Autodesk® Revit® MEP Content

In my last article we discussed Revit Families and how to create and change them to suit your needs. Family content is the backbone of a project, and provides the information that can be extracted from all parties involved to make BIM work to its fullest potential.

Today we will take a look at Autodesk Revit MEP content and focus on connections. Connections are the means to which pipe, wire and duct can connect to a family and make it a part of a system. Think of connection as separate components inside of families. They contain the information that determines what the characteristics of the family will have. For example if families of a washing machine and dryer were made with wiring connections, it would be important to make sure that the voltage parameter of the washing machine wiring connection had a value of 120V. It would be equally as important to make sure the dryer connection voltage parameter had a value of 220V.

Connections are also similar to objects in how they are placed. They require a face of a mass, or a work plane to attach to. They often times need to be constrained to move with the attached objects or planes when the shape of the family is changed.

Shown below is a heat pump family. It has a wiring connection and two pipe connectors to accommodate water lines coming in and out of the heat pump.

Since the voltage parameter can be set in the wiring connection, the pipe diameter you would like to connect to the pipe connection can be changed as well. We will select the pipe connection and look at its instance properties.

We notice that the connection has parameter ready to be populated. It is important to remember that at any time we can add shared parameters or create them. This connection has the radius parameter and value shaded back. When we click on the button to the right of the value with the = sign, we get the parameter dialogue box.

The radius parameter is set to equal the value of another parameter that works from a formula. In this case it gets its value from the Inlet Radius Parameter. To see what parameters are at play inside of this family we need to close these boxes and open the “Types” parameter dialogue box. If we want to disconnect the radius parameter from the Inlet Radius parameter we could choose from the list.

On the create tab of the ribbon, let’s go to the Family Properties panel and click on Types.

Now we can see that this family has formulas set for parameters according to how many tons the heat pump unit is. This particular family type is for a 5 ton unit. Boolean formula can be applied in the formula column to get parameters to arrive at the value that you choose. Once the values are correct we can look at what the connector is attached to.

We can see that the three connectors are attached to a work plane that has the mass also attached constrained by a parameter. This assures that when the depth parameter is changed the connectors move with the work plane.

Integrating connections into your families will assure that pipe duct and wire can be connected and that your family content is included in your systems.