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Dynamo for MEP - How to place hangers - part 1

I'm back with some new workflow for MEP addicted.
I tried couple of plugin for placing supports but all of them are either expensive or useless, so I decided to create a small definition to place families based on point, parameters and levels matching my requirements.
First of all what we have: piping, duct, cable tray or trunking (duct in my case).
In this first example II'm using a family of U-Bolt created to change dimensions according to the diameter of the pipe and the insultaion thickness. This articles is not dedicated to the creation of families but basically the family as a parameter for the DN and with this parameter I read the outside diameter of the pipe from a lookup table, then apply the insulation thickness and everiything is matching with pipe axis.
Then a simple project just to test the definition, different diameter, different elevation, different angles, some of them with insulation.

Now is time for Dynamo
The definition starts selecting all the pipes in the model (for the production version I'll change this with a manual selection of the pipe you want to use a placeholder for hangers).
Then extracting some parameter and converting the pipes into faces to extract front and back. This is important to find the center point and draw a line according to the pipe axis.
A little bit of vector algebra to find the risers and exclude them from the selection with a filter based on a boolean mask. From the remaining lines the next step is to calculate how many supports we need to place on aech segment based on the lenght and the maximum distance.
Again a little bit of vector algebra to find the correct angle rotation (top of the image) and finally we are ready to place our elements
One of the most important part of the definition is the node "List.OfRepeatedItems". With this noode you are able to map a single information coming from the segment of pipe, to all the elements you are placing on the pipe. Think that you have only one diamater to be mapped on maybe 10 hangers, this is the way.
And...
In the next article the procedure to find the distance from floors to calculate automatically the lengt of the rod or any other kind of fixing.
Hope you will enjoy and this.












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Comments

  1. Hex Hanger26 March 2019 at 16:41

    What are pipe hangers utilized for?

    The four principle elements of pipe support are to stay, direct, retain stun, and bolster a predetermined burden. Pipe hangers are very needy to connect with another pipe. Pipe bolsters utilized in high or low-temperature applications may contain protection materials. The general plan arrangement of a pipe bolster get together is reliant on the stacking and working conditions.

    ReplyDelete
  2. B20 June 2019 at 18:12

    COULD YOU PLEASE SENT THE SCRIPT TO ME

    ReplyDelete
  3. iron21 June 2019 at 06:27

    THANKS FOR SHARING SUCH A AMAZING CONTENT
    GREAT PIECE OF WORK!!!
    REALLY APPRECIATE YOUR WORK!!!
    Bim consulting service

    ReplyDelete

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