's the other time when you have a system built like this and you have the rules set up um when you're if you're modifying the system is it is it readjusting the calculations and sizes or is that yeah it is yeah if you go back it doesn't do it automatically right okay so like if i change the airflow on this to 300 you know as long as the system type and we'll because it still works i'm assuming too right if it doesn't work it'll probably right it's no longer still a well-formed system right so if i look at my duck systems in here and i say okay i look at my supplier that i'm using right now right and as long as i've got calculations turned on i'll do all in this case right in this case now what's happening is the duct system is actually tracking load at points and so if i use the system inspector on this and just say go ahead and inspect this i can actually see the flow along those points along with the red line defining where that primary flow is so again this is all in making sure you have your system set up correctly and see how it's adjusting by what the flow is of that area so again it's all about a well-formed system right and if you take the time to do it correctly and it's closed it can calculate you set the static pressure loss whatever you have and then you can use duct sizing tools and i like using larger connected and calculated just to make sure it never goes below the minimum of what i have right so there's just some rules that when you're doing this stuff as long as you understand those rules you'll be fine awesome there was one question i wanted to just tap on while you're talking about the systems and you were mentioning copying it around somebody did ask um is there any i mean i'm going to expand on the question it was a little basic question but um when you're when you're once you have this well-formed system um copying it mirroring it rotating it like what are are there limitations to how you can copy this system around a building have you noticed like if you mirrored it if you rotated it i mean is there is there no mirror [Laughter] i was going to say is it like groups where you got to be really careful with how you how you actually uh rotate or rotate and don't group it either got it that's another one if you do a group you can do an initial group but you better ungroup it when you get done so in that situation yeah so if you needed to mirror would you would you build just build would you be better off building the system mirrored on the other side and starting i would disconnect all the ducts yeah yeah just disconnect the duct mirror the air terminals because they don't care right don't want them you don't want that right because those are the starting spots anyway so mirror those mirror the source if you want or copy the source whatever it ends up being and then do the reconnect everything okay yeah here here's one thing you can't do you can't cross connections like i can't do this at least you couldn't do this so yeah i tell you it's been modified in the opposite direction right it doesn't understand that at all because you're not mirroring the fittings now the connector is on the other side it can't create the connection yep so don't drag across fittings that's a key role in there okay awesome all right so let's get to the last step here real quick because i'm going to get into some other areas real fast and kind of talk about the last step in the process in here and really it's that the last step is when you actually start to annotate and i know people really get a little bent out of shape about me telling you don't label anything don't put any dimensions down right and so in this particular case sorry i got really out of focus also what's going on with the camera it wants to focus on something behind you i don't know it's actually focusing on jeff right now it's kind of like the commercial you see i'm not the primary character in the picture anymore right right and so so in this case a couple of rules about doing the systems tag it tag tag tag tag don't use plain text pull and harvest that data from the objects right yes and and use that information and don't just copy tags you're not copying tags you're harvesting information so use that tag all feature to grab everything and then in your schedules you know you want to schedule and pull this information this is a key part too you want to make sure that you're putting shared parameters especially with mechanical equipment only in the families do not make them as project parameters and the main reason being is that when you assign a project parameter it's going to apply to all examples of mechanical equipment which can include air handling units pumps pav boxes process equipment and so if you put an air value on the pump it's going to sit there and go i don't have those values and there's no way to wipe it out if you do it as a project parameter if you do it as a shared parameter in the family then it's only going to apply to that one family so that's a key rule in here is to understand when you put these parameters it's not like architecture where we've got all the walls and we can put all the parameters we have in the architect you get one thing you have to deal with the wall we have all these other systems and parts that we have to deal with so we got to make sure we do that and then dimension when you when you've got it laid out the way you want to mention it now i do use dimensions to do like equidistant constraints you know center stuff in a room you can do that kind of stuff but why wait until now because really we talk about the stages of a project and you know this one i mean what were the what are the four stages of a project you start off you got schematic design and then you got design development right and then construction documents and then the most important stages of four stage you know what that is right construction no it's the panic stage it usually occurs two days before the end of one of those deadlines right because that's when people make decisions about what's going on it with this component and so you want to get as much of the model fleshed out as you can before you start annotating doing it so really it's it's important but it's not as important as getting the model right right so that's a four step process and i work we're taking up most of the conversation with this and i can hang out a little bit longer if we need to that's not a problem with me but the whole idea here is to make sure that people understand this process going into it and you don't have to do the whole building this way like you can work let's do a floor at a time or an area at a time but work through that whole process and get