Working with conduits within Autodesk Revit can be tricky. Sometimes it helps to create the conduit in a plan view, sometimes it helps to create your conduit in a section or elevation view. One part of creating conduit in Revit that designers struggle with is how to use the “Parallel” Conduit tool. Below we will explore how to create parallel conduits and demonstrate the result.
Step 1: Create a single conduit from one point to another. This will end up being our guide. Typically, this is from an Electrical Panel to some electrical device. In this case we drew a 2″ conduit from the main distribution panel to a sub-panel. (Make sure when connecting a conduit that you intend to make into parallel conduit later, to leave room on the top of the panel for the additional parallel runs).
Step 2: Navigate to Systems Tab>Electrical panel>Parallel Conduits Tool.
Step 3: Next we want to determine how many conduits we want to run parallel to our first run. To keep the demonstration simple, we will choose to add 3 additional conduits to the one that is there. We also want the conduit bends to be concentric as opposed to having the same bend radius.
This will take some trial and error until you get the hang of it. The most important part is setting the vertical and horizontal offsets.
Step 4: Hold your curser near the conduit you want to use to create parallel copies. You will see multiple blue dotted lines as a preview of what will be copied. If you press the Tab key, you will highlight the entire run of conduit and the whole run will have copies made in parallel.
Here we have demonstrated how to quickly and easily create parallel conduit in Revit. This type of modeling would be incredibly time consuming if done in a traditional workflow.
