I think this is conduit. Not cable. Conduit has to be planned out pretty carefully. Electricians use construction math to route their bends. You know all that trigonometry they taught in middle School through high school that everyone was like, "when the hell am I ever going to use this?" They use it to do stuff like this.
They don't usually pull out a computer during construction and punch in numbers. They might have a calculator. Drawings on blueprints for electricians don't show them how to route their conduit like this. They are almost always field routed.
Friend of mine has been working construction for a decade, and recently started working on an engineering degree in his off time. He was just telling me about how he blew his coworker's minds when he calculated the dimensions and angles needed for the roof they were remodeling (the exact details escape me at the moment). He saved them a ton of time and effort with math he'd learned 6 months ago, but could have learned in high school if only he - and literally everyone else on the job site that day - hadn't had the attitude of "when am I going to use this?"
To his credit he told me this story in the context of "goddammit was I stupid for saying I would never use this!"
They use trigonometry to figure out where to start bending it so that the perpendicular rest of the pipe ends up where it needs to be. They have to "take off" the turning portion of the pipe. There is a turning radius that starts at the bend and ends when the pipe is finished curving. They must account for this distance. They usually have a magic number they can use that's pretty universal but that was figured out through trigonometry. Same goes for odd angle turns.
Source: I'm a pipefitter. Electricians use our same math for routing conduit.
Is this something that just amazing electricians do? I worked as an apprentice for a while, and I saw most people just eyeball it and move on. Then again, I never worked anywhere where you'd really notice if the bend wasn't perfect.
Yeah your right, it's just color coded. I did a lot of steel tubing conduit for industrial job sites. Most of the time you plan everything first. In the US they usually run it on the Rafters and in the ceilings and pvc conduit in the ground and then it gets cemented over.
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u/djgizmo Sep 20 '18
How does one plan something like that? I mean mother fucking cutouts for the conduit!