Charlotte No-Hub Fittings

[egleaves]

Has anyone else downloaded and tried to use any of the no-hub cast iron fittings from Charlotte Pipe?

Nearly every time I try to insert one of these fittings (manually or automatic) Revit gives me an error similar to this: Can't make type "[family name]". When it does create a fitting, things turn out AFU (see attached screen shot).

I have been able to get the 90 degree elbows to work properly. There was a family parameter, referencing the lookup table, butI couldn't figure out it's purpose. I deleted it and now the family works as expected.

This simply should not be. Deleting parameters to make an OEM fitting family work right (or at all) just doesn't seem right. Anyway...I'm hoping someone else has tried these fittings and can either confirm that I am missing something, or that the families are really just poorly built.

[egleaves]

Additional issue just discovered.

I changed my detail level to medium and found the symbols for the tees are messed up, and one piece of pipe just doesn't show up.

The screen shot is of the exact same objects as the last one, the only difference is the detail level.

[RevitNinja]

I have spent a lot of time with the Service and No-Hub Charlotte fittings. Despite the fact that cast iron is used on 99% of MEP projects, Autodesk has completely ignored that fact that we need that content.

The no-hub content from Charlotte is pretty much the worst batch of content I have ever seen come out of a manufacturer. While I have gotten 20 or so commonly-used Service fittings to function, I can't remember any of the No-Hub stuff even remotely working.

I was a beta tester for Charlotte and for the company they contracted with the develop this stuff, and I reported all of the issues I discovered (all fittings, regardless of shape, being classified as "elbow" and that's just the tip of the iceberg). To say that I am disappointed would be a gross understatement.

[egleaves]

Well, that makes me feel better about all the bad things I muttered to myself about these families. My first impression is that they're junk, but I wanted other opinions before outright condemning them.

I've practiced a bit with the family editor creating some butt-weld fittings by reprogramming the generic fitting families, perhaps I can salvage some geometry from Charlotte's mess and come up with a new set of parameters.

Thanks for the input.

[RevitNinja]

No problem at all. What we did over here is identify 25 frequently used service weight fittings. We tested them out and made sure that they didn't throw any crazy errors and that there was some continuity between the medium and fine level views.

When these fittings make an appearance in a project, we just add a sheet note that says the contractor has the option to use no-hub.

The service weight stuff isn't great either...I've only come across a handful of fittings that can be plugged in as default fittings. The majority of it has to be placed manually using the actual pipe fitting tool.

[bishop.brown]

I've spent a few hours now messing with the PVC fittings from Charlotte and I have to agree that they're unusable.

I'm new to Revit MEP, so this did bring up a question to me. Since Charlotte has each of their families broken down by model #, they are differentiating a san tee versus a reducing san tee. By doing this, are they forcing a san tee and a reducer for smaller branch runouts? How would this be fixed? By making a family that would act as both?

[egleaves]

If the fitting isn't built to be a "reducing" fitting, then yes, Revit will force a tee and reducer instead.

I've been able to use their no-hub san tee with fair success, and it's able to reduce the branch. The family is not named in such a fashion that would announce it's reducing capabilities, but it has them.

I downloaded and messed with their PVC san tees and I see what you're talking about. Even after I remembered to copy the lookup tables and restart Revit, I couldn't get the PVC-DWV 401 fitting to re-size. The connecter would recognize a size change, but the fitting geometry did not change.

I found the OTB fittings for DWV PVC to work quite well. Even they provide separate reducing and non-reducing san tees, and I don't understand why. The reducing tee works just fine with each connection the same size....and then if you reduce the branch, the fitting plays ball. I don't even load the non-reducing version into my project files.

I've built several fitting families now and found that it's not very difficult (compared to building a fitting family in the first place) to make the branch of a tee reduce. So, I fail to see the point in keeping a non-reducing tee lying around when the reducing version can do the job of both.

