Supply diffuser source??

[Sergio Castillo]

Let me start by saying that I work for an Architectural firm and we are very advance in Revit Architecture, recently our consultants have begun to join us in BIM, I had already used electrical fixtures without the engineers for rendering. I also noticed that all electrical fixtures have a "Light Source" parameter that allows you to visually see their output depending on the power of each fixture. Now that have received the mechanical model from our engineer I am interested in knowing if those families, specially supply diffusers, also have a parameter similar to the "Light Source" so we can visually 'see' direction and intensity of air coming out of each duct/diffuser. And before someone ask why would you want that, well I've seen a number of exposed structures with hanging lighting fixtures that tend to swing when the ac supplies are close enough to hit them, they become very distracting to those of us who pay attention to the fine details and at least to me that is not acceptable considering that have a BIM system where we should be capable of calculating this accurately.

Thank you all for taking the time to read my posting and for any replies in this matter.

Sergio Castillo
ROFA ARCHITECTS
sergioc@rofainc.com

[dennis howell]

Well, "sorta". The diffusers, most have annotation arrows that point direction of flow, and all will have a CFM value attached to the diffuser. As far as a 'seeable' graphic, "no".

[Sergio Castillo]

Thanks for a quick reply Dennis,

I did see that parameter, apparently its only visible in plan views, well hopefully Autodesk is working on this so we can better predict airflow visually.

[jared52528]

In terms of an accurate diffuser throw, im pretty sure there is no default function for what you are after.

An idea to play with or pass onto your mechanical consultant would be for him to add an extrusion into his diffuser family to give you the clearance you require.

It would be some sort of half dome revolve that you could use for your clash detection.

Without getting to technical...

Throw is a relationship between the angle of the blades of the diffiser, the neck diameter and the amount of air being delivered (flow) and any obstacles in the road of the airflow, partitions etc.
Ie each diffuser will have different throw "geometry".

With the light fitting, you just look up the Lux in the catalouge, put that in and get a reasonable result. Your mech guy is going to need to be pretty confident with formulas to be able to get a comparable result in the diffuser family. If he cringes a bit when you suggest this too him I would be slightly understanding.

Instead, I would recommend speaking to your mechanical consultant and getting him to specify a safe clearance for worst case scenario and communicating that to your drafter.

Eg the light fittings need to be minimum 2m. away from any diffuser, you could then model a clearance extrusion if you wanted to pick it up in clash detection.

Hope that helps