Feeling Brave? Custome Pipe Rules

Have you ever wanted the assigned alignment to be relevant to where you are working at in the drawing? If you are like me you have one super duper pipe network for the sewer on your site. It can be a pain remembering to change the default Pipe Network alignment as you work to ensure that you are using the correct one, and going back and changing it can be confusing if you use the default names of Pipe - (234). These two rules will automate the process for you, somewhat. It only works if the alignments are on top of the pipe, +/- 1 unit. So if you use the center line of the road instead of the center line of the pipe it won't work.

I've written two rules for Pipe Networks. So far I haven't had any problems, but who knows what the future holds. The two rules are called Alignment and AlignmentLaterals.

Alignment: This assigns the alignment to the pipe based on the start and end stations offset values. If the start offset and end offset are +/- 1 foot away from an alignment in the drawing the alignment is set as the reference alignment.

AlignmentLateral: This assigns the alignment to the pipe based on the start and end stations offset values. If the start offset or end offset are +/- 1 foot away from an alignment in the drawing the alignment is set as the reference alignment.

The files for download have been placed here. I've only tested this in 2008 and probably doesn't work on earlier versions The file location on your computer should be in a location similar to this:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Autodesk\C3D 2008\enu\

To use the new rules, copy the existing two files with the same name to a new location as a backup. Then place the two files you downloaded into the folder you found the original two files. Restart Civil 3D, if you had it open. When you open up Civil 3D the two new rules will be available when you create rule sets, or apply it to existing pipes.

I'm not the greatest programmer so the code is probably slower than it should be. I also don't know exactly happens when you share the file with someone else who doesn't have the custom rules. I'm pretty sure it is just an error message in the event viewer.

Let me know what you think.