[SKalach]

They updated their fittings in October, they tend to work better these days. I still have qualms with not including the actual couplings(standard, heavy duty) and also the lack of a faux hub fitting for the service weight and extra heavy pipe that could be used when connecting to the spigot end of a fitting.

Also if you check you will notice that the pipe sizes in their "pipe.rvt" files do not match the dimensions they provide in their own dimensional catalogs.

If you are going to go through the trouble of making these fittings I would expect a template file that essentially gets all these fittings together in one place and has a pipe type that generally knows how to use them without too much manual placement of fittings.

[bishop.brown]

Agreed, I really expected a drop in template file to begin drawing their systems without having to edit families, link them to a file, etc. Color me disappointed.

[SKalach]

I have also been in discussion with Charlotte about some of these things. Apparently the reason the No-Hub couplings aren't included is because they don't physically manufacture them. It's not their product so they haven't modeled it.

[JayKurtz12]

We don't waste our time. Their filing system is cumbersome at best and Charlotte refuses to bundle their families into a single .zip file, especially if we need a lookup table for each one.

We have also provided feedback to Charlotte with no responses.

[bishop.brown]

In your discussions with them, did they say if or when they would update the fittings? Are they aware that they are very difficult to use?

[SKalach]

No mention of a date but it did seem as if the fittings are in ongoing development. From the conversations it appears that the fittings are created by a third party. Most of my questions about the fittings have been forwarded along to that third party without any real response.

[egleaves]

It's taken a couple of years, but Charlotte finally updated their fittings. Some of them. I received an email from them in mid-December stating "We updated our drawings. Thanks for your patience and have a happy holidays". That's all it said. So far I've found that the san tee (NH-28 ) works much better and the wye (NH-20) still doesn't work right. Anyone else give these a shot lately? I've looked over the wye family, but everything appears fine on the surface.

[1BadAction517667]

It's taken a couple of years, but Charlotte finally updated their fittings. Some of them. I received an email from them in mid-December stating "We updated our drawings. Thanks for your patience and have a happy holidays". That's all it said. So far I've found that the san tee (NH-28 ) works much better and the wye (NH-20) still doesn't work right. Anyone else give these a shot lately? I've looked over the wye family, but everything appears fine on the surface.
I now have the basics laid out and found this searching to see if anyone was adding the bands to their fittings or not.

Their families take a lot of manual massaging (first thing being to kill the inside diameter), but once they are done, they seem to work well. Some of their calculations are incorrect still and the medium and coarse detail levels are way off, but they are much better than they were when this thread was started.

[wroberts509026]

It's taken a couple of years, but Charlotte finally updated their fittings. Some of them. I received an email from them in mid-December stating "We updated our drawings. Thanks for your patience and have a happy holidays". That's all it said. So far I've found that the san tee (NH-28 ) works much better and the wye (NH-20) still doesn't work right. Anyone else give these a shot lately? I've looked over the wye family, but everything appears fine on the surface.

That wye has annoyed me excessively over the past few days. It seems to work fine when connecting TO a down sloped pipe from a higher location. Once you try to connect to an up slope pipe from a lower location it goes crazy. It's not been vital yet, but it would certainly be nice to connect the vent pipes with wyes instead of combinations.

[kchenault]

I am trying to use the NH-16 Short Sweep elbow. When I go to change the phasing, it says I need to disconnect the fitting and connected pipes. Does anyone have a solution or idea why that is?

[egleaves]

I now have the basics laid out and found this searching to see if anyone was adding the bands to their fittings or not.

Their families take a lot of manual massaging (first thing being to kill the inside diameter), but once they are done, they seem to work well. Some of their calculations are incorrect still and the medium and coarse detail levels are way off, but they are much better than they were when this thread was started.

I modeled a simple band as a pipe fitting and told Revit that it's a flange via Part Type in the family parameters. Set this for the flange in the routing preferences of the pipe type and it works great.

.....now if only the fittings would work reliably.