About a year ago, I posted one of my #StupidAutodesk posts on LinkedIn. I highlighted Autodesk’s lack of a search box or groups in the Services list for Fabrication Services. You can read that post here.
Well, Martin Magallanes Jr has stepped up to the plate to help out. Despite the horsepower behind a +$5.5 Billion software giant, a single guy fixes what Autodeskcan’t seem to do. He’s released a free Revit Add-In that upgrades Revit’s existing Fabrication Services dialog. Here’s the link if you want to give it a try. It works with Revit versions 2021 thru 2025.
1: Search
The biggest benefit to this AddIn is to add “Search” capabilities to the Settings. You can search in the following areas…
Unloaded Services
Loaded Services
Unloaded Part Folders
Unloaded Part ITM Names
This allows you to quickly filter the list of services to certain groups or a smaller list of services in a much longer list. It does not let you search Loaded Parts but that’s good thing. You shouldn’t be loading a lot of loose parts outside of a service.
2: Load All / Remove All Filtered
Another nice enhancement is adding a second set of Add/Remove buttons that Add/Remove ALL the services matching the filter. You can see on the left image, you can easily select all the services in the Electrical group.
3: Resizable List
Another nice enhancement is the ability to resize the Service list. While it doesn’t really show well in this example using Autodesk’s Fabrication Configuration, in many production Fabrication Configurations (mine included) service Groups and Names can and are much longer. This ability to resize the list if going to be very helpful vs Autodesk’s horizontal scrolling when the names are long.
4: Reload on Open
Another little nice option is the “Reload on Open” setting. Toggle this on and the next time you go to the Settings dialog it will automatically reload the database. Toggle this and the Fabrication Configuration will be loaded automatically the next time you open the dialog.
You may have noticed a new setting in Fabrication 2025. You can see it when you edit the properties of a Service Template. It’s shows as Maximum # couplings. Valid settings are 1 to 10. So what is this setting you may ask? Well, don’t go with your instincts. The name is as unintuitive as possible.
To start, couplings are any ITM made from Pattern (CID) 2522. So not necessarily an actual “pipe” coupling. So this setting only applies to any fitting made from Pattern 2522 regardless of what it does in the real world. No other patterns are affected.
Your initial instinct might be that this limits the number of coupling patterns on a service template. You’d be wrong. When you think about it, a lot of things are made from Pattern 2522. Couplings obviously, but also Welds, Flanges. some Reducers, Adaptors, Unions, Bolt Sets, Gaskets, etc. That can easily push the number over 10. So what exactly does this do?
First, a little background. To start this setting only applies to Revit. No other Fabrication products are affected aside from using them to edit the setting. Next, you should know that there was always a coupling limit as it pertained to Revit. It was hard coded to 6 I’m told. This change in the 2025 Fabrication products made it editable to a smaller (minimum 1) or larger number (maximum 10).
What this settings does is control the connect and coupling logic in Revit. Revit’s autofill features like Route and Fill, Multi-Point Routing, Quick Connect and Design to Fabrication are affected. This is because the coupling pattern is special. In most scenarios, pipe is connected to fittings. In come cases, fittings to fittings. Coupling patterns on the other hand, can connect to other coupling patterns repeatedly.
These autofill functions need to process the various options for fittings. This can have performance implications that increase exponentially the more parts you have using those patterns. Let’s look at an example….
The below image shows a pipe flange connection. It’s using 6 coupling patterns in a row in the model. But in your service, there may be even more. Different types of flanges, welds, gasket and bolt set options, etc. It needs to look at all of those to determine the options available. In this case, a coupling limit of 6 would work. That’s how many 2522 patterns you would ever string together to make this connection. So after 6, Revit no longer needs to keep looking for couplings and can limit it’s analysis to other pipe or fittings in your service.
As you can see, the old hard coded value of 7 would be enough to cover most flanged or dielectric connection options. In some very limited edge cases, you might need more. So now you can bump it up to 10. However, you may want to actually reduce it lower. If you’re using ancillaries for gaskets and bolt sets and not drawing ITM’s to quantify them, a setting of 4 would be sufficient. For some systems, you might even be able to go lower.
