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Derek Cutsinger/4 min read

Creating a Level Two Piping Plan for a Fire Sprinkler System

Level Two Plan Checklist

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This tutorial walks through creating a level two piping plan for a fire sprinkler system, covering essential tools and techniques for your projects.

Now let's continue with our Level 2 piping plan. Let's dimension this sprinkler to then set up the rest of our spacing. Type DI, and we'll start at this wall to the center of the sprinkler.

Now, if your dimension's not the same as mine, that's fine, because we're going to change it. Let's do another dimension off of this wall. Don't forget to hit TAB.

Okay, so I want to set this dimension to 4 feet, 9 inches. And I want to set this dimension to 4 feet, 4 inches. Okay, now let's select the whole thing, which also includes that piece of 1-inch pipe.

We are going to go ahead and copy this in this direction. Let's go 14 feet. Okay? Okay, now I'm going to drag my section across—that's good. I'm going to select my pipe and go to Create Similar.

Make sure we're aligned with that sprinkler—look for the dashed line. There we go, but I'm going to change this to 1½ inches. Let's also make this an outlet. Now I'm going to drag this all the way to just a bit past this sprinkler.

Now let's go to our Section view. Okay, so far so good, but now we need to make sure we're connecting our sprigs. These are referred to as sprigs when upright sprinklers connect into a branch line.

Let's go ahead and cap this. Now we want to make sure our sprig piping is set to outlets. Currently it's set to Tees, so let's go ahead and change that.

Otherwise, we're going to have a problem when we connect to the branch line, okay? The reason we're using upright sprinklers here is because in the gym area, there is no drop ceiling, but we still need to provide protection. Generally we use upright sprinklers that are 1 to 6 inches below the deck. Okay, so now let's go ahead and connect these sprigs.

I'll start here. I'll click on my branch line and select Trim/Extend Multiple Elements. Let's click that.

Now it's a matter of just selecting each sprig. It's a very short filler piece, and it'll work. Okay, there's our first branch line for the gym.

Now it's just a matter of copying them all down the line. Let's go back to our piping plan. What I'd like to do is remove this connection.

I'll select that and drag over to include the entire line. Let's go ahead and copy. We're going to be going 12 feet to the end.

So zoom out, make sure we're on a straight line—12,12,12. Oops, one too many. CTRL + Z. Okay, let's connect these, and we'll be good to go. Branch line, Trim/Extend Multiple Elements, main, and connect each branch line.

All right, that looks good. Let's go ahead and save our project. Now let's go back to our 3D Fire Sprinkler system and take a look.

Zoom out, and here we are. Everything looks good. A good thing to do in the 3D view is to hover over a piece of pipe—let's say this one—and keep pressing Tab. Your entire system should show that it's connected.

Let's do that again and zoom out. I'll hover over this piece of pipe. I'm not clicking, just hovering and holding Tab, Tab, Tab.

There we go. Now, if I rotate around, it looks pretty good. However, I think I saw a few areas that were already done for us that might not be connected.

We are basically done with our system. All we need to do is double-check a few things, add a sprinkler here or there, and our piping plan will be complete.