In Part 1 of Elbows for Engineers I discussed creating Elbows based on LookUp tables for Steel Sch 40 piping. In this installment I am going to show a simple way to get a more realistic throat dimension for Mitered Elbows and tips for graphical representation of a mitered elbow with turning vanes. This is actually very straight forward. By simply editing the default Mitered Rectangular Elbow and changing the Shoulder parameter to this equation… if(Duct Width < 2′, 0′  4″, if(Duct Width < 4′, 0′  6″, 0′  8″)) … you get a much better looking elbow for your documentation. See image results. I added the model line to represent an elbow with turning vanes. Some companies have different standards so do what works best for you. Enjoy!

The default Revit MEP content provided in the Mechanical Template is pretty horrendous. Here is a quick way to get up and running with some long and short radius Steel Sch 40 pipe and Duct Elbows with a more SMACNA standard throat. The “Standard” pipe type provided out of the box is intended to represent Copper Type K with brazed fittings. Commonly used pipe for Mechanical Systems or at least one to standardize around for piping layouts is a Steel Sch 40. The easiest way to implement this is to duplicate the Standard pipe type provided and change the material, connection and class type properties. (See image on right) That’s the easy part. Now for the elbows we are going to utilize the following (2) lookup tables which Revit MEP uses for pipe fitting definitions and dimensions. The files need to reside in your default lookup tables folder either locally or deployed on your network. The local file location on Windows 7 is C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\RME 2012\Lookup Tables\Pipe . File format must be .csv (comma separated). Restart Revit if its already loaded when you do this. http://openrevit.com/media/docs/Elbow_Long_Radius-Welded-Sch_40.csv http://openrevit.com/media/docs/Elbow_Short_Radius-Welded-Sch_40.csv