Pipe Network - Custom Parameters

Sometimes you want additional information included in a pipe or structure object. Maybe the velocity of the material flowing in the pipe or the quantity of material flowing in the pipe per unit of time. There is a way using programming to add information to a pipe or structure that will show up in labels. Here’s a shot of a structure the way it’s provided.

And here’s a shot showing the custom data added to the structure.

And here’s a screen shot of the label options in the Text Component Editor.

So how do you do this? You add a Pipe Network Catalog Definition to the drawing. The catalog definition is then available to all of the structures or pipes within in the drawing. A code examples are available in Civil 3D Developer’s help or in the Civil 3D 2009 VBA Customization vBook. The name can be anything that you want, it doesn’t have to be Custom Part Data. One could couple this will reactors and store the velocity or Q in the pipe, when the pipe changes the data held in the pipe would also change. I’d do an example, but I haven’t figured out reactors yet.

LEED AP

Today I passed the LEED AP test.

The test encouraged me to use my car, increasing pollution and land development impact from automobile use. I had to drive 2-1/2 hours each way to the nearest testing center. The parking lot of the testing facility was not within 1/2 mile of a train or subway station. The testing room did not provide daylighting or views. Strangely I didn’t miss a connection to the outside while taking the test. The parking lot/site of the testing facility looked wholly developed with little to no pervious area. The parking lot was poorly maintained and it was raveling causing pollutants to enter the environment. If I desired to take my bike to the testing facility I’d wouldn’t have had a place to park my bike, since there was no bike storage available. If I borrowed my parents zero emissions vehicle to go to the testing facility I would have had to park far from the entrance since they did not allow parking near the entrance and they didn’t provide preferred parking for low-emission & fuel efficient vehicles.

You’d think if the goal was a whole building approach the USGBC could have done a better job of finding a company that provided facilities that followed the intent of the process or is this just a marketing tool?

Anyways, it seems to be popular to do a brain dump on one’s experience in taking the test and here’s mine:

• I registered for the test three weeks ago and spent about 40 hours studying for the test.
• I spent most of the time using GreenExamPrep.com flashcards in the first two weeks of studying.
• I tried reading the Reference Guide, but found it didn’t keep my attention.
• I found the practice test at greenexamprep.com most useful, and spent most of last weekend taking them. It made studying the topics easier than reading the Reference Guide. The question format was similar to the actual test.
• I got a score of 187 out of 200, 170 is a passing score.
• The testing facility was high security with cameras and they require you to empty the pockets of everything and I couldn’t wear my sombrero de baseball.
• I learned that grass is evil and shouldn’t be counted for anything. Not sure what I should do with the non-irrigated grass in my backyard. Zero potable water use, but evidently it’s harming the environment.

Not sure if this will help you, unless you’ve already registered for the test. A new version is coming and to take the old test you had to register before April 1, 2009.

Oh, and I did this post because LEED is probably a popular search term for Google and will probably generate lots of pageviews, I guess I’m voting for marketing.

Workplace Meatball Sandwich

Cooking with Civil 3D Reminders:

Bread hollowed out to make room for the meatballs and sauce.

Meatballs and sauce heating up in the microwave.

Aluminum foil cradle to keep the sandwich upright.

Toasting in the toaster oven.

Finished Meatball Sandwich

Maybe I’ll try Civil3Diva’s Piping Hot Pulled Pork Pot Sandwiches.

Pipe Rule Numbers

If you plan on doing your own pipe rules you may want to use a particular format that shows when you set a parameter for a rule in the C3DPiperules.xml file. I was unsuccessful in getting an official list from Autodesk, but here is what I deduced by going through each number. The numbers correspond to a format type in the edit feature settings and that is the precision/format is used when you see the rule.

1-5 Unitless?

6-7 Station?

8 Grade/Slope

9 Grade

10 Slope

11 Direction

12 Lat Long?

13 Lat Long?

14 Angle

15 ???

16 Distance

17 Dimension

18 Coordinate

19 Coordinate

20 Area

21 Elevation

22 Elevation

23 Dimension

24 Volume

25 Distance

26 Degrees

27-30 Unitless

Civil 3D 2010 - Daylight Grading

Note: This post was an April Fool’s post and Civil 3D 2010 will ship with Grade to a Surface available in the Grading Criteria. Sorry for any convenience this may have caused. But the post still has an alternative method when the Grade to Surface doesn’t work.

One of the surprising changes in the Civil 3D 2010 product is the removal of the ability to Grade to a Surface. I guess the developers have given up on the feature until it becomes more stable.

So what are we to do? Well I’ve come up with an alternative method, while it does take a few more steps it is more reliable. The first thing you need to do is to grade to distance at the slope you want that will be sufficient to daylight the feature line.

Next create a volume surface using the Existing Ground surface and the grading surface.

Next add a User-Defined Contour at the 0 elevation, or the daylight line.

The user-defined contour in yellow, as you can see it’s only half of the solution.

Next extract the user-defined contour from the surface.

Now edit the grading to do the opposite slope and then rebuild the TIN Volume Surface created earlier. As you can see in the picture below all of the daylight lines for the grading exist. Extract the second user-defined from the TIN Volume Surface.

So now convert the extracted user-defined contours from 2D polylines to 3D Polylines.

Now sample Elevations from Surface for the two 3D Polylines.

Now add the 3D Polylines to your surface. You may want to increase the supplementing factors for the breaklines around the daylight lines.

As the surface below shows the surface needs a boundary around the surface.

The completed surface.

So that’s the finished surface. Sure it takes a few more steps, but there is less chance of crashing and it may be good thing that the feature has been removed from Civil 3D 2010.