everything done then complete it and follow those steps and you will be a hell of a lot happier with revit mep than you would be if you went and started throwing stuff in there awesome so let's just to reiterate before we move on from it so let me see if i remembered it without going back to the slides let's so step one was um place your targets right define your targets uh yep step two was your sources i believe right or or sorry that's part of the person yeah start probably the first step step two was actually creating the relationship between them right right and then step three was generating the geometry uh using whatever method we decide but at least at this point we're already we've got our sources there we've got our relationship and all we're doing is connecting the dots basically and then step four is tagging annotating dimensioning scheduling and all the all the good stuff from it it's all those little pieces that have to go into this and have to go into it early on right and so as long as you follow this process with mep now what this other what this also does is it's going to change the workflow and let's talk about the next topic in here is how the systems alter your perspective towards mep design right one of the hardest things to get design teams to do is to change the location of where a task occurs right and and in a cad world we're really guilty of pushing things like electrical to the back of the bus right because we've got to have all this other stuff done the conduit cable tray is going to be the last thing because it's all good it's going to fit in wherever it fits right but the reality of it is the data that's associated with all this and every bit of piece of equipment that goes into a project is very much important at the very early stage because if you get buy-in very early on about these primary targets and sources you're going to dramatically cut down the change orders that you have in a project because what we're really trying to do is instead of having that 15 25 you know 60 percent deliverables that we've had for years we really want to alternate that around to be 30 30 30 right and get it more even so that we're making fewer changes at the end of the cycle in that panic state because i see that all the time and even on some of our big projects we still do that that one project down in the corner that was the clayton water treatment plant those guys modeled that building in three months and we're a year and a half into the project and a big bulk of that is because of the changes that were made by client requirements over the course of the design you know and it was just like we had this time and also we're changing everything and so those are things that can happen over the course of the project but the more you get it well formed at the start of the job the easier it is to take care of things down the road and address those changes easier and have fewer change orders and in errors and emissions 100 one of the things actually i'm kind of interested in um is uh you know we on the on the construction side so so you know as as an architect i spend my my day job is on the construction management side now and dealing with model interactions especially early on in pre-constructions dealing dealing with even quantity takeoff for models for example and one of the questions that i never get a real straight answer with is um you know how how much of this stuff can get pro mep is always as you mentioned right it's always very it feels like it's late you know it gets later and later in the game on every job right and as far as what's modeled versus maybe what's a narrative or what's a schematic sketch type of deal and so you know i'm curious as to you know what is it that's stopping mep engineers from from pulling from from modeling that early at least some like you said like can you laying out the targets and sources for example is that really a big deal to to do that really early on it's a habit i i don't you just said something that touched on me that drives me absolutely crazy narrative oh yeah why why the heck are we doing a narrative when we can sit there my narrative should be how many square feet do you have here okay i know about what my power load is going to be based on that number alone oh it's a commercial building great and i'm going to have office spaces this is all known data you know um what is it ashrae 130 right and 90.1 when it came out where it defined what the loads are per person per room these are not new pieces of information these are well formed well thought out criteria for room now it's been altered by the advent of technology i mean look at the impact of led lighting on electrical loads right yeah yep you know and just that aspect of how we've been able to alter what we deliver with system improvements and technology and so and the reality of it is is that most architects and engineers they don't stop to say why don't we make these decisions now and so it's a it's a workflow and process change i had the fortune of getting sent to project management training a few years ago and learned about learned about work breakdown structures stuff that i never used right right but it made me understand better where we had to be changing where our decision making process occurs right like we won't start a project anymore unless we have a valid survey now my water group that i work with and i'm liaison for i won't let them start a pump station or water treatment plant unless they've got a damn good survey of this coordinate correct right because everything in that project relies on its location especially in the gravity fed system right so you can't kick that can down the road you've got to make these decisions earlier and so that's why it's so important even within the mep systems to understand how those relationships work yeah and how that and how it's going to alter what happens in a project so get that equipment out there pick your targets and sources and get them in even if they're just placeholders it doesn't matter get them in there and that's that's kind of what i was curious about and and honestly i have the same argument on the architecture side i i don't understand generic walls right it's if you chose an eight-inch wall you probably have an assumption what the real wall is so why not just place the real wall and i as an architect i say this to my you know fellow architects it's you know you put a one foot four inch exterior wall there's a reason why you chose that because you have a feeling there's a makeup that exists of brick and air space and so why not just use the wall and the same thing with systems you know you spent the time even drawing we