BIMing the Real World

Autodesk Revit is a great tool for design and coordination on BIM projects, but it needs a little creative thought to be realistic. The stock joins, tees and elbows, are fine for layout and design, and work well for pressure lines. They even do okay for producing line drawings. But when it comes to coordination in tight spaces every plumber knows there is a big difference in the space a tee takes out and the space a combination requires. And if you want to take full advantage of BIM in your take-offs and material schedules you need the right fittings in your model.

Charlotte Pipe andFoundry has great resources for your needs. They provide Revit families for every fitting they produce – cast iron and PVC. Plug these families into your models before you start designing and it's a lot easier to produce a solid, realistic model you can use in coordination and material take-offs. It doesn't take a lot of work, only a little advance planning. Trust me. It's a lot easier to plug in the right fitting from the start than to go back and edit a model that has nighties and tees where there should be sweeps and combinations.

The process is simple. Charlotte Pipe'swebsite has walk-throughs. You should start by downloading the Revit families, then load them into Revit. I keep a separate folder to make the official families easy to access. You also need to add the .csv files to your look-up tables so Revit can find the info it needs for sizing the fittings. Once you have the fittings you need loaded open the settings and edit how revit makes connections. The default will be set to standard elbows and tees – change that to the quarter bends and sanitary tees you downloaded if you are modeling vents or sweeps and combinations if you're working on drainage.

If you are concentrating on modeling one system at a time it works great! Intersect two pipes and revit sticks in a cast iron or PVC sweep or combination to make the connection. Done. If you go vertical and want a san. tee instead of a combo it's simple to change the fitting for that one placement with a couple of mouse clicks. When you change over to vent piping, just go back into the settings and change the sweeps and combos to quarter bends and san.tees and all your connections will use those fittings. With a little advance planning and proper settings all your fittings will be true representations of what will be installed in the field.

Once you have your model built using the correct fittings, coordination is much more useful. That standard elbow may look just fine turning out of the wall an inch below that duct, but the radius of a quarter bend is going to cut into the ceiling grid. Better to know that now than when someone tries to install it in the field and a vent or a duct has to be re-routed. You can also build a fitting schedule and revit will tell you how many san. tees and combinations you'll need to purchase instead of telling you to buy a bunch of standard tees!

Revit is all about the settings. Take the time to get everything set up before you start modeling – proper fittings and settings – and you'll love the results. Revit can be a great tool for coordination and material takeoffs if you use the right fittings in the right places. And don't neglect the settings! You have abundant control of revit's default behaviors, use it. Going back to change tees to combos later is a monumental waste of time. Do it right the first time.

One final note: You can create your own default settings and import them into each new project. That will save you tons of time up front when you start a new project. If you are a plumbing designer you are going to want all your fittings and basic settings available on everything you do, so take the time and make a settings file.

A Plumber's Guide to BIM

 

The best thing since no-hub bands?

Back when I was a kid I remember my father saying, “I'm not putting a band-aid on cast iron pipe!” Times change. I know a lot of good plumbers these days who've never poured a lead joint, much less wiped a joint. The industry changes and our skills as craftsmen change.

BIM stands for Building Information Modeling. BIM is the next step beyond CAD drawings and 3D modeling. BIM adds layers of information and is sometimes called 5D design. In BIM all of the submittals, specs, and product data we printed up and put in binders for the architects, engineers, and owners are incorporated into a three dimensional representation of our work. But that's only four dimensions.

Time is the fifth dimension of BIM. The BIM model contains a realistic virtual installation of our piping systems, tagged with all of the information I mentioned, which we can use to extract material and labor calculations and cost estimates. In our BIM model we can bring together all of the information and data we use to bid the job, buy the job, install the work, and bill for our services. We can make accurate cost projections and realistic work schedules – then we can track progress along the way.

To do all of this we need a good, accurate model. Unfortunately the level of development in the industry has the MEP trades far behind the curve, and the plumbing industry is years behind Mechanical and Electrical. I work in Autodesk Revit and NavisWorks, but all the current design software available suffers the same limitations. In Revit the standard fittings are limited to tees and nineties.

Pipe can be sloped in Revit, but there aren't standard representations available of the wide range of pipe fittings used in the industry. You can add custom fittings to the program, but the program doesn't understand when to use them properly. The promise of quick material take-offs falls flat with a list of tees and nineties when what you need is a list of combinations, wyes, sweeps, quarter bends, eighth bends... And what about all those no-hub bands?

Mechanical and Plumbing Engineers design piping systems. They often leave the details of which fittings are used to meet code and create a properly working drainage system to plumbers in the field. If you are working with an architect and engineer who are using a 3D modeling program to design the building and a contractor who is using BIM to coordinate the work and provide documentation to the owner, you are likely to get a model with the standard tees and nineties that ship with the software, not an accurate representation of how you will install the plumbing system.

These powerful 3D models can tell you how many yards of concrete is in the building, how many feet of pipe you'll need, and in the case of water pipe how many tees and nineties are needed. (Though in the case of tees you will probably get a list of tees and reducers not reducing tees) In the coordination phase you can see if your pipes are conflicting with other trades, but as we know there is a big difference in the radius of a standard ninety or tee and that of a sweep or combination. And often that makes all the difference in tight spaces.

If your contract requires a realistic as-built model, with all the product data plugged in, you'll have a lot of work to do changing all those standard tees to combinations and sanitary tees. But it takes a plumber to pipe a building, even a virtual 3D representation of a building. This is where plumbers need to step up and claim the future. It should be the plumbers job to realistically pipe the model, not the engineer. You can go to manufacturer's websites, and in some cases supply house websites, to get all the add on content you need – from realistic fittings to exact 3D models of fixtures and trim – to use in your model.

Like the no-hub band, BIM will revolutionize the industry. Plumbers can embrace the new technology and leverage it for increased demand for our expertise and increased profits for our companies or we can ask the engineers to put our fittings in for us and we will just become robotic installers. BIM is here. Technology will become more and more integrated into the working environment. It is up to plumbers and the plumbing industry to use that technology to move our industry forward.

What's a BIM?

I've heard that line over and over -- "What's a BIM?" BIM stands for Building Information Modeling and is sometimes referred to as 5D design. We all know what 3D design is, we live in a 3D world, but what is 5D? In BIM we incorporate a three dimensional model of a project with all the information associated with that project -- specs, product data, submittals, manufacturer data, OEM manuals -- and we add time and labor estimates and statistics as well as resource management.

BIM gives us a preview at what the project will look like, what material it will take to complete, what it will cost to build, and even future maintenance costs. We can schedule construction labor, project material needs, even calculate ongoing utility usage once the building is occupied. We can track our labor and material through construction and use that to evaluate our bid and fine tune future estimates. We can virtually build the building before we break ground and document every phase of construction as we proceed.

One of the major uses of BIM in the industry today is coordination between trades and scheduling the work efficiently. With our 3D models we can see conflicts before the piping starts and avoid them. We can also schedule which trade needs to work in an area, when, and avoid labor stacking conflicts. This saves both time and material. We can then provide this information to our workers for more efficient installation.

Here on the Plumbers Guide to BIM I will look at the cutting edge of design/build technology effecting the plumbing industry.