What happens if the coupling limit is lower than what’s needed? Well, you might have to make those connections manually. Autofill functions wouldn’t provide all of the possible options. In some cases, you might event get broken connections.
Personally I’ve not been able to create a sample dataset and configuration that really demonstrates functionality working or not based on the setting. For the most part, it’s likely not going to affect most users however lowering it might provide some performance improvements in Revit. They tell me ideally the setting would be 3 or 4. But as you can see, if you’re using ITM parts for Bolt Sets and Gaskets, 6 is likely your “Go To” number. But on a plastic system? 3 or 4, maybe even 2 would be sufficient.
When you manually add a Fabrication Configuration to your system yourself, it only works for the currently logged in user. In fact, you may have noticed this with your own configurations compared to the default ones Autodesk adds during installation. You can see the difference by the presence of a little Yellow Lock icon in the lower left of the Configuration’s image.
So when you use the Add Link option to add a configuration, it’ll only exist for you. If someone else logs into the computer, the configuration won’t be displayed for the new user. Autodesk’s on the other hand…will still be there.
The difference between these two ways Configurations work is based on how the configurations are “configured” in the Windows Registry. So let’s take a look by starting the Registry Editor.
The first thing to know, is that there’s two ways to start the Registry. Just running the REGEDIT command opens the editor and displays everything. The other way is to Run as Administrator. When just run, you’ll have read/write access to the HKEY_CURRENT_USER branch (‘Hive’ is the proper term) often abbreviated as HKCU. This is the branch where the User configurations are stored.
The Computer based Configurations (like Autodesk’s) are stored in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE branch often abbreviated as HKLM. When you run REGEDIT normally, you’ll see the HKLM branch but it’s Read-Only. To write to the HKLM branch, you’ll need to launch REGEDIT with the Run as Administrator option. Your IT Department may restrict this from you so you may need to involve them if you want to implement Computer based Fabrication Configurations.
The other thing to note, is that when you Run as Administrator, the HKCU branch is there but the settings may be missing or different. This is because, the Registry Editor is technically running as another user and that branch is User specific. You can see the two branches I’ve referenced in the following image.
Converting Configurations to ‘Computer’ Based
While you can edit the Registry manually, the easiest way to convert your Fabrication Configurations to be Computer based (not User) is to run the Registry Editor normally (not as Administrator) and export the HKEY_CURRENT_USER settings. The settings are in the key…
The <year> represents the version year of Autodesk Fabrication (CADmep, ESTmep, CAMduct, Remote Entry, etc.) or Revit. You can see that in the following image. If the Configuration key isn’t there, that means there’s no configurations “configured” for that version year. If a specific “year” isn’t listed, it means that version wasn’t installed.
Once you get to the Configuration Key, you can export it using the File -> Export option as shown here…
While you can Export a single configuration, I like to pick the Configuration Key and do them all. We can get rid of what we don’t want later. The main point to note when exporting is to change the Save as type: to the Win9x/NT4 Registration Files (*.reg) option. This will save the export in ASCII text which you can edit in Notepad.
Once you export to a file, you can right click on the file and select Edit to open in Notepad. The following image shows how it looks and is marked up what I’ve removed vs added/edited. Note I also edited the Registry Hive from HKEY_CURRENT_USER to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
Once you’ve edited the file and saved it, you’re almost ready to import it. It’s generally not advisable to have the same configuration with the same name and same path in both the HKCU and HKLM branches.
So first, you can run REGEDIT normally and rename the Configuration folder…or just delete it (if you’re comfortable doing so). Then close the Registry Editor and run it again but Run as Administrator. You can now Import the file you just edited to import those new Registry settings. The following image shows what both branches might look like…
Now, when you launch Fabrication (CADmep, CAMduct, ESTmep, etc.) you’ll see the little Yellow Lock icon on your configurations. Revit won’t show that little icon but it does honor the ‘User’ vs ‘Computer’ configurations.
