You can create pipes from different mesh shapes, e.g. circular edges:

You can control the number of steps to the extrusion:

You can bevel the insides and corners of the extrusion for smoother effects:

More features:

• Works on one or more selected faces.
• Control the number of steps in the extrusion, the depth and thickness of the cuts to give you a variety of effects.
• Ability to add some randomness to the step thickness to give varied effects.
• Taper, transform or rotate the extrusion to give bendable effects - can also be used with the proportional editing tools.
• Add bevels to the steps to create smoother pipe-like shapes.
• Can be used on tris, quads or n-gon faces.
• Choose to extrude selected faces as a region or extrude each selected face individually.
• Combine with Blender's Path Deform modifier to create intricate piping.