Optimization of fabrication parts - Revit MEP Tutorial

- There's a few different ways to get fabrication parts into our models. One way, the way I do it is simply model as you normally would then we physically convert what you modeled into parts. The objective here is to model some duct and pipe the old fashioned way. Then we'll optimize it into construction parts. So in Revit, under project, let's go open. Browse to where you're keeping your exercise files. We'll grab fabrication optimization and click open. Let's bring in some MEP fabrication parts. Let's go to the systems tab. On the fabrication panel, click the fabrication settings button right here. Now in the fabrication settings under fabrication configurations instead of none, click drop down. We'll grab Revit MEP Imperial content V2.4. Now under services, let's grab Ductwork +4in WG. I guess we'll grab the +2in too. While we're at it, let's scroll down. Let's grab Piping ABS, Copper Brazed, Copper Soldered maybe some PVC. Let's click add. Now let's go to parts. Let's go to items. Let's go to HVAC, Generic, let's go to assemblies, HVAC. We can keep the grill boxes out. Let's see what we have for equipment. Your devices, exhaust fans, quite a bit of stuff. Let's grab these rectangular fire smoke dampers, galvanized steel, rectangular. We're going to add that fire smoke damper. Put on the VAVs, we can add both of these. For hangers, we'll click here. Let's grab all of them I guess, select full strap hanger. Keep clicking add 'til they're all in our model. Let's look at sheet metal components. Duct accessories, let's drill into here. Bought or manufactured. Go to manufactured. Boy, look at all these. Plenumbox, volume damper... Let's grab a volume damper, add that. We have flex duct we can drill into here. Bought, we'll grab both of these. Add that flex five, go into rectangular ducts. Manufactured, let's grab all this stuff. Keep adding it all. I'm going to go up a little bit. I want to minimize this and I want to find our hangers. Our hangers are in. So now on our services, let's minimize HVAC, let's go to mechanical piping. Generic. Let's go to assemblies. Piping. We have this top one here. Reducers, I don't think we need any of these. We have Weld-O-Lets, which is nice. Let's go in the hangers. Let's grab all of these hangers. Let's put on the pipes. We have our schedule 40. Looking through here, I think we're good with everything here. We can go into valves, boy, there's a bunch of valves too. I'm good with what we've got loaded. Well, actually no, let's grab a bowel valve. Select it, add it. Can't hurt. Let's click okay. So in the project browser, right under mechanical, we are in one mech, just to make sure. I'll zoom into this area here. Maybe I'll start running some duct work the good old fashioned way. So let's go to our systems tab, click duct, 12 inch by 12 inch, middle elevations at nine feet. Sounds good, I'm going to pick a point here. I pick a point here up to here and over all the way down here maybe. Select this piece of duct, going to right click. Create similar. Pick a point here. Then come up a little bit to here. Let's bump that up to 12 feet. I'm going to keep going maybe all the way up to here. Maybe add another one here, right click on this piece of duct, create similar. Come straight down. I don't know, into this room. We don't need a bunch. Escape a few times. Now what I'd like to do is optimize this into fabrication parts. So I'm going to hover over this piece of duct and I'm going to hit tab three times until I have all of it highlighted. Then I'm going to select it. I'm going to click design two fabrication. So for our sizes, duct work, instead of two inch, let's go with four inch. Rectangular 12 by 12. Okay. If we had different sizes, it would list them here. Now let's just click on finish. Perfect. Hit escape a few times. Now the problem is if we select one of these runs, let's click on show related warnings. Fabrication straight exceeds the standard length. Okay. Let's click close. Let's hover over one of these pieces of duct again. Hit our tab key couple times, select them. Now let's click on optimize lengths. Now it optimizes these to the lengths that are in our settings. There we go. That's how we add and optimize lengths of duct.