Plumbing fixture connections...who hates this?

Okay, I've heard enough - plumbers, and plumbing designers, ya'll are the crankiest people I've ever met. We know - you can draw a line faster, it's all figured out in the field, the program doesn't work, yada-yada...

So what does the plumber really need (besides a belt)? Rough in connections! He doesn't need connections on the bottom of a sink, or on the side of a urinal - all of that really does get worked out in the field...so how do you help these guys get into BIM?

There are two big things:

1 - Change the location of the connections to inside the wall (thank you Melania Sibley at Enfinity Engineering in Nashville, TN). She had a sink that was giving her fits - so we made a new family. All of the connectors sit 2" inside the wall. They are controlled by vertical and horizontal work planes - the water connections can be 4" or 8" apart, you pick - and the waste connection, centered, can be moved up and down vertically in the wall to the stub-out location. this maintains the system - and eliminates the need to draw out the p-trap, trap primer (call these out in a shared parameter for scheduling).

2 - Check the fitting families - for annotation scale sizes, most fittings that show a tick have a "Tick Size" parameter - check the default, it's a formula - change the scale factor to something smaller if needed (i.e. 0.4 to 0.2) and see if it makes you symbols look better. Do the same thing with the ride drop symbol scale - and the drawings will look better! (BTW - I posted this tip earlier, but we still had people asking, so here's an image)

You now have my permission to whip your plumbers into shape...and get them BIM'ing...

See you at AU!

David B.