A Word About Fabrication ‘Profiles’
One side effect of ‘Computer’ or machine based Fabrication Configurations shows up if you use Profiles in your Fabrication Configuration. It doesn’t apply to Revit but does CADmep, CAMduct and ESTmep. When you use Profiles with ‘User’ based Configurations, the last active profile will be the default when you launch the program again. With ‘Computer’ or machine based profiles, you’ll always default back to the Global profile.
However this is easily fixed. To start, let’s look at the ‘User’ based configurations under HKCU when a profile was used…
You’ll see there’s now an ActiveProfile value in the configuration that wasn’t there before. That’s how Fabrication knows which profile to load by default. But also remember, the HKLM branch of the registry is normally Read-Only. So this means those programs can’t create this value when you change profiles.
The solution to this, is making those registry keys Read-Write in the HKLM registry branch. You can do that by running REGEDIT as an administrator like before and navigating to the proper registry keys. From here, you can Right-Click on the Key’s name and select Permissions….
You can do this on a specific configuration or at the root Configuration key and the permissions will be inherited by the downstream keys. Once the Permissions dialog shows up, select the User permission group and select the Allow toggle for Full Control. Again, you may need your IT’s help if you don’t have permissions to do this.
This will now allow CADmep, CAMduct and ESTmep to save the last Fabrication Profile to the Registry in the HKLM branch so when you start the software the next time, it’ll be able to use the last Profile used.
One good side effect of changing these permissions…you’ll now also be able to import or create more Fabrication Configurations in HKLM in the future WITHOUT having to Run as Administrator as you’ll now have Read-Write permissions to those keys by default.
Make sure if you do these steps, to do them for all versions of Fabrication. You can even make entries for versions you don’t have installed so they work later if you install that version. So if you want to prepare for 2025 versions, you can copy/paste/edit those registry settings in the file you exported and rename them as 2025 (or older versions) all in the same file, Being proactive in this way will minimize future support downtime.
Do you know what ‘Connector Matching’ is as it relates to Autodesk Fabrication? It’s been in the product since the 2020 release. Yet most people I run into have no clue what it is.
There’s a good reason for that. It’s hidden from view. That is to say, there’s a good reason you don’ know about it. There’s no good reason it’s hidden from you besides Autodesk is pretty slopping (lazy?) when it comes to product design in recent years.
What is Connector Matching?
Connector Matching only works in Revit w/Fabrication Parts. If you’re not using Revit, you need not worry about it but setting it up won’t cause any issues either. It’s designed to place a matching connector on pipe after you cut in a fitting when modeling in Revit. CADmep, ESTmep and CAMduct will simply ignore the settings.
As an example, if you’re drawing a welded piping system and want to break it with a Grooved coupling, Connector Matching places the proper grooved connector on the end of the pipe when the Coupling is placed. This helps us build a system with Welded Pipe Spools that’s assembled in the field with Grooved Couplings…a very common activity in mechanical construction.
When Connector Matching isn’t configured, you’ll have issues cutting in things like a Grooved Coupling into a Pipe that’s part of a welded system.
Configuring Connector Matching
The reason many don’t know about connector matching is because it’s hidden. None of the 3 views (Manufacturing, Costing & Drawing) display this option.
To set Connector Matching, you Right-Click on a connector that’s configured for the Item you need to match. In this case, it’s a Victaulic 77 Coupling.
You can see the Matching Connector is set to “Same” by default. That’s certainly not what we need so select that menu option.
You can see now the Matching Connector is set to a Grooved Connector. So every time an Item with the “VIC_Coupling 77” connector is cut into a piece of pipe, the pipe will get a “VIC_Groove” connector.
Added Configuration to Make it Work
Above, you set the matching connector. Unfortunately, that’s not enough. There’s some added configuration to verify to ensure that it works.
One of the requirements of Connector Matching is to make sure the Pipe’s Connectors are NOT locked and defaulted to the connectors they should use. In other words, ‘Set’ but not ‘Locked’.
Here’s what your Pipe ITM most likely looks like…
What I recommend here is, Unlocking only 1 of the Connectors and Clicking OK. After you do that, go back and edit the ITM again and take a look at the Connectors.