get a lot of line diagrams still in sd and you know drafted line diagram you spend all that time doing that is it really that more challenging to to to model those things and then i mean just delete them afterwards remodel i mean i mean i i don't know it's just it sounds like a lot of effort and and i think you hit now on the head it's a workflow process you know understanding of of it's okay to make decisions earlier and change things right down the road i think that's kind of what it comes down to yeah right we do guilt by association if you look at my revit model right now you look in there you see that wall you see that pepto-bismol pink walls yeah that's a generic wall right you're right and so we we started playing this guilt trip on the architects to say hey you haven't designed this ball yet we're going to make a pepto-bismol paint and even if you go to a 3d view the whole wall is pink right and so but it's a great way to think about it i mean if you're teaching somebody how to do this and you're saying hey okay their gut instinct is i don't know what it is put it out there there is one rule about about the architectural structure i need to pass on for the for the love of pete do not delete a wall if you're just going to put another type in change it that way we don't lose our host and we don't do that change the type to something else you know even if you're going to move it change the type to something else because that guid that's associated with it is so important especially when we start associating mep equipment with a wall or a ceiling or a floor or anything like that you want to make sure that you're not just randomly deleting stuff just to put it back in think about what you're doing there was a quick conversation um i i think kevin started it in the chat and it had to do with um if you're when you're placing targets and sources first if you're in a larger building let's say it's a 5-10 story building is there a flow uh you know bottom to top top to bottom or anything like that that you would you would suggest how you would approach the whole target source um would you lay out my my addition to that is actually would you lay out for example all the targeted sources the whole building and then go back and do the relationships and then go back geometry or would you do maybe like a whole floor at a time target source i mean i guess it depends on what this is either way i'm really dependent on the architect though yeah because let's say that he's done the first second and third floor and he's got the rooms laid out in there if he's got that done i can move forward right so i'm really following the lead of the architect in that case where are they working so it's really not set in that case but like i said it's a hierarchical system so it always works better when you go from the bottom up right because as you go like you know the top force of a building it depends on where the air handling units are they're on the roof you know the larger sizes are going to come from the top down so it's better to work in the bottom up because it's going to have a bigger impact on openings and things like that within the building right yep so you want to think about those structures and you want to think about what that load is going to be and you need the accumulative value of that load coming up through the building right to understand what that size is going to be and even if you haven't placed the duct you'll see the load from everything that's already there and that will help you make the decision earlier to make that chase larger or smaller whatever it needs to be yeah so it's all about harvesting the data yeah and i have to say i'm having a little epiphany moment and i have to share it with everyone because you know on the construction side you know we're dealing a lot of the time with the coordination in the field aspect of it and it's funny because when when we're modeling our fabrication level h you know ductwork and and and whatnot um you know the we always try we always try and follow the flow of construction uh with with how we approach that process but now that i think about it it's usually core it's usually shaft and vertical is usually the way our construction flow works you know we do shaft and core elements and then we do distribution per floor but thinking about this workflow and think about someone actually having to do the modeling it doesn't really make much sense to to do the core work first if if it's coming from the targets and sources that are outside of the shaft right and so i'm almost like i'm almost thinking now especially now that we have much more of our our contractors using revit versus autocad mep i may i may start asking them like are we like we must be causing some issues here by making you guys do all the shafts first and then do this and then spread the distribution because they're kind of they're kind of being forced to start with duct and feed out to everything else and then they probably once they connect they probably have to go backwards right to check everything yeah didn't fit i don't know there's an epiphany you just have it just that just makes complete sense now i think about it and it's it's stupid little things like that that drive you crazy and it's and that's the thing about it is is that you have to think about how this hierarchy plays out right you have to be able to put that in context and that's why the modeling aspect of this is so important to start it earlier right because if you're waiting until 60 to start laying out air terminals you're already in trouble right because you're not going to know what the load is unless you manually sit there and i want to talk about this as a traditional failure from cad right because in cad what do we do we're just drafting we're throwing stuff out there and by the way if i hear one more person tell me that i can do a project faster in 2d than i can in 3d i swear i'm going to throw something out i don't care i do i did a valve box it was 10 by 10 in revenue and did it in 20 minutes come on and then i had all my views from it so stop telling me that right i have to imagine i hope that most of my audience here would agree that it's faster than 3d than 2d i hope but we should still get this channel if you've been following this channel for 12 plus years and you've been following me i hope that you're in the same boat as us as far as that thinking is concerned but maybe not and and if you need something this is a therapist we're all telling you right now right yeah this is therapy for those people you know come into the group here you know coming we're all gonna be wearing robes in a little bit right yeah i mean