Under pressure, Go deep

Recently I was tasked with presenting pressure pipe to a user group. Pressure pipes, not my favorite topic. I only took this on because I owed Dino. Dino Lustri is our resident expert in H and H, actually, in my opinion he is a guru on the subject.

Anyway, as I began to work on pressure pipe to solve an old issue with a renewed focus, my stands on pressure pipes softened to some degree.

Like everything civil 3D, there is definitely a workflow needed to efficiently navigate around the gaps.

At the end of the session I did a poll to see if anyone else had warmed up to pressure pipes. Although I don’t have the exact figures, going by memory, the results were something similar to below

Civil 3D
Pressure pipe comfort level                                              % responded

1. 100%, I will use it now                                           %15
2. 75%, convinced, we may use it now                   %20
3. 50%, on the fence but will consider using it       %20
4. Still not convinced                                                    %10
5. Like it, but will need help                                         %10
6. No way in……will I use this feature                        <1%

So I was happy that I was able to offer some value to the user group. We covered topics from creating parts to laying out pipes in plan and resolve a crossover conflict in profile. I am hoping to document all this in a tutorial format.

However the main reason for this blog posting “Go deep” was not to highlight my warming up to pressure pipe, but was to draw attention to one of the potholes in the product.

Knowledge is power, and hopefully this tit bit of information will help you navigate around the pot hole, so to speak.

It seems that pressure pipes will not always adhere to the pipe depth in the setting. No idea what causes this or when it will happen. All I was able to do was, to document the issue with consistency. It is now with Autodesk and they are looking into it.

The workaround is to design, both in your plan view as well as in your profile view, and when the pipe does not follow the assigned depth, you can use the “AeccFollowSurfaceInPV” command in profile to adjust the pipe depth.

Not an eloquent solution, as each pipe is based on a cut length, but it is a workaround for now.