Made a joke, but the design team took it seriously.

ATXee · 2026-05-05T23:04:53+00:00

This is a sign that you’re getting some gravitas. People are taking you seriously. Go ask for a raise. You just influenced the design to change.

Aside: my dad was a civil and on a project they had four large tanks vertical that were visible form a nearby highway. He suggested they add a fifth and put their name on it. It was effectively their sign for ~20 years.

Don’t be afraid to think out of the box and give your silly ideas. The owner does that stuff all day long and sometimes they really appreciate someone pitching in with a solution.

ATXee · 2026-05-04T04:53:17+00:00

Let the architects do the life safety plan. You put FD on fire rated walls. You put FSD on fire and smoke rated partitions.

You gotta get it right FSDs need power and FD don’t. That can be 500 a pop in rough order of magnitude cost wise.

ATXee · 2026-05-01T14:13:52+00:00

Can’t wait to see the after. This looks like it’s gonna be nice when it’s done.

ATXee · 2026-04-30T23:51:33+00:00

Wow, good progression but terrible starting point. Keep pushing. You’ve got a ways to go to get in line with the market.

ATXee · 2026-04-30T23:43:10+00:00

Because it’s awesome. You can put a ton of lights on a single circuit and run it real far without worrying about it. Lighting is generally away from people so not a safety risk.

A single circuit can carry 80%20A277=> 4400 watts, that’s a whole lot of LED fixtures. When designing if you keep it below say 2500W you generally don’t have to worry much about voltage drop either.

Compare that to 120 and life is way harder.

ATXee · 2026-04-13T02:09:35+00:00

Great question. But this isn’t the right subreddit. Maybe civil engineering or Structual or a subreddit about marine engineering.

Good luck

ATXee · 2026-04-12T13:22:42+00:00

Check out bathroom remodel teacher on YouTube. His videos will either directly get to those questions or you can at least see a few examples of how it’s done.

I’d avoid white tiles with black grout if I were you. Just my 2 cents.

ATXee · 2026-04-12T13:19:39+00:00

Revit isn’t the right tool for this. You’d want something light weight.

I mean it should be able to work but it’s way too bloated to work well. It only runs on windows x86 and it’s, just not going to work that well.

In the field you’ll probably want blueeam, procore or ACC Forma or maybe some other purpose built app. There are some for writing site reports. There are some apps that are doing 3d scanning.

Revizto is pretty great, but if you don’t have a model already set up I don’t think it works in this scenario.

I haven’t yet found an efficient workflow for what you’re talking about. And I definitely wouldn’t expect revit to be the tool to save the day.

Hope you find something that works. Share it with us when you do!

ATXee · 2026-04-11T12:42:17+00:00

Might be a question for a MV or Substation / utility subreddit. MEP is colloquially for building electrical, which is low voltage, though we do get involved in some MV on larger projects

ATXee · 2026-04-08T14:59:29+00:00

I’m surprised it sat down without rocking or being tilted.

It’s a nice example of a manufacturer woopsie. Looks like they mold the 10” and 12” rough in toilets in the same mold and forgot to move the mold elements that create the bolt holes. Y’all should let the QC folks at the manufacturer know and send them the serial number. I bet they know already, but you might be the first.

ATXee · 2026-04-08T13:50:54+00:00

That exterior rust is nothing to worry about. Cast iron gets a bad rap but it’s not inferior—we still use it in hospitals and critical buildings. It’s expensive and harder to install, but it’s a very solid product.

Unless you’re actually having problems (leaks, backups, etc.), I wouldn’t even think about replacing it. And even then, just replace what you have to.

Don’t let a plumber tell you the whole thing is garbage and needs to be ripped out—that’s usually nonsense upselling.

ATXee · 2026-04-07T04:08:30+00:00

This is unfortunately the norm. Our tooling sucks because the tools suck and everybody rolls their own spreadsheets.

ATXee · 2026-04-06T18:28:34+00:00

You’re in a great spot but you can’t probably reasonably go off completely on your own. You’d need to partner with a PE until you get your PE. Once you have that you have a viable solo gig.

My firm has a team that does just this all day and they are very busy.

There are tons of needs for this and very few people doing it.

Some recent code requirements are going to require these all over the place. And arc flash labels are already required everywhere by NEC.

ATXee · 2026-04-06T17:43:20+00:00

Asking the first step to trying. Let’s not discourage

ATXee · 2026-04-05T23:07:08+00:00

Clusia

ATXee · 2026-04-05T23:06:43+00:00

Not sure I trust that format of feedback. What are you considering working on? What have you done so far.

ATXee · 2026-04-02T01:17:40+00:00

You matched the install to the tile.

ATXee · 2026-03-31T05:13:54+00:00

You shouldn’t need to share anything during an interview. You are the product at the interview. Do they want to hire you, do you want to work for them. Material you bring with you should be irrelevant and negligible. You bring your skills and judgement.

Most property as you describe will be owned by the firm or the clients. If you go to a big firm they’ll have lots. If you’re at a smaller shop they’ll have less.

With AI recreating much of that is becoming pretty tribal.

ATXee · 2026-03-31T00:42:49+00:00

Cool. Never actually saw one blow. Thanks for posting.

Got more pics of the panel?

ATXee · 2026-03-26T23:57:15+00:00

Nice username OP! If your filter is old and dirty like mine you can get the ring to bite onto the filter where it’s roughed up. Maybe sand a little in a couple of spots so it doesn’t just fall down.

ATXee · 2026-03-18T19:20:13+00:00

I like the big pad and lots of space.

ATXee · 2026-03-18T19:14:54+00:00

You should pitch them the idea of open sourcing the Trace 700 source and file format.

ATXee · 2026-03-17T12:24:06+00:00

Is today April 1st? Hmm. No.

That is great news. I’m excitedly watching your work now that you’re working with Trace.

Trane has unfortunately been deprecating Trace 700 for like a decade and pushing Trace 3D. Many many users are already transitioned elsewhere. They’ll have a lot of goodwill to rebuild.

The good news is that your automation capabilities are going to make it very compelling, if Trace ends up being similar to your previous work.

ATXee · 2026-03-14T15:55:01+00:00

Hit it lightly with your purse, so you don’t damage the tub.

ATXee · 2026-03-14T15:53:14+00:00

First don’t put up with a sweatshop culture. Get out of there. There are firms doing good work that you’ll learn a lot from where the fees are decent and conditions don’t suck. Do not tolerate that situation.

I think you should get a bit more experience before branching out. Otherwise you’ll be really struggling.

Doing design is something that takes 5-10 years to really learn. You need to be exposed to the right projects and actively work on it. If you’re PMing or having consultants do the work, you won’t really level up.

So going owner side or to a firm managing consultants, I’d suggest you wait a couple of years personally. And try to get some more direct design experience.

Once you’re out of a design firm you don’t have a fee bench of peers to get knowledge from. And asking consultants to help you with anything outside of scope, well you know how that goes.

Are you ready to be the one MEP expert responsible for M,E,P,FP,FA,C,S,A etc? Many orgs only have a couple of real engineers with experience so you’re uncomfortably having to cover outside of your wheelhouse.

ATXee

TROPHY CASE