Cabling and piping

The Cabling / piping module measures scaled polylines and keeps their vertices on the plan. It manages cables, shared conduit, pipes, groups and areas in one screen.

Access and preparation

Path: project → active sheet → Cabling / piping. A viewer may inspect; an editor or project administrator is required to draw, modify or delete. Disabled sheets do not appear in the selector, and their runs are excluded from totals, estimates and exports.

1. Calibrate the sheet against a known dimension. Without scale, a run can be drawn but its real length remains unknown.
2. Select Cable or Pipe, then a preset type and gauge or diameter. Use the custom fields when the family is not listed.
3. Optionally assign a group, such as an electrical panel or fire zone. Colouring and subtotals can follow that group.
4. For a cable, set the multiplier, extra length and conduit. For a pipe, the multiplier is always 1 and separate conduit does not apply.
5. Select Draw path. Click to add vertices; Shift constrains the segment, Backspace removes the last point, Enter or double-click finishes, and Esc cancels.

Endpoints, junctions and automatic routing

Snapping can target confirmed or manual devices. When Automatic drops is on, devices at the endpoints add their default drop to extra length. Check this value if slack was already entered manually.

Hold J while clicking a run of the same kind to create a tee. The context menu can also start a branch at a point or detach a joined endpoint. For Automatic path, select two devices and PlanRelevé proposes a route around detected obstacles. It is a proposal; inspect the corridor, penetrations and constructability.

Reference lines can guide snapping and automatic routing. Snap radius is project-wide; a radius that is too large may pull a vertex to the wrong device.

Review and correct

Double-click a list row to center it. From the context menu, open Edit vertices, move, add or remove a vertex, then save. Multi-selection can assign a group or delete several runs. Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y undo or redo session creations, deletions and modifications within the local history limit.

Cable length is calibrated geometry multiplied by the pull count, plus extra lengths, then increased by the spare percentage in totals. Shared conduit is not multiplied by conductor count; it uses its own conduit spare percentage. Pipes group by type and diameter, with stock-length rounding and estimated elbows, tees and couplings.

Estimate, export and recovery

In the estimate, each type/gauge combination receives a material price per foot and labour hours per foot; conduit is a separate line. CSV, PDF and XLSX outputs carry spare values and groups; see Exports.

If a total looks wrong, check in this order: scale, imperial/metric unit, vertices, multiplier, extra length/drops, spare and active sheet state. After recalibration, the same vertices are recalculated; review the result before redrawing.