Add mechanical equipment

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In this lesson, we will cover loading mechanical equipment families into a project,

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selecting the appropriate equipment type to place and placing mechanical equipment at the correct location.

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In this building model, there's a foundation slab outside of the building that represents an equipment yard.

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We'll place a couple pumps on this slab and then we'll place a VAV box above one of the exam rooms inside the building.

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When you place mechanical equipment, you may need to load families into the project.

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You can do this before you begin placing equipment on the insert ribbon in the load from Library panel,

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there's a Load Family tool or you can switch to the Systems ribbon and in the Mechanical panel, click Mechanical Equipment and activate the tool.

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When you do, you'll notice that the same Load Family tool is available here in the Contextual ribbon.

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When you click Load Family, the load family dialog opens.

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You can then navigate to the location where your family files are saved.

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For this example, we'll open the default family library and then open mechanical MEP.

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Waterside Components, Pumps.

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When loading equipment, you can select one family file or multiple family files by pressing Control or Shift.

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For this example, we'll select the Centrifugal Pump and then press control and select Pump dash Base Mounted and then click Open.

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When you do, those families are loaded and you can expand the type selector to see those families,

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along with any other families that have already been loaded into the project.

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For this example, I will select one of the base mounted pumps.

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When you select an equipment type, You should then set the level parameters before placing the equipment.

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In this case, we'll leave ground floor selected and I'll leave the elevation from level set to zero. For now,

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you'll also notice that there's a host parameter.

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This does not indicate that this is a hosted component.

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If this was a face based family, you would see a placement panel in the contextual ribbon.

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But we'll circle back to this in a minute.

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When you move the cursor into the drawing area, you can see the component underneath your cursor,

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You can press the space bar to rotate the component in 90° increments before placement and in this case, this foundation slab is at an angle.

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There are many buildings that have portions at an angle or even certain rooms that are at an angle.

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And if you need to align equipment to that angle, maybe it's the angle of a found housekeeping pad or a wall or even a floor.

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You can hover over the edge or a line on that component and then press the space bar,

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and the component will rotate in increments relating to the angle of whatever you're hovering over.

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So I'll place a pump on this foundation slab and then you'll notice that the pump is still oriented accordingly.

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If I move outside or away from an edge, I can then press the space bar to rotate it in 90° increments that are orthogonal to the screen.

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This time I'm going to leave it at the 90° angle and I'm gonna select Rotate after placement.

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And then when I click I can rotate, there's a rotate control that I can use to rotate it just like I was using the rotate tool.

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I'll enter 30 and press enter and then I'll click Modify.

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And you can see that the pump is now aligned to our other pump.

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All right now, when I have one of these selected, one of the pumps, you can see that the host parameter is now the foundation slab.

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And you'll also notice that the elevation from level parameter is 4", which is the thickness of this foundation slab.

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And so it's, as I was saying it's not a hosted component, meaning that it must be placed on a host,

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but it still has a host parameter and you can host it to a or you can place it on a floor or a slab and that will be filled in in that host parameter.

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And then you can use the offset from host parameter to move it away from that host even more if you need to.

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So really the elevation from level and the offset from host parameter in this case will work in conjunction with each other.

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For example, if I enter 2 foot into the offset from host the elevation from level adjust accordingly.

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Okay. Now let's place a VAV Box in the exam room here,

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so I'll activate the mechanical equipment tool again,

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and I'll expand the type selector and select a VAV box

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and I can press space bar once again to rotate it as needed.

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And then I will place it, I'll simply place it on the ground floor with an elevation from level set to zero.

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And I'll click Modify.

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Let's create a section view through here and we'll take a look.

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So you can select a component afterwards and then modify any of these parameters as needed.

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So I'm going to change the elevation from level to 10 feet and now we have it above the ceiling.

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All right.

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I'm gonna switch back to the mechanical ground floor view,

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and you'll also notice that if you scroll down in the project browser you can see a family's branch,

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and when you expand families, and then expand mechanical equipment, you can see all of the families that have been loaded into the project.

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And then if you expand a family, you can see all of the types,

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and if you select a type and drag and drop it into the drawing area,

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the mechanical equipment tool activates and the type that you selected to drag and drop is selected in the type selector.

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Now you can once again do the same thing and place it as needed.

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In this case, I will set the elevation before placement and we'll click to place it and I'll click Modify.

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Last thing here, When you select a mechanical equipment component you can see icons and these are connector labels.

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So in this case this is a supply air label and this is a return air label, and this is an electrical connector label.

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And it will tell you the size of the connector and then whether it is in or out.

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So in this case, this is a 16 inch by 14 inch supply air connector that is out, and you can click these to activate the duct tool.

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But it's always good to know what connectors are available because those determine these systems that the component can be added to.