P-Trap Plan View Symbol

How does everybody show their p-traps in plan view? In the past, we have just not shown them and left it up to the specs to cover them, but ideally we would like to show them. I've been playing around with it and got it to look half way decent (I haven't used it in a project yet to know that it will work the way I want it too every time) but I'm curious as to how everyone else goes about showing p-traps in plan view and how you get it to look that way. I have seen another firm use a drop symbol with a rise symbol right next to it. I was going more for the typical half circle look.

Here is what I have so far.
Attachment 92491

Chuck a masking region in there and you should be able to get rid of the horizontal intrusion (if you are looking to get rid of it)

Yea I tried putting a masking region in the family but it doesn't hide the pipe. I don't know if masking regions in a family only apply to things in the family..? Maybe I'm just missing a check box somewhere.

Jplatte, I have the same issue! have you progressed on this?

lynnseybrennan347636, no sorry I have not. I've been too busy to continue playing around with it, but I'm going to need to get back to figuring it out fairly soon here.

I've attached an image from our construction documents with a couple of P-Traps visible. Is this the look you're after? If so I can explain a bit how I got there. I know pipe fittings, and especially the trap, are pretty finicky.

Attachment 92645

neightyeight - yes, that symbol is one of the options I'm looking at, if you could explain how you got it to look that way it would be much appreciated.

Sure. There's a few things going on in there. And this assumes you have some experience creating families.

First of all, the P-Trap symbol is a detail family that gets nested in the main pipe fitting family, of course placed in the reference level view so it appears in plan view in your project. The linework defining the pipes in the fitting family needs to be set to not show in plan view. Detail families will break piping above it and be broken by piping above it, whereas annotations will not break.

The P-Trap detail family is where most of the work happens. The detail family contains the drop and rise symbols, and more importantly it also contains a line that would be the pipe entering into the drop half circle. This is not an annotation so it won't scale automatically in your project. But because it is a detail it will break any piping below it and it will appear broken if there's any piping above it as I mentioned. (Provided the view type is set to Mechanical or Plumbing). To be able to change sizes I have a parameter called "Symbol Scale" (Integer) that controls formulas that determine the dimensions of the detail linework - circle radius, etc. With the "Symbol Scale" set to 96 it appears correctly for 1/8" scale views and so on. Also, the line representing the pipe entering the drop 3/4 circle needs to be adjustable in length. The minimum length would be the radius of the drop symbol. The preferred length would be the length of the fitting (in the fitting family). The actual length would be the greater of the two. There is no need for any masking regions or anything like that.

Back in the pipe fitting family you have to create the same "Symbol Scale" parameter. Insert the detail family and path its "Symbol Scale" parameter to the one you just made in the fitting family. Now it will be available to edit in the project environment. Also, you need to path the detail family preferred length parameter to the actual length of the fitting.

I know this technique gets a bit complicated to set up. But once in the project it works perfectly and makes our drawings so much more readable. In fact, I've edited all our piping content to use this method so that things break as they should and I have control over the size of symbols. For example, sometimes in 1/16" scale views I want the symbols to be 75% of their normal size. Well, now I just change the "Symbol Scale" parameter to 144 and I'm good to go.

Well, have fun and feel free to ask any questions if you run into trouble or need more clarification.

Loved the instructions but I tried to follow and could not make one. Would you be kind enough to share your P-trap family? This way I could go inside and se the way you did and modify other families to have the same effect

Sure. I've attached the P-Trap family I use. You'll also notice that I don't use lookup tables in my fittings so you may be better off starting with your current fittings and adjusting them to work graphically how you'd like. Feel free to ask any questions.



Attachment 92959