You can see here that after Unlocking one of the Connectors and Clicking OK, going back to edit the ITM the Connector changed to “None”. This is a tell tale sign that there’s yet another thing you have to change to make it work.
In some Configurations, people have the Specification set to drive the Connectors. This is most commonly done for Sheetmetal but you see it in Piping as well. In the following image, the Piping Specification is configured to set the Connector to “None”.
What we need to do here is set the Connectors in the Breakpoints to “Not Used”. Note, if the Connector you unlocked earlier didn’t change to something other that what it was, you most likely don’t have this issue but still could…it could just be configured to use the Connector the ITM was set to.
You might have to hunt around for which settings apply. It could be on the ‘Any’ material or a specific material the ITM is using. The ‘Valid For’ could have it in ‘All Types’ or ‘Straights Only’. It’s possible too that you don’t have any breakpoints in the Specification at all. If that’s the case, then your Specification is likely already good. But if it’s not, simply ensure the Connectors are all set to “Not Used”.
Once your Specification is setup correctly (if it was a problem in the first place) you can go back to your ITM for the pipe and unlock both connectors but leave them set to the Connector it typically uses.
Once everything is set properly, Revit will then let your Grooved Coupling be placed in the run of pipe.
If you Double-Click on one of the pieces of pipe, you can see the Connectors are now set to a Groove for the end where the Coupling is.
A Final Word
Note that these settings were added in 2020. If you’ve had your Database configuration a long time, they’re likely not set. Even Autodesk’s ‘Out of the Box’ configurations that shipped with 2024 don’t have these set. So you’re pretty much on your own to make it work.
If you do ANY Administration of your Database Configuration in 2019 or earlier, these settings will be lost. As I’ve advised many times earlier, pick a version for Administration and stick to it. If you have Admin permissions and use 2019 or earlier, all those settings get lost and because they’re not displayed, you won’t really know.
You can use these settings for all kinds of things. They don’t have to be limited to Grooved Couplings. Changing the end of Steel pipe to Threaded when Cutting in a Threaded Coupling, Threaded Adaptor, Threated Tee, Threaded Valve, etc. All of these things should have their connectors looked at and Matching setup. Just about any of those types of fittings in all materials should have Matching set.
I run into a number of people who have had problems with Riser Clamps and Revit Fabrication Parts. I have as well. Here’s how you can work around them…fairly easily.
Problem #1 – Clamp Will Not Attach to Vertical Riser
The first problem I see is with Riser Clamps not attaching to vertical pipe. I’ve seen some creative workarounds. From just placing a clamp in space and moving it to near where it should be to using a modified form of a Grooved Coupling pattern. The following video shows what that would look like if you have this issue.
The fix for this issue is fairly simple. First, make sure you’re using Pattern Number (CID) 838. This is the original Hanger pattern that will allow you to make just about any hanger. Secondly, ensure that you select the ‘Slide‘ option on the pattern.
This is the ONLY Hanger option that will work for vertically oriented pipe.
Once you use the proper option, you can observe that a Riser Clamp will attach to the vertical pipe. This can be seen in the following video.
The second Riser Clamp’s configuration uses the ‘Slide’ option. This allows us to attach it to vertical pipe. This sets us up well for the next issue….oversizing.
Issue #2 – Oversized Riser Clamps
The second issue is that if you set your Insulation Specification’s material to Oversize Hangers, the Riser Clamp will also oversize. This isn’t something you do with a Riser Clamp. Many of us have brought this issue to Autodesk on several occasions, yet they seem to struggle with understanding of our need for an option in this pattern to “ignore” oversize.
Luckily, with a little added work and user intervention, we can work around this. To resolve the issue, create a secondary Riser Insulation Specification with a material that does not oversize hangers.
To do this, you’ll need a duplicate of your Insulation Material. In the image below, we configure the insulation on the right not to oversize for systems where we do not require thermal pipe inserts.
Once you have a secondary Insulation material, you can create the Insulation Specification for the Riser.
