What am I missing? Lay it on me y’all!
Some would say it’s totally useless, especially in residential construction.
They might say that plumbers, electricians, and HVAC installers have a general understanding of the way things need to be run, and don’t need or want a detailed drawing of pipes, wires, or ducts.
They might say that on site conditions, and the layout of framing, trenches, and chases not going as expected would make a set of plans with all that detail completely useless—leaving the plumber, electrician, or HVAC guy to do things the way they’ve been doing it for years:
- Buy the hardware store and bring it to the site
- Measure, cut, fasten, forget about it
- Return all the extra to the hardware store, or keep it for the next job… Oh, and buy the hardware store again
What use then is there for this library?
I’m not sure yet.
But I want to be able to draw lines, group them by pipe branch size, and hit a button that makes the whole thing turn into PVC with all the fittings, and be able to immediately spit out a report of how many fittings I need, and how much pipe.
So that’s what I’m gonna try to do!
I started banging my head against the wall of learning Ruby, but it just bled and there’s still a wall.
But I will be using VBO piping pro to do all the heavy lifting… Once I can figure out how to get it to work… The documentation for it is awful and so is the customer service. But it’s the cheapest thing that does what it does and I’m minded to make it work.
@RTCool @medeek @MikeWayzovski @RLGL @vbo
Do any of you know how to work VBO piping pro, or know anyone who uses it?
Lots of things don’t make sense to me and I’m trying to understand what all the settings do.
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I do not. Never tried it. My father’s drawings from the 1940’s-50’s amazed my how much he drew, including ductwork and plumbing sometimes, but I’ve never drawn complete plumbing works myself. My hat’s off to you for your effort.
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A no here also.
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I’ve played with it a long time ago. No recollection.
@voquochai or @Cyentruk might know more.
About drawing the real thing, check this post:
The Addon mentioned provides 660.000+ different parts/MEP content from more than 450 manufacturers, ‘BIM’-ready (with urls and data)
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started banging my head against the wall of learning Ruby, but it just bled and there’s still a wall.
Dynamic Components use Ruby, but don’t require you to know anything about it.
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You aren’t saying that there is a 660+ library of pipes and fittings i can load into sketchup are you?
or are you just pointing out that they they have no interior diameter, but that they are just solid?
boy that would cut the already small file sizes of each peace almost in half! might have to do that!
but they look so good 
Hi, VBO Piping Pro has released 3.0 version with more powerfull. The Author (Le Viet Truong a.k.a KCDA) included more detail user manual and a live page inside plugin to udpate info and free collections from user commnunity.
You could also check Collection from Product Connect (Thailand) VBO PIPING PRO 3.0 - Product Connect - YouTube
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Yes, I’m on the latest version.
But no, I haven’t seen a user manual that defines the parameters of the different options found in the collection editor.
Can you show me?
22’s? Did I miss them in the line up? Regular wye’s…. Trap adapters? Or is that too fancy?
These are looking great! I work for a general contractor who started as a plumber and still runs 3/4 of the business via plumbing jobs. These would be VERY handy.
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Don’t get me started on that. The vbo plugin doesn’t support 22.5 degree turns yet. I guess they do 30 degrees in Thailand.
I don’t think the USA uses most of that stuff in residential construction. The example collections just don’t have what we use here. Hence the library I am creating.
I found a 66 the other day when sorting the job boxes off the work truck. We never use them so there wasn’t a place for them in our storage.
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that one makes sense though, because 22 1/2° is halfway between 45. So 66° would be (edit: “almost”) 3/4 of the way to 90. But 30°… I don’t understand that one.
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Actually that would be 45+22,5= 67,5… 
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Correct. We just call them 22’s the same way we say ‘half nine’ to mean the double ended 1/2 and 9/16 box wrench and ‘inchy fives’ for drywall screws.
Because we’re lazy talkers 
Which is dumb! Because ‘half five’ is a 5 galleon bucket cut in half to make it short enough to fit in lavs.
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I was Pretty close 
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Did you look at the Charlotte or Tyler websites?
I believe I had a CD loaded with DXFs of all their fittings like 20 years ago. The two CDs came with 5 2 inch ring binders with all their catalogs. They may have them available for download now.
PDFs and DWGs
Yes. No DXFs as far as I could find.
No. Never heard of it.
None of those are what I’m looking for, but I am glad they are there!
Tyler Pipe is in TX and makes CI DWV pipe. They have a couple other foundries around the country and also I think a sister company (Kennedy?) that makes fire hydrants and PIVs.
Looks like their drawings are Revit files also.
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It’s working a little…
Running into technical problems and communication issues with the plugin, and the developer.
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