BIMtopia
Module 10 - Design Project Brief: System Design — Plumbing Systems
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Module 10 - Design Project Brief: System Design — Plumbing Systems

Focus

The focus of this stage in your integrated design project is to explore how you can best implement the strategies that you identified for achieving your project goals as you design the features of your building’s plumbing system.  For this check-in, you’ll add the elements of a typical public restroom to your building model:

  • Plumbing System Elements
    • Plumbing Fixtures
      • Toilets
      • Urinals
      • Lavatory Sinks
    • Piping Systems
      • Cold Water
      • Hot Water
      • Sanitary
    • Optional (if part of your design)
      • Greywater

Recommended Approach

At this point in our design process, we’ll continue adding the details to flesh out our initial building design ideas -- for this check-in, focusing on some of the plumbing system elements for typical restrooms.

Create a Linked Plumbing Model

  • Create a new Revit model using the Systems Template.
  • Link your architectural model to this new plumbing model using origin-to-origin positioning.
    • Be sure to select the architectural model and edit its Type properties to turn on the Room Bounding property.
  • Use the Copy/Monitoring tool to copy these elements from your architectural model:
    • Levels -- to create matching levels with the same floor-to-floor heights in your mechanical model.

Model the Plumbing System Elements in One Typical Restroom

  • Plumbing Fixtures
    • Toilets
    • Urinals
    • Lavatory Sinks
  • Piping Systems
    • Cold Water
    • Hot Water
    • Sanitary
  • Optional (if part of your design)
    • Greywater

Copy these Plumbing System Elements to any Stacked Restrooms on other Levels

If your restrooms are stacked (located directly above each other on each floor), copy the plumbing system elements to different similar floor levels.

  • Copy the plumbing fixtures and piping that you’ve model on one level to the Clipboard.
  • Then, use the Paste Aligned command to copy these elements to other similar levels.

Does the Plumbing System affect Other Systems?

The design of your envelope system, your structural system, your HVAC system, and your plumbing system all have to work together:

  • Hot and cold water supply piping is very easy to route wherever it is needed.
  • But sanitary drainage lines can create challenges because they must slope downward to function correctly.
    • If your restrooms are located far away from the location where the risers (the vertical pipes) will be located, the required change in elevation can create problems if the piping protrudes into your architectural space.
    • If this happens, consider adding another mechanical space for the sanitary riser that is closer to the restrooms to reduce the required change in elevation.
  • It’s typically easier to route the piping systems below the structural framing elements to avoid interferences, but piping can be routed through beams with careful planning to make sure that the voids created for the piping do not compromise the structural integrity of the beams.

Progress Check-In / Documenting Your Design Journey

About Design Journal Entries

You’ll be sharing your ongoing design process and progress with others in our class community through a posting in an online Design Journal using Notion.

Feel free to use whatever format best captures the ideas that you want to share -- text, images, sketches, photos of hand sketches, intermediate models, results of analyses, and so on.

For this class, your design process is as important as the final result.

Post a Design Journal Entry

Create a new posting sharing your Design Journal entry on this linked Notion page:

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Design Project Check-In: Plumbing Systems

Your Design Journal entries this week should highlight your design thinking and process in modeling:

  • your plumbing system elements
  • your piping systems
  • any special plumbing system challenges that you encountered and how you overcame them

Model Coordination

Upload the latest versions of your architectural, structural, HVAC, and plumbing models to Autodesk Construction Cloud, then copy these latest versions into your Model Coordination space to explore the integrated design.

  • Walk through a merged model view to experience how the architectural, structural, HVAC, and plumbing designs work together.
  • Look for any potential conflicts or issues that require resolution.

Weekly Design Project Check-In

You’ll sign up for an appointment next week with a member of the teaching team to review your progress and share tips about how to proceed.