Now, all you need to do is override the Insulation Specification on the Riser (vertical pipe) before placing the Riser Clamp. You can see this in the following video.
You can see how the vertical pipe get’s a pipe sized Clamp, where as the horizontal pipe will still oversize because we didn’t change it’s insulation specification.
I’d like to thank Kevin Allen and William Tucker of Comfort Systems USA for pointing out this embarrassingly simple workaround for Insulation Specification that seemed to escaped me.
One of the more annoying things users find with upgrading Autodesk Fabrication is losing their customizations. Things like column configurations in the old version do not magically appear in the new version.
But this problem is actually fairly solvable. You just need to know where to look. And those settings are located in a local folder on your system. They’re USER specific….VERSION specific and PRODUCT specific. Here’s where you’re going to look…
Each user will have a folder for the version and product they’re using. If the Version/Product isn’t there, that means the product is not installed or that combination of Version and Product was not run yet.
So as an example, if you’re using ESTmep 2021 and have your columns all configured, you’ll find that folder. But if you just installed 2024 and not run it yet, ESTmep 2024’s folder may not be there. If it is, the settings will not be the same.
In our theoretical example of upgrading from ESTmep 2021 to ESTmep 2024, you’ll copy the folder/contents from 2021 into 2024. If the ESTmep folder doesn’t exist in 2024, just copy the entire folder.
You can even copy the contents of ESTmep to the CAMduct folder. This would make the column configurations the same for those two product to be the same. You can also copy a product version from one user to another user. Either on the same computer or a complete different computer.
The folders may have different numbers of file between them. They control different things. The lack of a particular file within the Product folder means a particular feature wasn’t customized.
You could play around using trial and error and see exactly which file controls which settings. But I’ve personally not found that to be worth the effort. I just copy them all so I know that my new install is the same as the prior.
Another thing I usually recommend to people upgrading, is find the person who’s settings you want to use. Save those folders somewhere on the network for easy access. When you install/upgrade other users, copy them from the network local to the person you’re setting up.
Using this technique, you can easily keep your Fabrication product customizations consistent…version to version, product to product, user to user and computer to computer.
Fabrication 2024 is out. I’ve updated all the reference information to include 2024 formats. As has been the trend the last few years, little has changed. Summary below…
I’m occasionally asked how one would add one of every size in a product list to their job. This very easy using ESTmep or CAMduct. CADmep however does not have this capability.
Here are the steps….
Step 1: Start ESTmep / CAMduct with a blank job.
Step 2: Go to Item Folders and navigate to the folder with the ITM(s) you wish to takeoff all sizes for. Select all the ITM’s and press CTRL+SHIFT+Right-Click and select Takeoff All Product Sizes.
Step 3: Go back to the Items tab and review all the sizes of each item you selected.
Why Would You Do This?
There’s several reasons this may be helpful to you.
Any Size with dimensional errors is quickly found
A simple report shows you where you may have holes in your data (Price, Labor, Product Info, etc.)
Produce a quick MAJ that can be opened in CADmep (OpenJob) to measure each size to ensure dimensional accuracy.
If the option is grayed out/disabled, you’re one or more of the ITM’s in your selection is NOT Product Listed. For this to work, all items you’ve selected must be Product Listed.
Fabrication 2023 is out. I’ve updated all the reference information to include 2023 formats. As has been the trend the last few years, little has changed. Summary below…
Those of you who used CADmep, CAMduct or ESTmep prior to it’s acquisition by Autodesk remember when all the reports were in one folder. Once Autodesk took over, they moved to a system where each product used a separate subfolder for their reports. After all, ESTmep is likely using different reports than CADmep and yet different than CAMduct. Here’s what your configured reports folders now look like (you may not have all products/folders). Notice how each product has it’s own older.
The reality is, many reports are helpful across products. This means you need to make the same report multiple times or copy it from one folder to the others. This leads to duplication of data and a chance than one of the copies gets changed different from the others.
Consolidating All Report to a Single Folder
It’s commonly asked if it’s possible to configure the different Fabrication product to use the same folder. The answer you always hear is No. Technically that’s correct. You can’t configure Fabrication products to look at the same folder. However….
