If you didn’t sleep through the previous post, you were promised some stuff at the very end. This is that stuff. It took longer than it should have as I had to get some drawings to the plumber. Without further ado…

The next part needed in this assembly is another 4” ‘Long Sweep’ elbow that goes somewhere below the circle that represents the closet flange penetration. To place this part, I needed to align the axis of one of its legs to an axis running through the center of the circle parallel to the Z Origin Axis. That axis does not exist, so I needed to create it.

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A quick note about structure before I continue. All of the layout sketches and work features being created are located within the Plumbing Layout.ipt part file which is located within the Plumbing_08-25-10.iam. All of the plumbing parts are located in the same assembly as can be seen in the image of the Browser Bar to the above (click).

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For this series of articles, the Routed System of choice will be your average everyday home plumbing. The DWV (drain, waste, and vent) system to be exact.  

The DWV layout I am using as an example is for is for a little eco cottage design that has all of the mechanicals running through chases and partition walls to keep the thermal envelope as intact as possible — but the technique will work on any design equally well. Also of note is that the design has a FPSF (frost Protected Shallow Foundation) slab……which means there is only one chance to get things right.

The Penetrations

The penetration drawing is a plan view sketch that shows where the various pipes pass through the structure at whatever level is represented. It is created  as the first sketch in a part file located in the overall plumbing assembly. This is a hold-over from ship design days, but it works on houses as well.  

For this particular house, you can see that the stack and vents run up a 2” x 6” partition wall. There is a wet vent at the other end of the wall as well, but is not shown. All of these penetrations run down the center of the wall, and can be drawn on the same plane, which is where I started.

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In this post I’ll be creating a BIM version of the Pella ThermaStar window (sold at Lowes). You can download the model at the end of the article, or at any time in the BIM section.

I need a model of the new construction version of these windows for a home model I’m working on, and as is usually the case, there is no model available –so one needs to be made.  I need the model to be a fair representation only —reasonably accurate in general looks, but very accurate in the areas where it will interact with other elements of the design. If good fit and good looks are possible without too much additional effort, I’ll likely go that route.

Right off the bat (ever had one of those weeks) I hit a little snag. The excellent little add-in created by Brian Hall of Qube-It no longer works after the Service Packs I installed the other day. I tried uninstall/reinstall, repair, etc., to no avail. Bummer. It is a nice tool that I have used quite a bit since installing. Brian describes the tool and how to get it in the video below. I’m sure it will work in other configurations…

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 I spent most of this morning playing around with the Photo Scene Editor for Project Photofly with nothing to show for my time –so-far.

Early this morning I downloaded and installed the Photo Scene Editor for Project Photofly from the Autodesk Labs website. The program is very small, and the download and install were quick and painless.

I had seen a video by Donnie Gladfelter over at thecadgeek yesterday, and decided to re-watch it as a primer before delving into the program myself…

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I’ll begin this post by going all the way back to the first extrusion in this model to fix an error I made way back then. It will go a long way to demonstrate the power of parametric modeling.

The problem was that during the first extrusion, I inadvertently included the profile of the front reinforcing ribs in the selection set, giving the entire lower front an angle that it should not have. To fix this mistake, all I did was double click on the offending extrusion, get the profile selector from the dialog, hold down the shift button on my keyboard, and select the profile I want to remove from the selection set…

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