we're all gonna get you on board so so and that's the thing you know ted you just don't have those relationships you're not accumulating that data right and so that was to me the failure of cad is we got so dependent and the beauty of cad is yeah i can change anything i can do it any time i want the weakness of cat is i can change anything i can do it any time i want it made us lazy right i love autocad to death my career has been built on autocad and revit and autocad made us lazy and revit made us go back to the drafting board where you had to know everything before you started right yeah and it made us think about our designs more and i think that's one of the things that really changed in the bim omniverse that we were talking about the other day right is this mindset change of the importance of making these decisions sooner in understanding what the what the end should be right yep got to make that decision soon sooner so agreed on fronts on all fronts for sure so kind of closing this out i made a comment about looking towards new deliverables with clients and customers and i want to throw a bone at you right here sure i wrote a blog article back a few months ago i actually wrote more in the last year and had some health issues that really inspired me to write and put out some blog posts but this is something i've been thinking about i've been trying to teach this class today for years called the revit point of views right and initially my thought was is that i want to explain the importance of a view in a project you know and how the different views work through regular viewports when you cut a section at the side you know how you make all this stuff work to give clarity and meaning to what it is that you're building and it made me think about something why are we so damn dependent on a cad standard in sheets i wish i could tell you that i mean if you think about it you get dictated to all the time even in a revit model i had a review come back where they complained that i didn't have their name text style in a model that i delivered and i'm like okay it's a 332nd it's type text type with arial fonts right so it looks right who cares if it's called client name 10 point as opposed to my 330 seconds of an inch high text right and and then i got to thinking more about our dependency on the sheet and when we talk about wanting to change an industry you have to be willing to kick the crutch out that we lean on the hardest right and that's the cad standards and the sheets it's the appearance of the documents that takes way too much precedence in a design project and let me tell you something when you get into bim when you get into project information modeling and now you start to talk about digital twins there is no money in line weight nope it's irrelevant yep and so or that feels dot in your schedule or that you know that graphic standard that that legend that exists in your your wall type schedule like that stuff has zero value in that world so here's why the reason why i say this is that we don't invest enough money in the data that goes into a model we don't have enough people that circuit receptacles we don't have enough people that assigned a load of receptacles in new york last couple weeks ago new york build i had the opportunity to speak with a lot of industry leaders and there was one gentleman up there um that worked for gaffcon named john and he's on the digital twin um the digital twin committee and i can't remember the name of it right top my head but he made the point he said there's more representation of a digital twin here in your phone because this is a true digital twin of yourself right so as i'm looking at this stuff and i look at what i have on here you know i've got my medical apps on here that talk about my medical history everybody has their banking information on here right now maybe right i'm scared my wife is an officer with a bank but you think about that we have more data that's about us in this one piece of computer than anything right now and we have far less data about what goes on behind the walls above the ceiling and below the foreign systems and what we put in our models i'd be willing to bet you that we as an industry if we could get rid of the the dominant feature of having to rely on cad standards and replace it with content standards and documentation standards that say make the text 330 hit second of an inch tall and not say it has to be a specific type right right right that's where you get your money back to start making systems work for you and to get it to where we can put that data in to where we get closer to that true digital twin because for me i'm 61 years old man this is this is your stuff this is what you guys need this is what the next generation needs to be successful is the ability to understand what a digital twin is and to recreate it correctly so the next person doesn't have to guess what's behind that daggone wall right so that we do a better job of renovations a better job keeping cost in control and so there's just that's that's my soapbox for today it drives me crazy when we talk about systems for people to understand you got to be willing to give something up to make it work better for you why not make it the sheet right and and it's a perfect it's a perfect topic within this topic because uh i think uh for the most part what's happening this happens in architecture too this is just this isn't just mep this is architecture this is all disciplines you know we we we've adopted revit as a new drafting platform not as a bin platform right that's everyone's using it now but it's all the the ends is the end result is still the the document and so that reflects on what you're saying there and it's always easy to eventually know that you know at the end of the day i'm just producing plans so if i have to override this graphic and throw a text note on there i'm good to go but to your point if you're building it if you're building a good system if you're using the tools and connecting them and putting the data in there you can't cheat some of that stuff first of all which is good right right absolutely and and in theory your documents will be better i mean at the end of the day the the the the adoption of this will make your documents better but i am completely on board with you and i've you know over the last couple of years that's kind of my new driving force for the rest of my life essentially and and the same at tournament construction where i work my day job and the same here on the revenue gate is is i want to see before i retire whenever that day comes you know we've got a long way to go man no documents i want to see building you know