Ducting

Ducting

I created a series of fittings for Evergreen Square, Rectangular and Round Tubing. This has got very complicated so this article is an attempt to get a handle on this.

To get started .. we have the range of Evergreen tubing listed below, 3 sizes of Rectangular Tubing, 5 sizes of Square Tubing and 12 sizes of Round Tubing for a total of 20 different tubing sizes.

For all of these I need 45°, 90° elbows – perhaps others .. additional ones for the rectangular tubing, Tee-Fittings, Joiners, Flanges etc.

Short Code

There are quite a few combinations when an elbow connects two lengths of tubing. With 20 tubes you could create 380 different configurations. Many of these would simply ‘silly’ but this gives an idea of how complicated it could be. To simplify it a bit I gave a letter to each tube as shown in the left column of Fig 1 above.

So now we can code the connector for two tubes:

• AA connects two #257 tubes
• AB connects a #257 and a #258 tube
• ABR connects a #257 and a #258 tube with one connector at right angles to the other
• AC connects a #257 and a #259 tube
• AH connects a #257 and a #257 tube
• FP connects a #254 and a #2276 tube

The type of connector with additional info is coded as:

• E = Elbow
• J = Joiner (single)
• C = Joiner (double)
• 90 = 90°
• L,M,S .. for different lengths of the ‘legs’ of the fitting

A 90° elbow that joins a #257 and #258 tube would be coded as AB-E90
A 45° elbow that joins a #257 and #259 tube at right angle would be coded as ACR-E45
A #257 and #259 tubes would connect inline with a Joiner (S) would be coded as AC-J

SKU

The SKU – or – “Stock Keeping Unit” is while not strictly necessary are useful. The prints in my store are identified by a different SKU for each. To do this I created formulas in Excel from the folders and sub-folders that the files for the prints are stored. I store all of my models at D:\MicroMimesis\Models. Under Models I have sub-folders for major collections such as Industrial, Infrastructure, Commercial and so on. I put my ducting under the Industrial folder as D:\MicroMimesis\Models\Industrial\Ducting\Evergreen. Under the Evergreen folder I created a folder for Rectangular, Square and Round. Tubing. Finally under each of these folders I created folders with the Evergreen stock numbers for each size tubing.