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NIBCO Copper Pipe Fittings

Our free collection of NIBCO pipe fittings makes it easier than ever to model copper piping systems accurately and efficiently in Revit.

Copper soldered pipework offers long-term durability, high heat tolerance, and excellent leak resistance, making it a trusted choice for residential, commercial, and HVAC systems. It can withstand high temperatures and pressure without degrading as it has no internal components such as gaskets.

This collection features a small but powerful set of essential components – pipe type, reducer, coupling, bend (elbow), end cap, reducing and equal tee. We've created the pipe type itself with the full routing preferences already defined, so you can load it and start drawing your pipework without a second thought.

A series of rendered copper pipe fittings in a row representing different types: straight couplings, bends (elbows), tees, and reducers.
NIBCO pipe fittings available in the collection.

Each family is modeled to match NIBCO's product specifications and copper fitting standards, ensuring dimensional accuracy and peace of mind when coordinating. More about this later on.

Bends

The bend covers NIBCO’s 45 degree and 90 degree close rough elbows ranging from 1/8” to 8” nominal diameters.

 45-degree and 90-degree close elbows, each shown in a descending order of size from 8 inches to 1/8 inch nominal diameters. The fittings are aligned to visually communicate the range of sizes and angles available.
45 and 90 degree bends.

Tees

The tee family is capable of equal size connections, reducing branches and runs (or both where possible) ranging from 1/8” to 8” nominal diameters.

Tee fittings rendered in copper color, decreasing in size from left to right. These tees represent equal-size and reducing branches for piping, ranging from 8 inches to 1/8 inch diameters.
Equal tees.

A zoomed-in illustration of a 90-degree pipe bend highlights the flexible installation tolerance feature. The bend shows slightly rounded edges and socket connections, allowing for angle variation (89°–91°) to accommodate field discrepancies.

Flexible Installation

The pipe type has been given a 1 degree tolerance. For instance, the 90 degree bend can produce 89-91 degree bends to suit any small discrepancies in coordination. This tolerance also allows for installation at fall/gradient without throwing out a Revit error which can happen with some ‘out of the box’ fittings.

A zoomed-in illustration of a 90-degree pipe bend highlights the flexible installation tolerance feature. The bend shows slightly rounded edges and socket connections, allowing for angle variation (89°–91°) to accommodate field discrepancies.
90 degree bends overlaid with transparency to show how they accommodate design inaccuracies and flex.

IsCustom Option

Our NIBCO soldered copper pipe fittings take advantage of Revit’s IsCustom option for pipe fittings. The IsCustom option allows the Revit user to create piping systems with a more fluid workflow.

Whenever there is an incorrect value for angle or nominal diameter (depending on the fitting), Revit will allow the pipe to be drawn but will flag that it's using a custom fitting and will color the fitting bright red.

This allows you to quickly and efficiently draw your system, while having an easy and unobtrusive way to spot and fix potential issues.

Four rendered pipe bends are shown: a 30°, 45°, 88°, and 90° elbow. The 30° and 88° elbows are colored bright red, indicating non-standard or unsupported configurations as flagged by Revit’s “IsCustom” option. The 45° and 90° bends appear in normal copper color, representing accepted configurations. This visual illustrates how Revit software identifies and differentiates custom versus standard pipe angles during modeling.

IsCustom option at work – unsupported bend angles color bright red when created.

One Last Thing: Choosing the Connector Position

We’ve been creating pipe fitting Revit families for many years now, including the AWWA Autodesk pipe fittings. Typically, the connectors are placed at the ends of the fittings. While this may be easier for Revit (or at least it was thought to be years ago), it does mean that a material takeoff will be inaccurate.

For example, 1” ND copper pipework is incredibly common and the fittings have a socket depth of nearly 1 inch. This means you miss 2 inches of required pipe length for every fitting used. Even a small office building will use up to 300 1” ND fittings, equating to approximately 50 feet of pipework not accounted for in a Revit material takeoff.

In a world where BIM is meant to be the default, we should aim to be more accurate and efficient than that.

That’s why these Revit families have their connectors placed inside the fitting as per real life installation. The image below shows how the pipe ends connect inside of the sockets for accurate coordination and material takeoffs.

A wireframe drawing of a pipe system displays vertical and horizontal copper pipes connected using fittings such as tees and elbows. The pipe ends are visibly inserted inside the fitting sockets rather than terminating at the fitting edge, reflecting real-world installation practices. This setup ensures that material takeoffs in design software accurately reflect actual pipe lengths needed for construction.

Wireframe plan view of NIBCO system showing pipe ends inside of fitting sockets.

Get the Collection

Click here to view and download the full collection.

Collection Content List

  1. Pipe Type - NIBCO
  2. Bend
  3. Reducer
  4. Coupling
  5. Combined Equal and Reducing Tee
  6. Cap End

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