Quick Tips for Victaulic Tools for Revit?

MeyerFire University | TL103.01

By Joe Meyer, PE

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Using Victaulic tools for Revit. 

Today, I want to do a quick rundown of four of my favorite features about Victaulic for Revit. Quick preface, Victaulic for Revit is a Revit adding tool. It's one of my favorites. And I think if you're routing a lot of pipe in Revit, it's a must have. It's also not very expensive. It's a one-time purchase per user per year. So, if you're in the 2022 version of Revit, it's usually $200 for the latest year, and then it gets cheaper as you age out. So, in this case, I'm using Revit 2020. However, to buy license today, it would be about a hundred dollars one time for the 2020 version. That being said, the ROI on this tool is probably better than most software that I've come across inexpensive and extremely helpful for routing pipe in helping a real quick ways and for those ways is what I'm going to show today. I'm certainly not going to cover all of the features. Basically, how this ribbon lays out is their settings. You've got all of Victaulic’s families that you can pull out of here. They also have a content center where if there's not something included in the dropdown, you can search Victaulic’s complete family library in their content center, which is really nice if you're looking for something ultra-specific, say it's a number 10DR, which is the four-inch drain elbow that we use for fire department connections, you know, content center, you could look it up and find it there. They also have the ready to go installation, ready fittings, and just everything that they own that's in Revit is there in that content center. A few of the tools, the first one I'm gonna start out with is the rotate pipe tool.

So, if I go with my shortcuts and I go PI for pipes and let's call it a groove pipe, I'm just going to do a few tricks here. So, if I take and select those components and I hit RS is my personal shortcut, and then you can rotate your selection, which is in my cases here by any access, just by clicking on another pipe. So, if I want to rotate it and move things vertically, I can move it by any fixed distance. I like keeping this at 45 because I can rotate things pretty easily in that pain. Let's say, and I'm going to draw a section here just so we can see this rotated.

One of the things that's really nice is this doesn't just apply. I'm gonna hide that wallet in the background. It doesn't just apply to pipe and pipe fittings. It applies to pipe accessories as well. So, I can rotate that if I need to hit a specific angle, you know, if it's a 45 or 10 degree angle or 15 degree angle, something like that in 3D space, this tool becomes really, really powerful. Just as an example, if I take this butterfly valve added onto here and I want to rotate, I do the same thing, RS and I can rotate that valve to whatever position I want. If I'm doing a pump layout or a riser assembly, this becomes really handy. I can keep selecting that and, and really enter, you know, put that at exactly the angle I want. So that's the first tool, and I find that really helpful. Also, I'm going to copy this down the second one. That's my favorite. I'm gonna just gonna rotate this, just show an example, is the resize tool.

I have this set up with the two keyboard shortcut command as RZs have I hit whatever I want to resize had RZ. Now I've got this dialogue box that pops up right in the middle of my screen, which is really nice. And I can change that pipe or whatever that selection is to whatever diameter that I need it to be. So real quick, I'm going to check my settings and make sure that I'm going to run this as a tap TE for trim extent. And now, I've connected this.

Now let's say that, this is our riser assembly. We've got some kind of manifold coming in and I want to run this out to the exterior. Well, normally what it had to do is let's say the long way of doing this for rotating is you would have to go run it horizontally somewhere that you could drag it, go back to your floor plan, take this either rotate it or drag it, and then you would have to, let's see, let's do this again. So, you'd have to draw it here. You'd have to select it again. And then you go back in your section and draw it out, and that's how you would go out the building and down. But there's a faster way to do that. And that's what I like about this rotate tool. So, if I am drawing this pipe and I want to run it out the building, and I'm just in my section view, and let's say I draw, I want that to be a 45 elbow at the end. I can just take that, hit tap, select what I want to select to the RS for rotate selection. And I can pop it right in there. And I turned it away from me. Let's see where it landed out here. Yeah. Pretty close to where I wanted. So, I can do that if I don't want that to be a group fitting, going outside, I can do it as a threaded. So, this would be a group thread piece, hit aligned, and now I've got a drain that's running outside. And I ran that all just from this view in here. If I want to make sure that that's, you know, exactly a foot off the ground, move it up, set it back to one foot. Now it's exactly a foot off the ground. You got thread a fitting on the outside. It's pretty nice, pretty nice for a drain. So that's the rotate selection tool, which is also found up here by rotate selection. Again, just as a quick over your Revit, I never want to use the buttons up here ever, ever, ever. I want to create two key keyboard shortcuts for everything I possibly can. That way I'm not moving the cursor is making a selection and coming back, I want to be as fast as possible. Efficiency is really important and especially in a tool like Revit.

We covered the resize selection, but I couldn't visit that real quick here. If I'm going to draw pipe and run this somewhere, and I've got this has 6 cents, but I really want it to be a four-inch. I can do all of that. Hit RZ for the resize selection tool and change it to what I need to. Now, this looks like it's kind of a goofy transition in here, probably just because it went to a reducing coupling, but if I drag that I should get some kind of reducer in here, and that's a little bit more realistic. So that's the resize selection. It also applies even if you've got welded outlets. You can select in and change sizes of things really conveniently. So that's the resize selection tool.

Let's say that I'm working on a multi-story project and I copy huge selections, and I want to move something up to the second floor. What's interesting about this is even though I've copied it up here, some of the references, well, let's see, in this case, it changed it to level two. But let's just say I copied Florida floor and I selected this pipe and it was still making all of its height adjustments based on this original level one. And I wanted to change that to level two. I wanted all of my selection to be associated with level two. I can do the, it's the Victaulic. And again, don't use the dropdown. It's the level or tool for me. I've got this as LV in my shortcuts. So I hit L V and, and I get a dialog box that says, Hey, where do you want to move this reference point for all of these items? I would go level two. Now all of these elements are associated with level two, instead of level one, it's really powerful in a lot of ways. I can filter things I can use. This reference level when I'm talking about pipe heights, oh, I don't want that at five though, I really want that at seven though.  When now I can adjust that there. And it's referencing this dimension from level two to that pipe, very convenient tool. That's the level or tool.

Lastly, which is a quick tool that I like at a Victaulic compared to most software. Other Revit programs is the delete selection tool. This is also in that dropdown. It is... Where is it? Delete pipe. There you go. So, I've got this set as DD and what it is is it takes your pipe selection and it deletes it, but it also moves fittings to be connected when that pipe is removed. So, the traditional way to get around for this is you would have to take a pipe, delete the pipe, take your item for a coupling. There's two openings. You have to drag it, hit it just right. Make sure that connects, kind of a pain. DD, this delete Piper tool. I hit DD, click it, done, click it done. Now I've got couplings that are actually touching my valve. And that's what it really should be. That delete pipe tool is really convenient.

Let's say I want this butterfly valve to be right up against that elbow. I go DD, click, done. DD, click, done. And now we're all tight together. This is realistic, cause I don't have short runs of pipe. And that's a very convenient thing to have.

Also on this topic. What's interesting is, well, why, why does it matter if the pipes actually there versus if it looks like it's there. Let's say that there's actually pipe in here in between the fitting. That's not realistic, cause that's not how it actually connects. But let's just go with that for an example. What's the difference between something like this in a scenario where you actually are touching up here? Well, if you move this pipe in Revit, it's going to stretch this horizontal pipe to accommodate that movement. It's really not what we want. If we want components to move together, they need to be touching. Now let's do that same thing down here with pipe that is touching. If we move this a foot over, the whole thing moves, it's because it's connected. This coupling is connected to the valve, which is connected to this coupling, which is connected to the pipe. That's what we want. In general, when remodeling, we want things to be as realistic as possible. And when we're moving these assemblies, we want them to move together, not to be constantly stretching, very small amounts of pipe.

Same would also apply in the vertical. We hit DD here. Now we've got elbows that are connected to each other. If we move this assembly, the whole thing's moving. It's not just stretching that pipe. So, you could see how this could become really powerful. Let's say, you know, combined, let's say we wanted to rotate the selection and run it 45 degrees in the horizontal. Well, now he did that. You hit the delete pipe tool. And now, you know, if we're looking at this in 3d, we've essentially got a swing joint right here. And if you were to go and try and create this manually without the delete pipe or by connecting elbows and rotating them and everything, you'd have to be jumping all across a whole bunch of views. And the reality is we really don't have to do that. If I go back here and go in 3D at this, all these same tools work in 3D also.

So, if you want to be, you know, rotating selections, you can do that in 3D. You want to delete pipe, you can do that in 3D. Now suddenly, you know, you've got this really powerful tool where you're able to route in 3D, rotate and move around this pipe and something that you have way, way more control over. So that's the rotate selection, the resize tool, the leveler, and the delete pipe tool.

One last thing. And it's just a bonus here is, let's say that we've got these components and they're offloading, and I'm just going to delete these out of here. And we want to connect this opening to here. Well, Victaulic’s got this auto connect tool. I've got this as AC in my shortcuts and you can select an opening and another opening and it will auto connect it.

It doesn't always rotate. So, if I've got this, I'm using that rotate tool again. If I've got this opening over here and this opening pointed up, it's not always going to connect it. Sometimes it will if it's really close. Most of the time, I don't think it does. But all I've got to do is hit AC down here and then hit my other selection. And it's moving that pipe all the way over there. Let's look at this in 3D. So, I'm selecting both going to be X for section box and ZZ for my zoom selection. That's another third-party tool. We'll talk about later. Hit AC for auto connect. Boom, boom. And it's moving it. Now, it's an assembly. That's touching. If I move this pipe up, it's going to affect this pipe, which is what I want. And some really powerful pipe routing tools here.

Really at the end of the day, what this gives you is some freedom to route things the way you actually want them to be routed, to have it connected the way it's supposed to be connected, to have assemblies move together when they're supposed to move together and not just be stretching pipe.

And just things like couplings. If you're modeling something generic and there's an auto connect tool and you know, you want to model it as realistic as possible. Well, it's really kind of a pain. If you're coming in and trying to add a coupling family and get it perfectly lined up or something like that. With this Victaulic tool, I can hit SS for split pipe, which is automatically going to add my coupling. Then I DD and it snaps too. So, if I've got another valve, that's, let's say over here somewhere, I can do the same thing. I can go SS, SS, DD, DD, boom. Now I've got a valve. It's movable. It moves with its coupling. If you look at it in 3D, it's going to look realistic. And that's all of the things I'm going for.

For me personally, I'm doing shop drawing work in Revit. So, it's really important that I'm getting things with accurate takeouts, that I'm quantifying the assemblies correctly. But even if I'm doing, you know, bid level drawings, I want things to look realistic and having a pipe that's connected to a valve without any sort of connector just isn't realistic. So these Victaulic tools that can be really helpful, this came out a number of years ago, says probably maybe five or six years ago now as of 2021. And it's a great set of tools. Again, inexpensive, I'd really recommend it for anybody that's doing pipe routing and Revit.

That is my favorite top four, plus our bonus feature talking about Victaulic tools for Revit.

I'm Joe Meyer, this is MeyerFire University.