Discussion Groups

Hi Ken -
These discussion forums (as well as the ones on Augi.com) are designed to be a place for customers, potential customers, industry partners, etc to exchange ideas, tips & tricks, etc. While they are reviewed on occasion by Autodesk employees, they are not the best way to get answers from Autodesk.

One of the best ways to interact with the design team is to sign up for the Beta testing program (myfeedback.autodesk.com). The Beta site provides the best interaction with the design team for the upcoming release to resolve any major issues with the product. All members of the design team participate in the discussions and provide as much feedback as they can. The Beta program is designed to help catch as many of the big issues as possible before the next release is launched. Even though we run through a myriad of tests internally, we cannot always reproduce something our users may be trying to accomplish.

As part of the Beta sign-up process, you can indicate if you’d like to participate in usability studies. These are done by the design team to get input from customers regarding the ease of use of the product and/or a specific feature as well as the terminology used. These provide valuable insight into how users think something should work or what they normally call something in their day-to-day practice.

If you’re experiencing issues with things like performance, crashes, etc then you should be logging a case with Product Support and provide sample drawings if possible. They are the best resource as they may have seen the issue before and can provide you with steps to take to mitigate the problem. If it’s an issue that needs fixed in the product, they will contact me and the design team right away so we can investigate the best way to resolve the issue.

We also have the MEP Customer Council (www.adskmepcc.com) and we encourage everyone in the MEP industry to participate and provide feedback. We’ve sent out a few brief surveys to get feedback and we hope to expand on this more in the future. The Council is used to get feedback on various topics which may be software-related or just other MEP topics in general (sustainability, energy analysis, etc).

I’ve posted my email address in other messages as well and have asked for users to contact me directly. Once again, I offer this up to anyone interested. Be advised that you may not receive an immediate response, but I do review the information and file it away to be used for future reference. There’s only a finite amount of things we can do in any release and it’s not always an easy task to determine which items receive top priority and which items may need to wait. My email address is: toby.smith@autodesk.com.

Hope that helps,

Toby Smith, PE, LEED AP
AutoCAD MEP Product Manager

CadLad –

Wow….really?!? I think the question should be why would any firm doing MEP design continue working in plain AutoCAD when there is a much better solution available with AutoCAD MEP? It’s built on top of AutoCAD so you still have all of AutoCAD’s functionality. In addition, there are numerous enhancements specifically for the MEP user.

I can’t list every benefit here and there are much better sources of information available (a few are listed below), but here are some of the key benefits I see for making the switch.

Use “smart” objects for MEP equipment (chillers, pumps, boilers, air handlers, switchboards, panels, sinks, lavatories, etc) instead of basic blocks. These objects know what they are and how they should connect to other objects (ducts, pipes, conduits, wires, etc). These objects can also participate in sizing calculations – something that isn’t possible just using basic blocks or even solids.

Mechanical/HVAC design – are you still using polylines or the “area” command for room dimensions, putting the info in a spreadsheet and then re-entering into your loads program? In AutoCAD MEP, you can add Space and Zone objects then use gbXML export and transfer all of the room information to a loads program such as Trane Trace (or any other software that accepts gbXML – Carrier, etc). Quickly run your calculations, export to gbXML then import back into AutoCAD MEP for quick sizing of HVAC systems.

Electrical design – are you using Excel spreadsheets to track all your circuits and panel loads then using some third-party tool like Spanner (or AutoTable, Dotsoft, or even OLE) to add the panel schedules to your drawings? In AutoCAD MEP 2009, this is no longer necessary. You can see all of the panel and circuit load information in Circuit Manager (which is also modeless and can be docked off to the side for continual reference while circuiting) and the panel schedules are customizable to look like your company standard schedules. Have a last minute circuiting change that needs to be updated on multiple upstream panels? The load changes happen automatically in Circuit Manager and all panel schedules can be updated with a single command.

Piping/plumbing design – are you using Excel worksheets or even just a copy of a fixture unit table for sizing? AutoCAD MEP has built in sizing tools for supply (hot and cold water) and sanitary systems based on industry standards. You can even customize the sizing tables if necessary.

Are you using Excel for Equipment schedules? What a shame since the schedules in AutoCAD MEP keep track of all the information and even display a visual indication when they are out of date (they can even be set to automatically update if you prefer).

How often does a piece of equipment need to be moved because of some change by the Architect? Electrical disconnect switches can be “anchored” to mechanical equipment, even across Xrefs, so when a fan or VAV box moves “at the last minute”, the disconnect switch and homerun go with it. No more worries about circuits hanging out in mid-air! Anchors can be also be used to keep ducts with walls, light switches with doors, etc.

Obviously, there’s much more than what I listed and here are some additional links:

Main product page: http://www.autodesk.com/autocadmep
Link to “Features” page: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=8475379
Link to Feature brochure: http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/acadmep09-detail_0118238_us.pdf
Link to AutoCAD MEP User’s guide: http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/autocad_mep_user_guide0.pdf
Resource Center: http://www.autodesk.com/experience-autocadmep (Numerous tutorials and webcasts available here.

Toby Smith, PE, LEED AP
AutoCAD MEP Product Manager

MEP fails to be any good because the focus is too much on DESIGN at the expense of COORDINATION and FABRICATION. Please consider that the DESIGN CALCS are a small fraction of the work to be done on a construction project and there inclusion in MEP is a distraction/diversification away from the core function of the CAD package.

CADduct is a better tool for COORDINATION and FABRICATION because it doesn't try to be a design tool. MEP fails to provide a solution for what is in effect the bulk of the work to be done on site and in the fabrication shop.

MEP is not that great. Trust me I use this software heavily unlike the people who a writing the coding for it or the marketing people who are hyping it.

