Plumbing, course or fine to print?

[ALM BIM]

I am curious how most folks are printing plumbing in Revit. Single line or double line. It seems both have their pros and cons. What are arguments for over or the other?

[drewj]

Dont really have an argument for one or the other, however we print using single line (Medium Detail level) as this best replicates our drafting standards. Due to how small the pipes are, double lines can tend to merge together and become thicker than required.

[Jrobker]

Medium for us.
Fine view is hard, almost impossible to decipher rises vs drops.
Well use fine on sections, 3D and camera views.

[camrynj]

So far we are using medium as well due to same issues explained above (lines to dark when printed). I am working on a parameter that would allow us to use double line on 3 1/2" and above and single line on 3" and below. Has anyone done this?? If so could use your help. Im not sure if it is even possible to do yet in Revit MEP 2012.

[Graeme Padgham]

Hi,
You could add a parameter in a couple of ways to override the line thickness for say anything less that 50mmdia.
One way would be to add a project paramater at instance level, which could simply be a YES/NO parameter called FINE LINES or whatever,
Then create a filter which picks up the YES flag and apply it to Pipes/Accessories and Fittings, and override the line to a thiner one in the VG.
Doing this by instance is a little time consuming however.

What i have done is create a Pipe Type for 15mm to 50mm and one for 50mm+, then use the filter to pick up the pipe type and apply an override.
It works ok, but i really still would like to override by Coarse/Medium/Fine, which would mean i can show single line for all pipes less than 50mm.
I wait in hope.

[drewj]

The Filters dont allow you to control the Detail Level of the elements, at present you can only control the visibility (on/off), the line weight/colour/pattern and apply Halftone, Transparancy and (in 2012) Ghost Surfaces.

Perhaps a work around could be to have a filter to hide at less than a value, and a filter to hide at over a value, then set one to fine, the other to medium. You can now drop them both on to a sheet... I will attach an example.

Just made the example, not great, maybe someone can think of a way to get the fittings to work better....

[camrynj]

The Filters dont allow you to control the Detail Level of the elements, at present you can only control the visibility (on/off), the line weight/colour/pattern and apply Halftone, Transparancy and (in 2012) Ghost Surfaces.

Perhaps a work around could be to have a filter to hide at less than a value, and a filter to hide at over a value, then set one to fine, the other to medium. You can now drop them both on to a sheet... I will attach an example.

Just made the example, not great, maybe someone can think of a way to get the fittings to work better....

Thanks for this idea. I will try this, i think it will benefit us in our further projects.

[ALM BIM]

Autodesk, are you listening? We need to be able to control detail level for different size pipes. Also it would be useful to. Control detail level by element for pipe accessories and fittings. Right now there is no optimal way to print plumbing. To earlier post...you can help control pipe line weight with object styles too.

[camrynj]

Our only issue with object styles is that it would change all your pipe line weights and all i am trying to do is change the line weight of pipe sizes 3" and below. Also for the idea of the two view ports overlapping each other on a sheet does not work for use because there is no way to turn off the sheet title without turning both of the sheet titles off.

[Jrobker]

because there is no way to turn off the sheet title without turning both of the sheet titles off.

Actually quite easy.
Just duplicate a viewport and make the new one have no title.
Apply the no title to one of them.