Monday 27 October 2014

Cable Tray does run along a Wall !!!

Hi,

I woud like to post something which most of the electrical engineers  wish to have in REVIT MEP.
As a BIM coordinator I was always been asked by the Engineers to  run cable tays along the wall. Accidently we found a work around to get this done. I Don't say this is a BIM way of working but this is surely going to be useful.
 
1. Draw a cable tray with riser as shown.
 
 
2. Copy the riser and rotate it to 90 Degrees.
(Many of us would have tried to rotate the horizontal cable tray)


3. Now bring cable tray elbow fittings from the ribbon and place it at the ends of the rotated cable tray.


4. Select the elbow fitting, drag and connect it to the riser cable tray.





5. Tada. Vertical cable tray is created.



6. Remember: whenever you want to adjust the cable tray length select the fitting and extend it.


7. Never drag the cable tray. it would change the rotated cable tray back to horizontal.

 


8. Added advantages: You can add Fittings in the tray and can change the size of the tray.
 

 





 


Monday 15 September 2014

Schedule Ducts based on their gauge values.

Hi,
This is a tip to bring Metal gauge values in duct schedules. My poject team asked me to find a way to bring Duct's metal gauge values in schedules. The team wants to fix the Gauge values based on the MAXIMUM SIZE OF THE DUCT. So I have to find the Maximum size of the duct.
 
To find the Maximum Size of the Duct, I created a simple calculated value using if statements .
 
The steps are given below.
1.Create a duct schedule and add the fields, Width & height.
2. Create a Calculated value with the name Max.Size and the formula as

 if(Width > Height, Width, Height)
 
    After finding the Max.Size of the duct we need to add another calculated valuewith the name "Gauge Value"  to insert the gauge values in the schedules and keep it as a text parameter.
     
    Now we have to create a nested if conditional statement to bring the gauge values.
    if(Max.size < 751 mm, "Gauge 24", if(and(Max.size < 1501 mm, Max.size > 750 mm), "gauge 22", if(and(Max.size < 2251 mm, Max.size > 1500 mm), "gauge 20", if(and(Max.size < 3001 mm, Max.size > 2250 mm), "Gauge 18", "NA"))))


     
    Solution Found.!!.
     

Saturday 30 August 2014

Duct Elbow Fitting with Fixed Inner radius.


Hi,

I would like to share a tip ad hope this would be helpful for someone in the projects. One of my project required to maintain the inner radius of the duct elbow at 150mm regardless of the size. A small trick in the formula helped me to acheived it.

When I edited the family to modify to meet the project requirement, I found that the radius of the Elbow fitting is derived by the "Center Radius" of the Fitting. The "Center Radius" of the Fitting is then derived by the Radius Multiplier


Image showing the default parameters of Duct Fitting
I removed the parameter "Radius Multiplier" and added a new parameter in the name "Inner Radius". Then Changed the formula for Center Radius  as "Inner Radius + Duct Width/2".
Modified Parameter to maintain the Inner Radius.
 This solved my problem and now I'm able to control the Inner Radius of the Elbow.