Go With the Flow - Part 1

As a support technician in the Subscription Support team, I found myself answering a lot of questions about how things work in our MEP applications.  I found that I enjoyed this process, as providing this information usually resulted in customers being thankful for my efforts....I'm a sucker for instant gratification.

I also learned through that experience the value of having a strong understanding of how things work.  This allows you not only to be successful in that specific situation, but also in related situations.  You know the saying, "Give a man a fish and feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and feed him for life."  With that in mind, I am setting out to cover another fundamental of Revit MEP that users often struggle with.

Revit MEP Connectors
Connectors allow data to flow between elements in the Revit BIM.  Pretty straightforward right?  Well, yes in concept.  But, when you introduce the data that needs to flow between Connectors, the need to establish rules for flow, and the association between the Connector and the Family itself; things get interesting.

Note: The embedded videos below are actually 1024x768 resolution, so be sure to Right-Click->Zoom->Full Screen to see it in full clarity.  The links are also included if you want to download the video file for later use.

Connectors and Mapping

I hope that first video helped with Connectors in general and how their Geometry can be defined by the Family itself.  I apologize for the poor sound at first, my mic was turned up too high.

Now let's talk about the data that flows between families.

Connectors and Data

Whew...information overload right?  Even if your brain is about to explode, I bet you can still see the power that the Connector holds in Revit MEP, and how you can use it for all kinds of useful things.  Next post I'll cover some additional parameters on Connectors, and how they impact flow propagation in the model.

For those of you who want to tinker around with the model I used in the video, you can download it in the link below.

Connector Dataset

Comments

[Jose Guia at CadKicks.com]

You've been kicked (a good thing) - Trackback from CadKicks.com
http://cadkicks.com/adkrevitmep/Revit_MEP_Go_With_the_Flow_Part_1

[calvin]

wonderfully helpful, thank you for posting

[Michael Porskær]

Very usefull information, it is needed in the Essentials.

[Barry]

I thought there was a third video in this series...

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