Easier way to plumbing

What you think as the best way of pluming in 3d max? You may definitely say using cylinders, or else say using circle and path curve using loft. Both ways are good in pluming up to some extent. But to me, these are not the best ways. Why I am saying that because both these methods having their limitations. If you are using Cylinders to model, you will not be able to easily model round corners and L-joints. However you may be able to overcome these two problems easily by using “Loft”. But how you are going to model different types of pipe joints? Definitely you may have to model them separately and connect to the lofted object. I am going to teach you a method which will allow you to overcome most of difficult parts of the pluming.

In this method, most of the pluming will be done using lines. If you need to model your pluming system to a realistic scale; go to Customize menu > Units Setup and change the Display Unit Scale in to a unit you prefer (I have select centimetres). To start the pluming, go to Create > Shapes > Line and draw a line in a way you want the piping system. Keep in mind that these lines will be the axis of pipes we are going to create later. You may use snap option to place the line along the correct place. Make sure to draw sketch using straight lines, unless the pipes go through a curved path. That means you do not need to use curve lines at the bends and turns, we can correct them later. If you were not able to draw the full sketch at once you may go to Create Line option under Geometry rollout and add more lines. Make sure you have drawn all the necessary parts of the plumbing system including all its branches before going forward. (Don’t worry you will be able to correct it later if you have done any mistake. But it will be easier if you have completed it at this point.) I am not going to describe you about drawing lines; I hope you will be able to complete this step without any problem.

Select the line you have created and go to rendering rollout and enable all the options under that except Use Viewport Settings. Set the Number Sides to an amount you like (The final quality of the circle will depend on that. Generally 12-16 sides may enough). Set the thickness as the value you want as pipe diameter. If you need accurate pipe diameters, download standard pipe sizes through Internet (the pipe sizes may depend on the pipe material, therefore use pipe material when searching for standard pipe sizes). Now you should see the piping system in its basic shape.

If your system should have different sizes (in diameter) of pipes, go back to Segment Sub-object level and select all the segments which should in similar diameter and detach them. If you want more than 2 pipe sizes, repeat above step for other pipe sizes (That means finally you should have different line sets for each pipe diameters). Now go to Rendering rollout and change the Thickness to the value you need. Repeat this for all the line sets.

The pipes are in different pipe diameters as you need. Before go to pipe fittings, we need to make the corners smooth to looks like a real pluming system. To do this go to Vertex Sub-object level and select the vertices/corners you need to you need to convert to bends. Go to Geometry rollout and increase the value of Fillet until you get the bend you want. If you need different types of bends, do the Fillet one-by-one. However it will be better if you right down the values you set for Fillets. In the cases you need the same sized bend; you can use that value directly.

Now it’s time to make fittings. I’ll describe one fitting and tell you how to apply it to other fittings. Let’s start with “T”s. you may turn of Display Render Mesh option under Rendering rollout while you complete this step to see the line clearly. Select a place where there will be a T-joint, go to vertex Sub-object level and add vertex on each branch at same distance away from the T-joint (the 3 vertices give the size of the fitting).

If you try but unable to place the vertices correctly, this is a way you can do it easily. Turn on Snap and draw a circle on the T-joint vertex on the plane where the crossing lines are. Select the pipe lines (piping system), go to Vertex Sub-object level, press the Refine button under Geometry rollout and add 3 vertices at the places where circle crossing pipe lines. Exit from Sub-object level and delete the circle (keep the diameter of the circle for later use – if needed).

Select the segments within the newly created vertices and detach them. Increase the thickness of the detached part to desired value.

Hope you have understood the method well. When this method applied to T-joints connecting 2 different pipe sizes, don’t attach two lines of the “T” together. Because if attach together, you can’t get different diameters.

Other main fitting is bends. When you come to bends, add 2 more vertices on both sides of the bend on the straight part, just away from the bend. Detach the line part bounded by above 2 vertices. And increase the Thickness a bit.

Modify all the bends and T-joints using above method. You may also attach all the lines with same Thickness together, it may help to reduce the number of lines.

Hope you understand this method. Finally you can insert remaining parts by modelling using general methods.

Tags: 3d max, easy, plumbing, tutorial