Ad

Monday, January 03, 2011

Water Main Coverage

When designing for a water main or sewer line it’s sometimes nice to have a visual representation of where the minimum cover is located at. There isn’t an easy way to create this without using other objects. One such method is to create a new surface.

image

Next paste the surfaces that represent the surfaces you want to see the cover for. In this case I’m going to paste in the existing surface and then the corridor surface to create a composite surface.

image

Next select the surface and move it down the amount that represents the minimum cover. I usually select the surface and use the move command, and use a displacement value of 0,0,5.

Now create a profile from this surface.

image

I also set the minimum cover surface to not show any contours or boundaries. Now I have a way to see if I’ve achieved the minimum cover and it’s dynamic, so when the design surface changes, the minimum cover surface adjusts (as long as the Rebuild Automatic is enabled for the surface).

If you don’t like this method, check out this alternative way to accomplish the same goal: http://civil3dguru.blogspot.com/2010/12/watermain-coverage-solu-around.html

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Chris,

Thanks for the nice trick. Wouldn't the displacement be 0,0,-5instead of 0,0,5?

Gaurav Bagga

Christopher Fugitt said...

You are correct, I neglected to put the - in front of the 5.

LinkWithin

Blog Widget by LinkWithin

Ad