Environmental and water engineering students often ask whether there is a separate "environmental Revit". There is not. Revit for water treatment simply means using Revit, mostly its building services and structural tools, for the industry's facilities: wastewater treatment plants, water treatment plants, pumping stations and storage tanks.
This article walks through modelling a wastewater treatment plant in Revit 2027: which layers of elements the facility has, which tools build the tanks, and how to split process piping by system. The last part covers where to get manufacturers' pump families, and when AutoCAD Plant 3D is a better choice than Revit. To learn piping and equipment properly, see the Revit MEP course.
Revit water treatment: the layers of elements
A wastewater treatment plant in Revit usually has five layers, each built with a different group of tools.
| Layer | Examples | Built with |
|---|---|---|
| Tanks and concrete structures | Equalisation, anoxic, aerobic, settling and sludge tanks | Structural walls and floors, in-place masses |
| Buildings | Blower house, chemical building, control room | Ordinary architectural and structural tools |
| Process piping | Wastewater, sludge, air, chemicals, treated water | Pipe with its own system type for each |
| Equipment | Pumps, blowers, diffusers, mixers, scrapers | Equipment families with pipe connectors |
| Supports and accessories | Valves, flanges, hangers, rods | Pipe accessory families and support families |
Architecture, structure and building plumbing already have their own articles. This article focuses only on what is different about water treatment facilities.
Modelling treatment tanks in Revit
Reinforced concrete tanks make up most of the quantity. There are three ways to model them, chosen by shape:
- Rectangular tanks with vertical walls: model the walls as structural walls and the base and cover as structural floors. Concrete and rebar quantities then come out like any structural element, see concrete quantities in Revit.
- Tanks with special shapes, such as a hopper-bottomed clarifier or a V-notch weir: use in-place masses, see model in place in Revit.
- Elements repeated many times, such as collection troughs or baffle walls: build them as families, so one edit updates them all.
Model the tanks in a separate structural file and link it into the piping file, as with the discipline split in linking Revit models. Cut openings for pipes through tank walls in the structural walls, and run a clash check between pipes and tank walls before issuing drawings.
Revit plumbing for process piping: split systems from the start
A treatment plant has many kinds of pipe running side by side: wastewater, sludge, air and chemicals. If they all share one system, drawings, pipe colours and quantity schedules get mixed up. Revit separates them with piping system types.
Revit 2027 ships with eleven piping system types: Domestic Cold Water, Domestic Hot Water, four fire protection types, Hydronic Supply, Hydronic Return, Other, Sanitary and Vent. Each belongs to a fixed system classification; users cannot create new classifications, only duplicate a system type and give it its own name and colour. The method is in systems in Revit MEP.
A common assignment for treatment plants:
| Pipe | Duplicate from | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Gravity wastewater | Sanitary | Has slope and invert levels like drainage |
| Pumped wastewater, sludge | Other | Revit does not need to compute pressure for solids-laden flow |
| Air from blowers | Other | Air runs in steel pipe, not ductwork |
| Chemical dosing | Other | Kept separate for colours and schedules |
| Treated water | Domestic Cold Water or Other | Depends on whether hydraulic calculation is needed |
According to an Autodesk support article, the Other classification carries no calculations and is intended for pipes such as air or gas (Autodesk: Hydronic and Other classifications). Pipe and fitting types by material (HDPE, uPVC, steel) are set in Routing Preferences, see pipe types in Revit; colouring by system is in pipe colours by system.
Drawings and quantities from the model
A treatment plant set usually includes a general arrangement plan, plans and sections of each tank, process piping plans by system, sections through the main pipe runs and equipment installation details. All of them come from the same model, so moving a pump updates the plans, sections and equipment schedule. Quantities cover tank concrete and rebar, pipe length by system and size, and counts of valves, fittings and equipment; schedules are covered in Revit MEP quantity take-off. Piping drawings should be split into sheets by system, as in MEP drawings in Revit.
