Specify Amps on Connector to Specify Load - Part III

In a user response to Part I, there was an inquiry "it would be nice to demonstrate in the next part how to get Phase working with if then statement or better yet lookup tables, since thats really makes for the best flexibility and limits having huge type catalogs.".

There are three things to make note of in this inquiry:

1. If / Then can get quite hairy... and since the Number of Poles param data type can't be used in formulas (including If/Then statements), limits the applicability.
2. Lookup tables... I presume this is referring the text_file_lookup, which as described here is really only applicable for Pipe fittings (and perhaps other things where you have one or more inputs of 'length' params, and one 'length' output.)  (New in 2011 is a similar function called ConduitSize_Lookup).  Since we are not dealing with length inputs/output, this function doesn't apply.
3. Type Catalogs are actually a great suggestion here to deal with scenarios such as Motor Loads.  The inquiry gives the example "ie. when HP finally reaches >1/2 changes to 3phase should be auto".

The type catalog option that is demonstrated in this video actually serves a slightly different purpose than the original topic in this series.  The original request was the be able to specify the volts and current, and have the software determine the load on each phase.  The type catalog option provides a way, in this case, to 'look up' the Horsepower, and have the family determine the number of poles, as well as the power.

For more information on how to structure your type catalog header, refer to the Families Guide.

If you want to cut-and-paste instead of creating the type catalog from scratch on your own, here is the text I entered:

,Horsepower##other##,Voltage##Electrical_potential##Volts,Number of Poles##other##,Phase##other##,Current##electrical_current##amperes
1/6 HP 115/1,1/6,115,1,1,4.4
1/6 HP 115/1,1/6,115,1,1,4.4
1/4 HP 115/1,1/4,115,1,1,5.8
1/3 HP 115/1,1/3,115,1,1,7.2
1/2 HP 115/1,1/2,115,1,1,9.8
1/6 HP 277/1,1/6,277,1,1,1.8
1/4 HP 277/1,1/4,277,1,1,2.4
1/3 HP 277/1,1/3,277,1,1,3.0
1/2 HP 277/1,1/2,277,1,1,4.0
3/4 HP 208/3,3/4,208,3,3,3.5
3/4 HP 460/3,3/4,460,3,3,1.6
1 HP 208/3,1,208,3,3,4.6
1 HP 460/3,1,460,3,3,2.1

 

 

Comments

[OpenRevit]

Thanks Martin. All our recent content makes use of type catalogs so adding a few for rows in excel isn't too difficult. It would be nice in the future to integrate the NEC motor tables so that information was parametric.

[Fix Slow PC]

To Integrate the NEC motor table is better idea. Thanks for all the stuffs. I have also see the video, great efforts. Not sure but I am not able to view Families Guide (Hyper ink).

Regards

[Martin Schmid]

This type catalog mechanism is a way to incorporate values from the NEC motor table, and is indeed parametric (i.e., these are all entered as parameters into a table). Since most of the world likely doesn't follow the NEC, a 'NEC' specific feature is likely not high priority... however, it makes me curious what you would expect such a feature to do that the type catalog doesn't already accomplish?