Overview

This document provides a solid method for creating floor change connectors and risers in the Netsys ductwork and pipe sizing programs.

While this document concentrates on pipework, the techniques are easily transferable to ductwork systems.

Method

For a floor change connector to function correctly, it should be placed on the floor/ceiling of your project with risers connecting them together. In some instances the software may not automatically add riser sections. This document ensures that risers are created correctly for your sizing run.

To display this technique we will be using a two storey project with pipework at low level on the ground floor and at high level on the first floor.

As general good design practice, you should consider laying individual floors out and sizing them
first to ensure your layout is correct. Then you can draw a riser set and connect your floors as necessary.

The riser will be connecting the far right section on each floor at the ceiling/floor intersection. We should consider the riser for the ground floor first.

From the Pipes menu, select the defaults option. If not already set, ensure the current pipe height is set to "low level". You can also set the "Special" pipe height to 3m at this point.

Select the Draw Pipe option from the Pipes menu or the toolbar and click on the pipe marked X (diagram above) to start drawing our riser pipe. If you move your mouse around you will see that the draw mode is in 'elastic' mode. One end always stays tied to the X point.

RIGHT click on the same point (X) - This will produce the context menu.

From the menu, select the "Pipe height" and select the "Special" height from the proffered list, then click OK. Now back on the drawing LEFT click on the X point to set our pipe.

Push the Enter key to stop the draw mode. To see what has been drawn to this point, from the Zoom menu, select the Isometric view. Rotate the view to examine your riser. You should see something similar to this:

As we have our riser in place, we can now place the floor change connector between the ground and first floor.

Go to the Pipes menu and select Defaults. You should note that our Pipe height is set to "Special" - the reason for this is due our changing heights in the operation above. This is fine for now.

Select the Draw pipe option and LEFT click on our X point again. This will start the pipe, so immediately RIGHT click to bring up the Context menu. This time select the "Floor change connector" option to bring up the Floor change connector dialog.

The ground floor information should be filled in correctly, using our current floor and current pipe height. This will place the ground floor connector onto the ceiling level, i.e. 3m above ground floor level. To fill in the other part of the dialog, we should enter the floor we are connecting too (1) and the height above the floor that we wish to connect to. We should leave this as 0m to ensure the second half of our connector will be placed directly on the floor of floor 1, sandwiching the ceiling/floor boundary.

Push OK to close the dialog and return to the CAD screen. You will have broken out of draw mode and a black dot will have appeared over the X point on our drawing. This indicates a floor change connector has been placed in the drawing, with sides on this floor and the floor above.

The height of the connector is always the referenced floor level - that is, the datum of the referenced floor.

For e.g. Consider our lowest floor at -4m, and the height of the floor was 3.5m to ceiling,
connectors would be placed at 3.5m to ensure it hugged the ceiling.

 
The final thing left is to draw the riser between our connector and pipe section on floor 1. From the Floor menu, Change floor to the Floor 1.

 At this stage, even with the connector in place, it is still not part of our system.
If you sized the project at this point you would receive a "No flow in system" error.

Select the Pipes menu and choose the Defaults option. On the defaults screen, change the "Special" height to 0m, and select the current pipe height as "High Level". Click OK to close the dialog.

From the Pipes menu (or toolbar) select the Draw pipe option and LEFT click on the Y point (as indicated in the image above) to start our riser. As before, you will see you are in 'elastic' mode. Now RIGHT click back on the same point to bring up the context menu. As before, select the Pipe Height option. From the available heights select the SPECIAL height (previously set to 0m) and click on OK to go back to the CAD screen.

LEFT click on point Y. This will exit draw mode and position the riser piece in place.

From the Zoom menu, select Isometric. When the Isometric view appears, select all floors. You should see something similar to this:

This should have created a floor change connector for these two floors and added the correct riser pipes, too. If the system is sized at this point, both floors will be considered.