How to Lay Out Multiple Bends on One Conduit

Multiple bends lays out a whole stick at once: say a stub-up, then an offset, then a saddle, with every mark measured from one end. The bends are worked out together, so each one’s gain and shrink are carried into the marks after it and you don’t have to add them up yourself.

How distances are measured

• Add the bends in the order they come along the conduit, starting from the end you measure from.
• Each bend’s distance starts at the back of the last 90 before it, or at the conduit end if there isn’t one, and runs along the finished run to the point its field names: To the obstruction, To the center of the second bend, To the back of the new 90 and so on.
• Offset before an obstruction is finished by the time it reaches the obstruction; Offset after an obstruction starts past its far side. The versions measured to a bend center help when conduits of different sizes have to line up.
• A Compound 90° works like its own screen: its distance runs to the back of the new 90, and the blocks after it are measured from there.
• A Kick has no distance: it goes straight after a 90, as on the Kick screen.
• Straight between bends sets the straight conduit from the end of one bend to the start of the next, for when the gap between two bends matters more than where they sit. The block after it is placed by the straight, so it has no distance of its own; at the start of the list, the straight runs from the conduit end.
• A Cut mark goes last, and nothing can follow it. Its position includes the shrink of everything before it, so the conduit can be cut, and threaded, before it is bent.

How to bend it

1. Add the blocks and their measurements, and check the drawing matches the job.
2. Put every mark on the straight stick, measured from the conduit end, and the cut if there is one.
3. Bend them in order from that end. Each bend starts with the hook facing the conduit end, the three-point saddle’s center bend included; with marks for the arrow, every mark goes on the arrow.
4. If the bender has to face the other way for a bend, tap Flip on its mark. The mark moves to suit the hook facing away from the end.
5. Keep each bend in the plane the drawing shows: a kick is a quarter turn from its 90.

Where the numbers come from

The blocks are joined into one conduit and run through the same radius math as the single screens. The back of a 90 is half the OD behind its corner, so after a 90 every later mark moves by that 90’s stub less its gain.

If it turns orange or red

The colors work as on the single screens, for the whole stick at once: red if two bends overlap or a mark falls off the end, orange if there is too little straight between two bends for the shoe or the conduit is longer than one stick. A compound 90 that would touch its obstruction turns orange too. A block with a missing measurement, a kick with no 90 before it, a straight with nothing after it, or anything after the cut is left out, and says why.