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Tyler Grant/4 min read

Placing Return Diffusers in Revit MEP: BIM 321 Course Tutorial

Return Diffuser Workflow

1

Pick Return Family

Return-style diffuser (often a grille pattern).

2

Place on Ceiling

Click in ceiling plan; family hosts to ceiling.

3

Connect to Return Duct

Branch return duct from main return trunk.

4

Set CFM

Match design return CFM for the served space.

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This Revit tutorial walks through placing return diffusers in revit mep: bim 321 course tutorial, covering essential tools and techniques for your projects.

Welcome back to the CAD Teacher VDCI video course content for the BIM 321 course, Introduction to Revit MEP. In the previous video, we went ahead and put in all of our supply diffusers. I want to go ahead and put in all of our return diffusers now. We're on the second floor currently; let's go ahead and hop back to our first-floor ceiling mechanical. Let's go ahead and select Air Terminal here, and as you can see, I cannot change my system classification here.

We want to go ahead and make sure that we're loading a return diffuser, but they need to be hosted. So let's go to Load Family; I want to scroll down and find Mechanica MEP, Air Side Components, Air Terminals. I'm going to scroll down, find Return Diffuser, Hosted; again, Return Diffuser, Hosted, because we have to put these into the correct systems. So I'm going to hit Open, and there we are.

Now the other thing I want to do is right now I'm going to uncheck all these arrows here so I don't have to deal with it a little bit later on. So I'm going to remove that, that, that, and that. Another thing I need to do is make sure my placement option is not set to place on vertical face, because that means it's going to place it on a wall; we need to Place on Face.

And here we go, I'm going to go ahead and place this one here, and as you can see, those arrows will eventually go away. I'm going to go ahead and place one here and here, place one here, here, and again I'm just working my way around, and there. I'm going to go ahead and now go into my align tool, AL for align. I'm going to select Multiple Alignment because I'm going to align all these diffusers in their correct locations. So pick here, and then I'm just going to go ahead and work my way down.

Clicking it off, I'm going to uncheck Multiple Alignment, and then get them all situated correctly here so they are in the middle of those ceiling tiles. And there we are, perfect. I'm going to go over to this location here. I'm going to leave that Multiple Alignment unchecked since we're not aligning many diffusers here.

There we go, there we are, and the entire first floor is done for our return. What I want to do now is let's go ahead and hop to our second floor and do our return diffusers there. So Second Floor Ceiling Mechanical view.

I want to go ahead, go to Air Terminal. Please make sure it says your Return Diffuser, Hosted (work-plane based) and remember to ensure the placement option is set to Place on Face. I'm just going to go ahead and start right up here, there. Again, I'm placing them off to the side so I know to go back later and use my Align tool. The reason we do it this way is it's very hard to get it directly in the middle of the ceiling tile. You have to zoom in very closely; it doesn't facilitate ease of use. So really the best way to do this is just place it off to the side for right now, and then go back later and put it in the correct location.

I'm going to hit Escape to deselect. I'm now going to do my align, so AL for align, here, here, here, here, here and here, here and here. Again, even if it looks correct, I'm quickly going to ensure that it is by using my Align tool. Remember, you need to pick what you want to align to first and then pick the edge you want to align with it.

See, again, sometimes you move a little too fast and it will come back and get you. And there we are; the second floor is done with our different diffusers. I'm going to zoom extents, then press Control+S to save the file, and there we are. I'm going to stop this video here. In the next video, we're going to start talking about placing our ducts and how we can connect all of this system together.

I'll see you then.