Drawing Intelligent Service Ducts
When Intelligent Service ducts are added to your floorplan it allows the Inspect Floorplan tool to detect whether blocks of stands are positioned over them or not.
Note:
Please check in our Venue Downloads section that we do not already have a drawing with intelligence already available, or contact us because not all of the drawings we have are available for download yet.
Service Ducts should only be made intelligent on Venue drawings which are inserted using the Insert Venue function and not your actual floorplan, however if you have inserted a venue drawing without using the Insert Venue function then please carry on.
Drawing Intelligent Service Ducts
Before adding Intelligent Service ducts we recommend that you obtain the relevant technical dimensions from the venue specifying what percentage a service duct should be on a stand. In most cases stands should be at least 50% over a duct to not cause any issues at build up.
There a 2 common types of service duct, those that are isolated and those that are in a long run as shown below. We will cover adding intelligence to both types.
Adding Intelligence to Isolated Ducts
1
Zoom into one of the ducts.
We now need to create an area in the centre of the duct which will be our detection area. This area must be determined by how much of the duct should be on a stand, however for this example we will just offset the duct boundary line into the centre to give us the detection area.
When you create this area yourself, use whatever tools you need to achieve this, we recommend using Construction Lines.
The below picture shows the Duct boundary offset towards the centre of the duct, giving us the area we want to use for detection.
3
Select the 'Draw Service Duct' (top half of button) which is located on the VENUE ribbon.
4
Now draw around the area in the centre of the duct so you end up with a highlighted area in Orange as shown below.
Your duct is now intelligent! Any stand edges that touch or overlap the Orange detection area are good to go, and ones that do not will be highlighted to you in the Inspect Floorplan tool.
5
Optional
You can now remove the area you created to draw around in step 3, or if you used construction lines just delete them.
To remove the area you created Select the 'Show/Hide Intelligence' button which is located on the VENUE ribbon. The Orange detection area will now disappear temporarily. You can now select the area in the centre and delete it. Now click the 'Show/Hide Intelligence' button again to show your Orange detection area again.
Recommended
There are usually many isolated ducts on a venue drawing so we recommend making them into symbols. You can get help on creating a symbol here.
Once you have created a Duct symbol which contains the intelligence (Orange area), copy these onto all of the other ducts on the plan and then remove the old ones. The benefit of doing this is that if you need to change the detection area you only need to do it on one duct and then re-create the symbol, this then updates all of the other ducts which are symbols.
Adding Intelligence to Ducts in Long Runs
1
Below shows the full length of service duct.
2
We now need to create an area in the centre of the duct which will be our detection area. This area must be determined by how much of the duct should be on a stand, and as for most ducts it is usually 50%.
Long ducts will usually be much simpler to add intelligence to because all they need is a line drawn down the centre of them.
To do this Select the 'Draw Service Duct' button which is located on the VENUE ribbon.
3
Now zoom into one end of the duct and start drawing from the centre of it as shown in Pic 1 below, then move your mouse and click on the centre point at the other end of the duct (Pic 2).
Pic 1
Pic 2
4
You will now have an Orange line going from one end of the duct to the other.
Your duct is now intelligent! Any stand edges that touch or overlap the Orange detection area are good to go, and ones that do not will be highlighted to you in the Inspect Floorplan tool.
Now repeat the same for each and every long run of duct.
