Insert Fittings

Inserting fittings is a nice way of adding members without breaking the route and without needing to fix constraints and dimensions.

What I like to do when I have a quick layout to do or a proposal, for which we NEVER have enough time to make it proper, is to cheat and bend the rules as much possible and Tube and Pipe is no exception.

If you’ve finished the route and you ready to place fittings, it’s easier not to drop them in the line, or create nodes but to use the Insert Fitting command.

Once I’ve done my route and proved that it’s a viable solution and that the installers will have enough room to fit it I then turn to starting adding fittings. I am talking about adding fittings like valves, pressure gages, sample points, etc. These are not placed in automatically with the Populate Route command.

If the route is fully constrained and populated it’s a royal pain to add more fittings. Dropping them in your assembly will create new nodes in the route but this process will delete constraints and dimensions and you need to do that extra work to get it back to fully constrained. This is a fully constrained sketch route going crazy with a single place fitting command.

Route going crazy with single fitting placed.

                This is when Insert Fitting comes into place. Use the Place Fitting command to add your parts but before you click to place it right-click in the graphical area and choose Insert Fitting. This will allow you to insert it next to an already existing fitting or between two existing fittings.

Insert Fitting on right click menu.

                If I have a valve to place I find a close nearby elbow or any other populated fitting and I drop it in there, and I keep inserting next to it the rest of the fittings like pressure gages, sample points, etc. I am only interested to show what else will be on that line and to get the BOM quantity and price as close as possible.

                If the fitting to place is already available in the assembly then select it first and use the Place Fitting command. If not, just start the command which will let you browse for a part on disk. With the place fitting command active right click on the graphical window and choose Insert Fitting. You can press Spacebar to change connecting point on the fitting before finalizing the command. Move your mouse pointer next to an existing fitting, and watch how the arrows are displaying indicating your connection and when you are happy with the results click to finalize the insert.

Insert Fitting doesn't break the route.

 TIP: Sometimes you will not be able to place all fittings. No matter how much I try, I can’t place some fittings that have been imported from step or fittings located in library and not in content center. They work fine in T&P but inserting them is not available. What I do is place a fitting that works like a tee, union, coupling etc. first and then drop my valve on top of the tee to replace it. At this point you will also get the rotation dialog allowing you to orient it as needed.

TIP: Make sure that the segment where you are inserting is long enough so that inserting the fittings will not violate minimum length rule.

                If you deal with Butt Welded fittings you won’t need this but if you work with other type of connection like the Socket Weld like I do then there are some limitations. Once the fitting is inserted you need to right click it and choose edit fitting connection. In the dialog you will have two connections, one to the pipe and one to the existing fitting where you inserted yours. Edit the one to the fitting and choose custom distance and enter 0. The fittings by default will engage as per the authoring info which will overlap them.

The other issue is that the pipe will be trimmed to the furthermost fitting last inserted and so you will lose all those small segments in between them and if you need to do a cross section in you drawing it will appear as they are butt welded and the missing pipe segments will also give you less quantity in the BOM and Parts List. This is not a problem for me since we don’t do cut-to-length lists or material lists and it’s only general layouts for installers to follow.

                And this is it; nice and simple to speed up those designs. Would love to see what tricks do you use to speed your work up.

Later,
ADS

Tube and pipe construction lines

Last week I’ve shown you how to do mixed styles routes and how to align the 3D ortho tool and now it’s time to discuss construction lines for Tube and Pipe module of Autodesk Inventor. At this point I wonder how many of you are using them and even know of their existence?

The place command is hidden, you cannot change them to normal and vice-versa, they are always visible in the model and drawing and yet there are times when you might need them.

Can’t say I blame you if you’re not using them, you can do away with just dimensions and constraints but I found them useful at times and that’s why I decided to share this post.

They could be annoying being visible all the time but you can hide the route if need to and on the positive side you can edit the route really quick by double clicking on the visible lines.

The command is not on the ribbon and it can only be invoked by right clicking on a node inside the route. This is only available for route nodes, not on construction line nodes, and it’s only available in the contextual menu while you are in the main Tube and Pipe environment. If you open the run on itself and try to edit the route you won’t have the option to do construction lines.

                               

On each node you can start multiple construction lines but keep in mind that you need to constrain them even though you used the triad axis when drawing them. Regular segments get constrained at least collinear or perpendicular with previous segments, while construction lines are floating in model space with just one end connected to the starting node.

In the image bellow I am constraining the tee center in between the pumps by first creating a construction line from one pump center to the second. Then I am doing a different line starting from the tee node perpendicular to the first one and coincident with the middle of first one.

                                 

A more eloquent example might be when you need to dimension you route at an angle for which you can’t use included geometry. At this point you can’t add dimension between segments and planes, just to nodes and to get it right you might need to play with formulas and trigonometry.

                                              

Using construction lines you can constrain the projection of the angled segment into a plane that suits you where dimensions can be applied.

As you can see in the image bellow I have created a couple of construction lines to serve as projection of the angled segment. There is a third one that is constrained against the run origin (included geometry) and is used as fixed reference to dimension against.

                                               

  

In the last example that I have used construction lines to form a grid to which I have constrained my nodes. This will work similar to reused dimensions but it’s less messy, and the route is a little neater.

Start a construction line and constrain it to your references, I would recommend that you use include geometry on run origin planes. Keep your external references to a minimum, try to avoid faces that could change leaving you with broken links. Keep these as local as you can just like my run planes.

Constrain this construction line coincident to one of the points, it doesn’t need to be the farthest away, and you could even just use a small dimension to minimize its visual impact outside of the route. Coincide the rest of the points that lay on this line even if it doesn’t passes through them. The points will be in line with the construction segment.

At this point you just need to dimension one of the nodes and the rest of them in-line will follow.

The good part is that Inventor doesn’t generate a pipe segment where you’ve used construction lines but you can’t switch them back and forward as you might expect. Once you’ve done it as construction you need to remove it and draw it again as regular if you need a pipe segment there.

The drawing environment is having the same visibility problem with this type of lines. As soon as you use include route centers it will bring over the construction lines as well. You then need to turn visibility off by selecting them individually or with window select.

And that’s how you can use construction lines to help you speed up your design.

As usual, there’s a video.

Later,

ADS.