Mick Reynolds, EI | Solutions Consultant
Over the years I have built many custom Civil 3D templates. Part of the process is finding out what clients would like in terms of content to create a set of construction documents that are easy to read, accurate and efficient to produce. While no one would argue Styles aimed at producing these finished documents is extremely important, Styles used to aid the design phase are often marginalized or omitted altogether. One fine example of a Style that is beneficial during the design phase, but is not acceptable at construction level are Alignment or Profile “Layout“ Styles. These Alignment and Profile Styles show the tangents and curves of these Civil Objects as different colors, and make it easier during design to identify the transition locations (PC’s & PT’s for Alignments and BVC’s & EVC’s for Profiles). There is another Style I like to use during design of Pipe Networks to help me avoid the annoyance of changing the flow direction and reapply Pipe Network Rules when I forget to change the flow direction during the layout process.
When laying out Pipe Networks it is important to remember to change the direction of flow when you arrive at a low or high point in the associated profile. A couple of things I have used or seen people use is split screens to look at the plan and profile simultaneously, or writing down all of the high and low point stations from a profile. While these are effective, neither method is efficient. The solution I use can be taken directly from the standard Civil 3D Imperial and Metric Templates. There is an Alignment Label Set that includes Horizontal and Vertical information called “Major Minor H+V Geometry Points” that can be applied. When this Label Set is applied it will require the user to set the Profile it is reading the high and low points from (usually the Design Profile) twice. One time it is set to read the high point information and the other will be for the low point information. The dialogue box with Design Profiles is show in FIG. 1. Like Horizontal Geometry Point label set elements, the user then identifies the vertical elements they would like to see displayed, also seen below in FIG. 1, number 1.
FIG. 1
The user then selects the items they want to show labels for as shown below in FIG. 2 for the high points.
FIG. 2
The net result is an alignment that will show this information as part of the labeling the user will see while laying out the pipe as seen in FIG. 3. After the Pipe Network had been laid out, simply restore the Label set used for construction documentation.
FIG. 3