Revit pump families and manufacturers' equipment
Pumps, blowers and mixers are placed with Mechanical Equipment or Plumbing Equipment on the Systems tab. Equipment can connect to pipes only when its family has connectors; according to the Revit help, all MEP components need connectors to behave as part of a system (Autodesk: Connectors). Connect equipment to a system with Connect Into on the equipment's contextual tab (Autodesk: Connect Into).
You do not have to build pump families yourself. Large manufacturers provide them:
- Grundfos offers BIM downloads on each product page, as one family holding many variants (Grundfos: accessing BIM assets).
- Xylem provides BIM data for its pump brands, including .rfa and IFC files (Xylem: BIM).
Specialist equipment such as sludge scrapers and diffusers usually has to be built. Building a family with connectors is in creating Revit MEP families. Laying out pumps, suction and discharge headers and valve sets is similar to a pump room, see pump rooms in Revit.
Coordinating with the other disciplines
A treatment plant brings civil, structural, process, electrical and control engineers onto one site, so coordination matters as much as modelling. Keep one file per discipline and link them, so each team edits only its own elements. Put the tank structure in the structural file, process piping and equipment in the MEP file, and cable trays and panels in the electrical file. Run a clash check between pipes and tank walls, and between pipes and cable trays in the blower house, before each drawing issue; the method is in linking Revit models. Grid and level changes from the structural team are best tracked with Copy/Monitor, as in MEP coordination in Revit.
From P&ID to model: P&ID Modeler
A treatment plant usually has a P&ID before it has a model. Revit 2027 still has P&ID Modeler on the Systems tab, P&ID Collaboration panel. According to Autodesk's help, it builds 3D pipes following the P&ID, maps P&ID symbols to Revit families, and marks which runs are modelled and which do not match (Autodesk: P&ID Modeler). The condition is that the P&ID must be drawn in AutoCAD Plant 3D and shared on Autodesk Docs.
Plant 3D vs Revit for treatment plants
| Revit | AutoCAD Plant 3D | |
|---|---|---|
| Strengths | Buildings, tanks, coordination with architecture and structure | Dense process piping, P&ID, isometric drawing of each pipe run |
| Piping drawings | Plans, sections, schedules | Automatic isometrics to piping standards |
| Suits | Medium plants where civil works dominate | Plants with many items of equipment and complex pipe runs |
According to Autodesk, Plant 3D is a toolset included with AutoCAD for drawing P&IDs, modelling pipes to specification and producing isometrics automatically (Autodesk: AutoCAD Plant 3D). For most municipal, hospital and industrial-park wastewater plants in Vietnam, Revit covers both the civil works and the piping. Large water treatment plants, or plants with many process pipe runs, should consider Plant 3D for the piping.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a separate environmental Revit?
No. It is ordinary Revit, using its building services and structural tools for water facilities. Installing Revit gives you everything.
Should blower air pipes be drawn with Pipe or Duct?
With Pipe, using a system type duplicated from Other. Duct is for heating, ventilation and air conditioning.
What should I learn first for wastewater treatment plant design in Revit?
Revit MEP for piping and equipment, plus structural walls and floors for the tanks. The path is in free Revit tutorials.
Can I use Revit LT for a treatment plant?
No. Revit LT does not include the MEP tools, so pipes, equipment connections and systems are not available. Use full Revit; students and educators get it free through Autodesk Education.
Where do I find valve and fitting families?
Revit ships with a library of pipe fittings and accessories, loaded through the pipe type's Routing Preferences. Manufacturers' valves are often available from the same BIM portals as their pumps.
Does Revit do hydraulic design for treatment plants?
Revit computes flow and pressure loss for some system classifications, but process design is still done to the industry's standards and spreadsheets, and the resulting pipe and equipment sizes go into the model.
Revit for water treatment is not usually taught as a separate course; it is Revit MEP plus structural modelling applied to water facilities. The Institute also runs company-specific training on request, where the exercise can be the company's own treatment plant.
In short, Revit for water treatment means using the tools you already know from building services and structure, with system types set up for process piping from the start and manufacturers' families for pumps and blowers.