With the sort of structure you want to build you are better off spending a few minutes making suitable components.
Here I have made a 3 component joint with rotation points on a separate layer. Using this joint you can very quickly throw together a very complex structure. You start with one joint component and then make unique as needed to get the various arrays you want. You can change angle and rotation and redraw the faces of the components to create whatever shape pipe you want. This is simply a way of having components correctly aligned to each other. As with anything of this type, if you consider how it would be constructed in real life you usually find that using a selection of parts is the best way to go.
Also by using this type of joint, you give yourself a framework from which to use curviloft or Extrusion tools etc to make nice connector fittings.
Of course the other very simple way of doing it would be to construct it from a bunch of lines then use Pipe along path, or profile builder or some such to finish the construction for you.
[image: zLSO_Joint.JPG]
[image: Y5m9_Handles.JPG]
Joint.skp
