Civil · sites, utilities and the services they feed

A building's services, from the street in.

A site is only finished when the building on it works. Watch the mains in the street connect to a building and the full set of services go in: ducts, water and drains, sprinklers and wiring, each from raw stock through the machines that make its parts to the joints that hold it. Change the room or the air and the duct sizes, the sheet count and the build follow.

135 parts · 137 joints · 17 machinesOpen abcad

0:00 / 1:19

Edit · Services

Design

Air per diffuser

Building · it is built in

Room length

Building: 9 × 6 m, 3 m high, 3 diffusers, 6 lights
Supply air: 240 L/s: 3 × 80 L/s
Trunk: 350 × 200 mm at 3.4 m/s (240 L/s ÷ 0.07 m²), 9 sections, 6 sheets
Branches: Ø160 at 4 m/s (80 L/s ÷ 0.0201 m²)
Hangers: 4 trapezes at ≤ 3 m along 7.8 m
Lighting: 6 × 36 W = 216 W, 0.94 A on 1.5 mm²; drop 0.24% over 20.2 m
Drain: Ø110 PVC at 1 in 100
Water: 15.24 m of Ø22 copper, 18 soldered joints

The site: what comes in from the street

Step 1 of 21: The mains in the street

A Ø110 polyethylene water main 1.0 m deep and a Ø225 sewer 1.8 m deep, in an open trench along the street. 13 m of each, in 6 m lengths: fusion couplings on the PE, rubber ring joints on the sewer.

Fasteners: 3 × Electrofusion joint, 3 × Ring joint

Steps

Site
Hangers
Ducts
Pipes
Fire
Power
Check

Change the room or the air and the duct sizes, the sheet count and the build follow. Everything is written from the same data: the lists, the sheet and the build. Checks are early-sizing aids, not certifications.Open abcad

The site first

The water main and the sewer lie in an open trench along the street. A tapping saddle and a service pipe bring the water to a meter at the wall, a lateral takes the drain out, and the power comes down from the pole.

Hangers, then ducts

Trapezes go into the slab first. Sheet steel goes through the shear, the brake and the seamer and comes out as duct sections; strip goes through the spiral machine and comes out as round branches. Each is screwed to the one before.

Pipes, sprinklers, wiring

Copper is cut and soldered up to the fixtures; PVC is cut and cemented, falling to the lateral; steel is cut and threaded for the sprinkler line; conduit is cut, bent and coupled round the room, and the wires are pulled through.

Switched on and checked

The air moves, the lights come on, the trench is filled in. Duct velocity, voltage drop, the drain fall and the clearances between the four systems are checked, with the arithmetic shown.

Civil chip in abcad

Sites, roads and land

Survey points become ground surfaces; alignments, profiles and corridors become roads; feature lines grade the site; parcels, gravity and pressure networks tie the lots to the mains in the street. Change one and the others update.

· TIN surfaces, contours and earthwork volumes
· AASHTO criteria, TR-55 runoff, HEC-22 inlets as early-sizing aids
· LandXML, Shapefile, GeoJSON, KML and GeoTIFF in and out

Open abcad

MEP chip in abcad

Ducts, pipes, sprinklers and wiring

The sizes in the demo come from the MEP chip's own arithmetic: ducts by the velocity method, hangers at code spacing, voltage drop on the lighting circuit. In the editor the same engine routes runs with fittings, connects them into systems, sizes them and finds clashes.

· Duct and pipe sizing, pressure drop, index runs
· Circuits, panels, voltage drop, conduit fill
· Clash detection between systems, hanger placement

See a chair built from two-by-fours See the services in the whole system

The sizes and checks are early-sizing aids for design. They are not certifications or stamped calculations.