The software is also bloated and unstable on a wide range of hardware configurations. Also the software is not worth installing until SP1 is released due to inadequate QA.

Hi Brad -

I'm not an expert in gbXML or Trane Trace - I'm an electrical guy by training. However, I did ask one of our in-house mechanical guys who I consider to be an expert in this area (thanks Will!) and here's what he said:

The interior walls exported from AutoCAD MEP are imported as partitions in Trane. This is standard and as expected. Trane allows the user to input a U-Value for the partition and temperature differential to calculate the heat gain or loss to the space. The partitions are accounted for in the Partitions tab of Trane Trace. By default the partitions are not included in the heating/cooling calculations unless U-Value and delta-T is applied.

To prevent interior walls from displaying in Trane, the user might try changing the name for all the Interior walls to the same Style name, then Export to gbXML, then delete the Construction ID for Interior Wall style in the XML file before importing to Trane - this has not been verified.

Hope that helps,

Toby Smith, PE, LEED AP
AutoCAD MEP Product Manager

Thanks Toby and Martin,

As I said, I'm tasked with learning, and helping our company migrate to, AMEP, and don't actually have much experience with Trace; I'm only going off of what our engineers have told me. I'll run your suggestions by our engineers who have more experience with Trace and see what they say.

I ran across a video the other day that showed the gbXML export/import functionality from ABS 2007 to Trace, and it appeared that in 2007, the adjacency of spaces determined whether the walls were interior or exterior, and only the exterior walls were imported into Trace. (The video is called 'Exporting to gbXML from AME' available here: http://inside-the-system.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/02/dusting-off-the.html )

Was this functionality removed/changed in AMEP 09? When I examined the .xml file, I noticed certain surfaces were classified as interior or exterior, and all of the exterior surfaces were only adjacent to one space, but this information doesn't seem to be making its way into Trace.

Thanks again for the replies. When I'm able to give them a shot, I'll let you know how it goes.
-Brad

I'm bumping this to the top of the list again....

HAS ANYONE FOUND AN EASY, RELIABLE MEANS TO IMPORT MEP2009 GBXML INTO TRACE700!

This used to be sooooooo easy and work so well! (In ABS2006) We incorporated load calc's into pretty much every report we do for clients, partially because it was easy/quick = cheep to do. Now... I would like to migrate to MEP2009 but.... why, it'll cost me too much.

In the discussion above there was a comment that interior walls are imported into Trace700 as partitions..... if only this was true.... Trace700 updated themselves to deal with the changes AutoDesk made. When importing into Trace700 you can "not import partitions" but the MEP2009 gbxml exports all of the surfaces as exterior even if you take the time to manually go through the hassle of changing them in the space/zone manager to show interior/exterior properly. (Another peeve... what was wrong with the visual, change it by clicking on a little circle method ... that worked!!!)

Can you tell I'm frustrated.

Heather

Thanks Dustin,
This does help... kinda...
I had figured out that it was figuring out adjacencies for me... and now I guess the problem I have is that I'll have to manually fix every single space... I have yet to see an architectural plan with wall centerlines. I discovered also that if the spaces are generated from the arch. line work you end up with a surface for every single line it finds eg where there is a window I ended up with a surface the width of the RH frame, another the width of the glass, an other the width of the LH Frame as well as 2 for the walls on either side of the window... All this where there should have been 1 surface that I could insert a window into. Even though the line work consisted of 1 long line with the shorter window lines directly on top. I tried turning off/freezing the window layer... didn't make any difference.

Unfortunately I don't work with any architects that use ADT (or whatever it's called now)

for your point 4) I found where you can set that. If you go to "Options" "AEC Object Setting" tab, then Space Settings and Maximum Automatic Adjacency. I haven't played with it too much yet but it does seem to find an adjacent space at 10" if it's set to 1'-0".


Thanks Again,
Heather

Heather,
I'm in MEP 2009, and not having the same difficulty you are. There are a few tidbits of advice I got from Autodesk at some point that will probably help you a lot:
1) Make sure all your space edges are completely parallel to each other. See my attached image, I actually recommend snapping their edges together, but since you are most likely snapping to architects floor plan, your accuracy is largely dependent on theirs. Perhaps draw spaces to the centers of walls, and snap the space corners together exactly, this will cause them to be exactly parallel.
2) It automatically reads space adjacency to determine interior/exterior for the wall/surface. If it finds a completely parallel space, it become an interior wall (partition/surface), if there is no completely parallel surface, it becomes an exterior wall. Like you, I also wish there were manual overrides to this - it'd be nice if the software showed you what it was determining to be an exterior or interior wall, then you could manually adjust.
3) If a space finds another space only partially adjacent (like rooms 100 and 102 in my image) it will create an exterior wall for only area it should (in the picture 6' of the 10' of the space)
4) There is some threshold where even if spaces are adjacent and completely parallel, the software will not read it as an interior wall condition. Let me boil that down a bit: If you wall is too wide, it wont read it as interior. I *THINK* that threshold is 6", but I could be wrong. So if you are doing a building that is all 8" CMU, like most schools around where I live, then none of the spaces would be able to find their adjacent neighboring spaces and therefore all come up as exterior walls. Try this for yourself, but I'm pretty sure 6" is the magic number.

Hope this helps.

Dustin

If you are looking at the space in Trace, it tells you the Space Name (autodesk) in the Room Description field (Trace). From there, go back to your CAD model, find the space then use Space/Zone manager to find the problem wall. Trace will tell you the rotation of the wall, use that to make a best guess as to which face of the space it is (I think in Trace 0=Top, 180=bottom, 90=Right, but dont quote me on these)

You might also be able to use:
AecPropertyDataBrowse
to find spaces by room number if you used Property Sets to read/display room tags