models as deliverables and and i want to see the end of the sheet as we know it so that's that's my end goal so i appreciate and i completely agree and and and and and feel your your uh your thoughts on that post so i wanted to close out one slide in here before i hit my last one and i wanted to talk a little bit about this we have an obligation as an industry to do a better job of educating people what we do right and so you know as we change these deliverables and this is a little project we did for rutgers you know mep project just an outfit of a room that if you look at this you look at the clarity of the documentation and the ease in which somebody can differentiate between what's going on you know and what it takes to make this work are the people that are actually behind the scenes and the training that we put into them and the training investments that we make in ourselves are what's going to make this work and and i want to tell everybody that's on this group out here your training doesn't stop at five o'clock okay i i never stopped at five o'clock you know you get to the point where you are by investing in yourself and and we as companies and communities we do things like a you you know where our company is gone and i've had thousands of people in my classes up there that have been great friends of mine for years you know but even if it's something like with my granddaughter teaching her how to fish what does that next generation need to know and have a damn good time doing it right enjoy what you do because think about it there's not a lot of people that get to do some of the cool stuff that we really get to do and where we are in the edge of in the evolution of the technology what's coming is going to be phenomenal and so you've got to prepare yourself for it and so it's really cool to to take the time and train yourself and invest in this and learn how to do this and so i'm going to give you my last one to get out of this yeah because i'm going to take questions right after this but i am teaching the full class of this i put in a proposal for au this will be my 20th year on au if i get accepted and so i'm going to send out those little two and a half dollar checks to everybody who votes for me but yeah i mean if you want to see more of this and really get into the into the weeds about it we're going to try to bring this up to eu this year and do this class again because i've taught it i've taught it uh half a dozen times it's won two top speaker awards for me and we get a lot of information you get into a lot more detail the handouts alone are worth admission because they're they're 140 pages of how to do systems right right and i will make sure that uh links in the description here on youtube and when i post it on my blog tomorrow at the revitkid.com i'll make sure to have a link to not just your blog post you mentioned but also a link to vote for your class on a you i have to imagine that you'll get plenty of votes and and and you'll be uh you'll be approved so that's my shameless plug but again i i got to do it with you because you get something i've been looking at the people that show up in here and a lot of the guys if you had a really good friends of mine and it's kind of like you know the traffic that you get the amount of people that you get up here you really see the passion of people in the industry and that's really cool to see and and to add on to what you said before i think the fact that uh you know the i think at most we had somewhere around seven or eighty people concurrently here um at nine p.m if you're in east coast i guess but sitting here for an hour listening to us talk about mep systems and and get on a few soap boxes here and there uh shows that that we do have these people still you know in our industry and and and if you're out there and you're one of those you know stay curious keep doing this and and together you and i and david and the rest of us uh we can we can move to those you know beyond those frustrating conversations you have every day with the people you work with trying to convince them of what you know is the truth and what you know is the best and what you know is the way we should be doing things and hopefully you know eventually the the mob will follow and then drag you kicking the screaming into the 19th century right that's all we can hope for well david and you all get a really cool hat this has been awesome i'm going to definitely uh uh uh jot down the four steps i'll uh i'll put the the the chapters here on youtube so everyone follow along with them um what what's the best other than the the links that i post there is the best place to reach you is is on blog on your linkedin and where would you like people to find you linkedin honestly is the best place to get up with me i mean i get a lot of people that ask me questions up there every day be aware that if you are posting questions to autodesk and you might see me pop up and answer your question right if you're posting mep questions they may get to david yeah they may get to me so if i see them i'll try to grab them but at the same time you know events like au is always a great place to find me you know i try to go there every year whether i'm teaching or not you know but like i said the best way to get up with me is via linkedin and i think most of people communicate with me that way awesome and i'll make sure to put a link to it link to your linkedin profile as well below so uh thank you david thanks for joining this was this was fantastic thank you guys all for joining us live as well there's a bunch of great chat going on even conversations between folks in the chat which i love seeing um you guys are amazing thanks for joining um see you again next week thursday nine o'clock i'll be here new guests uh fun topic and uh with that i bid you ado thank you to twin motion for sponsoring um and then make sure again that you subscribe to the channel here on youtube and yeah you guys are amazing i'll see you soon have a great night [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: TheRevitKid

Views: 20,251

Keywords: revit, revit design, autodesk revit, revit tutorial, revit tip, revit tutorials, BIM, architect, architectural design, bimafterdarklive, revit mep, revit mep systems, Mastering Revit MEP Systems (w/David Butts), revit mep tutorial, revit mep systems tutorial, how to create a revit mep system, what is a revit mep system, revit mep systems for beginners, revit mechanical, revit duct, revit plumbing, revit electrical, autodesk revit mep, Mastering Revit MEP Systems Tutorial

Id: r0z3ntzpqks

Length: 62min 50sec (3770 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 18 2022