Drawing Pipes in Profile Views

When designing Storm and Sanitary Sewers for a given project one of the most important pieces of information that we will create are the profiles that contain our pipe data. Civil 3D makes it easy for us to do that in a couple of different ways. We can add pipes to an existing profile such as a roadway which would be ideal for waterlines, or we can create a network specific alignment to create a profile to give us accurate data on the pipe networks themselves. Either way we look at it, the Civil 3D dynamic model makes it easy to create these without frustration.

When getting ready to put pipes into a profile view we must first have a pipe network present in the model. We will take a look at how to create an alignment from network parts and use that alignment to create a profile of our pipe network.

In the picture above you can see we have a pipe network in the model and we are going to create a profile ranging from structure (2) to structure (4). In order to do this we are going to need to create an alignment that ranges from structure (2) to structure (4). We can do this by accessing the pipes� pulldown and looking through the utilities we have available to us, as seen below.

After we have selected this option it will ask us to choose the network parts we want to create the specific alignment. We will now choose the two structures at the beginning and end of the desired alignment.

The pipe network parts have now become dashed to represent their selection. At this point we can continue to add parts or simply create the alignment. When we choose to create the alignment a dialogue will pop up. It will be very familiar as it is the same dialogue box we see when creating a lone alignment.

Here it will allow us to name, choose a specific style, choose a site, choose a label set and describe the alignment we are about to create. From this point on it is just like creating a simple alignment only we have already specified a location by assigning it to the specific pipes. At the very bottom of the dialogue you will see a check box that reads �Create profile and profile view.� Checking this will automatically send us into the wizard that will create the profile and profile view.

We will now see that we are creating the profile from a surface and will need to make sure that we choose the correct surface that is related to our pipe network.

Once we add the surface we need we can then use the �Draw in profile view� option. Once we do that we will be asked to create a profile view in the same manner as always. Only now can we access the Pipe Network Display option of the dialogue.

Assuming all of your other settings are correct, you can jump right into this section of the wizard and choose the network of your choice. Once you choose your network, all parts of the network will have the ability to be toggled on or off for creation. We want to go through and make sure we select the correct parts that are in relation to the created alignment.

As you can see above, we have gone through and selected the specific parts we wish to see in the profile view. Once we have done this and all other profile settings are correct we can choose the Create Profile View option and begin to place our newly created pipe profile.

After our process we end up with a nice profile of our pipe network with no manual drawing required. All information is derived from the model itself, which saves us time and a huge headache. Keep in mind that if you wish to have automatic profile labels you will need to get into the network properties box and access the profile tab in which you can choose which profile label style you wish to use for your network, This needs to be done before you create your profile view. After a few times through this process should become second nature and you can pump out these profiles all day long, which is nice.