Premade blocks similar to what is used in both HVAC and Electrical could be inserted into the drawing with predefined fixture units. The fixture units would be stored into multiple headings with IPC and UPC fixture units. The connections would be there with predetermined heights as well.

All of these symbols came up on one particular project, please leave comments on common plumbing symbols that I may have missed. Adding in these symbols and the corresponding isometric representations would greatly reduce the amount of time required to create each one of them by hand on both models. The following are the symbols that I found would be useful additions:

• Mixing valves


• Water heaters


• Grease interceptor


• Sample wells for grease interceptors


• Cleanout


• Cleanout to grade


• Two-way cleanout


• Backflow preventer


• Water filter

Especially for waste and vent sizing, the conversion from fixture units to pipe sizing is standard for all cases for the UPC and IPC. Generating sizing charts for cold and hot water, automatically through a series of settings possibly, would be probably more difficult to implement but equally helpful to make sizing plumbing easier.

Be able to create plumbing and piping fixtures, similar to light fixture or receptacles in DM Electrical or diffusers in DM HVAC.

When inserting fittings or piping the software will go through a regeneration process after each item is inserted. When files are small this is not a big deal. On large projects there is a noticeable delay and the software zooms out to the extents and then back into the area you are working on. Rather than do this on every change, include an option to only do this when the drawing is saved (and possibly when the drawing is opened).

Be able to remove text from specific pipes so that not every little branch and section has a label.

In the UPC and IPC the conversion from water closet counts and urinal counts to a number of fixture units is a standard table. Adding this to Design Master would be a small change yet very helpful.

Three options: One for system type and size, one for just size, and one for just system type.

When connecting a new waste pipe to an existing pipe, draw the chamfer between the two using the new layer system (not the existing layer system as it currently does).

Would be great to be able to copy all piping, including risers to other drawings. Even if you had the option to change risers to pipe I think it would be helpful and save time from having to chase down and draw all the risers a second time.

Be able to easily mirror plumbing plans. Risers that extend to multiple floors cause problems for the mirror command.

Currently, when a Direct 90-degree Vertical at Wall returns back from the wall on top of the pipe going towards the wall, the pipe on top hides the underneath pipe. A common way of representing this in 2-D models is by adding a "jog" in the pipe. However, in the isometric model the jog doesn't need to appear because overlapping isn't a problem. Automatically showing this "jog" on the 2-D model would make representing these cases much easier.

The Edit Multiple Pipes command needs to have the ability to change fixture units. Sometimes I forget to add fixture units to hot and cold water pipes I'm copying to other sink or shower locations and then I have to change each one individually or erase them and copy them again after I've added fixtures units to the first one to be copied. The current project I'm working on is a large university sports complex with a lot of locker rooms so you can imagine the number of showers, sinks and toilets, etc.

Be able to insert valves on vertical pipes. Valves would be displayed on isometric and possibly also on plan view.

Our plumbing drawings will typically be drawn with supply and drainage on the same drawing. It would be helpful if only the drainage piping caused breaks with drainage piping and the supply piping with only the supply piping. Additionally we place venting on a separate layer. I am thinking that you could place different pipe types into different categories and they would only affect pipe breaks on pipes in their category.

These pipe symbols would be used to represent clean outs, floor drains, and other things like that.