Learn/Drafting/Solid Modeling Tools
Pipe & Tube
Shift+PUpdated v2.3.9At a glance
- Sweep pipe along a 2D or 3D sketch path — or stand it straight against a plane
- A 3D Sketch path gives real out-of-plane tube bends (roll cages, handrails)
- Sharp path corners mitre; a rounded corner becomes a real mandrel bend
- Round, square, and rectangular sections — schedule/NPS sizes or custom, solid or hollow
- Distance covers part of the path; Rotation clocks square/rect tube
- Hotkey Shift+P (Plane keeps P) — rebindable in Settings → Keyboard
Pipe (Shift+P) drops standard pipe and tube stock into a model without drawing a profile. It has
two modes, chosen by what you click: click a sketch path — a chain of lines and arcs, a
polyline, or a spline — and the section sweeps along it for roll cages, hand rails, tube frames, and
process piping; or click a workplane / flat body face for a straight length you drag to size.
Each pipe becomes its own body in the component.
Sweeping along a path
Click any segment of a sketch chain and the whole connected run is selected automatically (turn Chain Selection off to sweep just that segment); polylines and splines work the same way. The pipe then follows the centerline you drew.
Corners come straight from the sketch. Where two segments meet at a sharp corner the pipe mitres the joint, like cut-and-welded tube. Where you've rounded a corner — a line, an arc, then a line — the pipe makes a smooth mandrel bend at exactly that radius. There's nothing extra to set: the path is the bend. An open path gives an open run; a closed loop sweeps into a closed loop of tube.
Distance sweeps only part of the path length for a stub or partial run, and Rotation clocks square or rectangular tube so its flat faces land where you want them (round sections ignore it).
Straight mode
Click a workplane or a flat body face instead and Pipe stands a straight length along the normal.
Length works like an extrude depth: type an expression (36in, 1200mm) or drag the arrow gizmo in
the viewport.
Standard sizes
Round offers Schedule Pipe per ANSI B36.10M (nominal 1/8" through 12", SCH 10 / 40 / 80 / 160), DOM tubing, hydraulic tubing, and A500 structural round. Square and Rectangle pull from A500 HSS and mechanical tubing tables. Pick a size and the dialog reads back the exact OD, wall, and ID so you can check it against the rack before you model around it. All of these sweep along a path just as they stand straight — so a curved run is still standards-correct.
Custom sizes
Switch Mode to Custom and enter what you actually know: OD + Wall or OD + ID for round (the third value is computed and shown live), or width, height, and wall for square and rectangular sections. A Hollow / Solid toggle turns the same tool into round and square bar stock.
Notching and joining
Like the other solid tools, when the pipe intersects an existing body the Operation dropdown offers Cut, Join, or New Body — see Boolean Operations. Cut is the one worth knowing: run a pipe through a tube you're keeping and cut it away, and what's left is a true saddle cope.
For sweeping an arbitrary drawn cross-section (not a standard pipe section) along a path, see Sweep; for helical runs, see Helix.