Multiple ABS 2007 Duct Questions

[ameador]

I have quite a few different questions here all pertaining to ABS 2007. I am working with a Windows XP Prof operating system. If anyone has answers to these please reply. It may be helpful if you refer to the questions by number since there are quite a few here.

1) I need some help with ductwork manipulation. After a duct has been inserted in the drawing how can you find out if it was inserted with a center-center justification, or a bottom-center justification? How can you change that once it is already in the drawing? This will be necessary if we have one person working on a drawing and it gets passed off to another they use different justifications and the new ducts will from the plan view appear to be connecting, but in an isometric view you will see that they will be offset due to the justifications that were used to insert the ducts.

2) Is there a tee of some sort that will allow 3 different duct sizes and allow me to align the top part of the tee with both of the ducts? In other words it would not be going centerline to centerline, it would be left-justifying for the "top" portion of the "T".

3) Is there a way to get the duct flow and the piping flow arrows to show up larger? Most of the time they are exceptionally small, or I can't even tell if they are on the drawing at all. I select the duct, right click, and check the "show flow arrow".

4) Sometimes when I change a duct transition from concentric to eccentric it may or may not adjust in plan view, I have a hunch that it may be adjusting in the z direction, but when I go to isometric or side views that transition is now a line, not a 3D object. Why? How can I get this to show up properly? Is this some sort of display configuration issues? I have it set to MEP Design, and as far as I remember we have not tweaked the display config's (yet) for this issue.

5) How do I change the pipe fittings to automatically come in as say threaded instead of flanged fittings?

6) If you drop in a duct fitting in the middle of a duct to transition down to a different size, how do you get the duct label that standardly shows up in the duct to show up on the newly resized duct? The "duct label" icon outputs more information that what I am looking for, but the duct size label that automatically kicks out when ductwork is drawn is perfect.

Thank you in advance to anyone who is able to help with any of these issues! My company is jumping up from R14 and we have not had any training on how to utilize this program so I'm just winging my way through this.

[jlwetzel]

bear with me as i try to answer as many of these as possible...

1. while there is not a way to find out what way the duct was put in, you can change the elevation or plan oreintation in any case. you can also change it at any time. Say person one started with the duct top-center justified, after duct is placed you can click the plus sign and start a new duct using center-center justification. if eccentric transitions are used i think you'll have to erase them and rejoin with concentric.

2. i dont believe there is a tee you are speaking of. Sorry.

3. adding flow arrows to pipes/duct is as simple as adding a label to them. Use the add label button and pick the flow arrow that is standard with the templates.

4. not really sure on that one.

5. when you draw pipe there is a box in the upper right that asks for routing type. use flanged. if you set up a template and set that as the standard in the pipe settings dialog box and save. that would take care of setting it the default when starting a new drawing.

6. to the best i can understand your problem, i think you are using the wrong label on this inserted fitting. if your saying that it comes in right when placing duct, check the duct properties dialog box and see which label it is using and select that one in the add label dialog box.

[ameador]

jlwetzel, thank you for taking the time to reply. I have heard from one of the members of AutoDesk and he has cleared up most of my issues.

1) my concern was that if a duct was put in with one justification and another duct is attached to it that had a different justification would they actually align. I will have to keep an eye out for any transition/fitting issues.

2) I have been told that I might want to look at reducing tees for this issue. However, this will not accommodate different heights, just different widths. Which seems odd to me b/c if you are taking care of one direction, why wouldn't you have added in the ability to deal with the other direction.

3) Unfortunately, I have had our system customized, so the add label button you are speaking of is no longer on one of the accessible palettes. I will try to dig that up and "revive" it.

4) I will attach a drawing that shows this particular item. AutoDesk wasn't sure about this one either yet. I'll keep you all posted.

5) I will have to look into this.

6) AutoDesk says I need to manually place a new label on that duct. Again, I don't have this label on my customized version, so I will need to investigate/dig this back up. All I remember was that the original label was putting out too much information when all I wanted was just the duct size.

Again, thank you for your help!