You CAN configure Windows to make multiple folders look at the same folder. It’s just done at the Windows level with a feature called Junction Links.
So lets walk through how to configure CADmep, CAMDuct and ESTmep to all look at the same reports.
Step 1: Find Where Your Reports Are Located
Using CAMduct or ESTmep you can pick Help -> About or type AppInfo at the command line in CADmep. You can then scroll through the window to see where the Reports are located. Alternatively, you could use the Edit Configuration utility to find this folder as well.
Note that this screencap was done in ESTmep so you see the ESTmep subfolder. The mis folder is actually the root where all your reports are.
Step 2: Copy All Report Folders to a New Folder
The next step is to copy all the reports from the various product specific folders to a new master folder location to store the reports. In this case, we’ll call it (Master) just to make it super obvious. Notice we also deleted the folders for CAMductComponents, Tracker and RemoteEntry because I’m not using them. You can choose to include them if you need them,
Step 3: Backup and Delete the Original Reports Folders
When you’re done, you should back a backup of the product specific reports folders elsewhere incase you want to go back to the original config. Once backed up, you need to delete the original product specific reports folders. When you’re done, your reports folders will look like this…
Step 4: Create Junction Links for the Product Folders
Here’s where we do the magic. Windows allows you to create what’s called a Junction to other folders. A Junction is just another virtual folder that looks at the contents of another. Junctions are how Windows has a “My Documents” folder that really points to “C:\Users\<Username>\Documents“.
To create a Junction you need to open a Command Prompt with Administrative permissions. One that’s done, you use the MKLINK command to make a Junction Link to a Junction Target. The syntax looks something like this….
MKLINK /J "link folder" "target folder"
Here’s a screencap of my DOS Command Window where I make Junction Links to the (Master) reports folder…
When done (if Successful) you’ll see those product specific folders again for CADmep, ESTmep and CAMduct. But this time, you’ll notice the icons are slightly different and look like a shortcut icon even though the folder acts like a regular folder.
Here you can see a side by side recording of the process happening in real time…
Step 5: Use Fabrication As Normal
Once you have the junctions created, you can use your products as normal. Each fabrication product looks to the folder specific to it, which Windows redirects to the file in the (Master) folder.
One thing to note, is that when browsing the (Master) and product specific folders, the only clue that these are Junction Links is the Shortcut looking arrow on the icon. If you don’t know what’s going on, it would appear that you have 4 folders each with the same files. But if you try to delete the files in one, they will indeed disappear from the other folders too. After all, these folders are Links back to the Target.
Here’s a recording of all 4 folders show at the same time. You’ll see that changes to any one also happen to the others. You may need to Refresh the views to see the changes but they indeed are seen from the Target and all Junction Links. This means that while there’s 4 folders showing the same files, they only take up the size on disk in one folder.
Summary
Junction Links work well for letting all (or some) of your Fabrication products use the same list of Reports. But there are a few noteworthy items to be aware of….
Junctions Links and Point to Targets on a different DRIVE or FOLDER as long as it’s on the SAME machine. You can’t make a link to a target from a computer to a server for example.
If you access your database from a network location, you need to make make the links from the server so your IT Department may need to get involved. Your local software when accessing the server share will honor the junctions it sees on the server.
If you don’t know what’s going on or look closely, it appears you have duplicate data. Make sure you don’t delete things from one folder thinking they’ll still be in the others.
If you want to undo this setup, you should delete the Junction Links FIRST just like any other folder before deleting the Target folder. If you delete the Target first, the you’ll have trouble deleting the links.
IF you Sync your database from a master source location like Dropbox or using a utility like Robocopy, the Junctions are NOT copied, but are instead copied like regular folders. There may be some special utilities that copy the junctions but I’ve not found them. So what is 4 views of 1 copy of a file on a network, when synced to your local system becomes 4 copies of the files in 4 folders. For the most part, it’s not an issue as you manage from the master source location. None the less, this nuance is worth mentioning. Most Sync utilities do NOT recognize the special nature of a junction and treat them just like a folder.
