How To Improve Revit Square Duct Elbows

Whilst working in Autodesk Revit there will undoubtedly be some standard out of the box families that you will use and others you will not find so useful. There will be some however that can be made more useful with a little bit of tweaking. One of these is the Rectangular Square duct elbow, which can be found set up in a routing preference within the Mechanical and Systems templates as well as in the UK family catalogue.

The issue that arises with this component is that it is fixed to 90 degrees, so when another angle is required it is unable to comply, as in the image below. There is fortunately an easy remedy for this, which we will look at in this article.

Rather than creating a new fitting from scratch or editing the existing square bend, it is possible to convert one of the standard radius bends to a square bend.

The best one to use in order to match the existing square bends dimensions is the ‘Rectangular Short Radius Bend - Flanged.rfa’ which can be found in the standard UK catalogue. Once opened, the first thing you should do is Save-As (all the out of the box families will default to Save-As) and give it a relevant file name.

Next, we will need to select the body of the elbow which is a ‘Sweep’ and then near the bottom of the ‘Properties’ palette there is a parameter called ‘Trajectory Segmentation’ which you tick. Once this has been applied the bend will immediately become square.

Again, save the family and it can now be loaded into the template or project you wish to use it in.

You can now replace the old square bend with the new one in the duct routing preference - see below.

It should now be able to accommodate all the angles you require and is dimensionally the same as the original fitting it replaced.

I hope this tip has been useful. If you are looking to take your skills to the next level, you should consider the certified Graitec training courses. If you have any questions, please send us a message now: