Creating pipes by layout - AutoCAD Civil 3D Tutorial

- [Instructor] To create new designs, you will often want to create pipes, fittings and appurtenances as you go, rather than all at once. In this video, we'll explore how to do this using the Plan Layout tools. What we'd like to do in this video is create a new water line or begin to create the new water line for our development. We're going to tie into this existing water line and for the first few feet, we'll come down the road and then jump over into the sidewalk. We typically want to keep the main structures of our water line, the valves, the t's and such, out of the center of the road so that if they need to be repaired, we're not constantly tearing up the road. However, where we're tying in, we don't really want to tie in here under the curb and come straight back. It's kind of better to tie in here, and then jump into the sidewalk a little further down the road. So, the reason I'm explaining all that is because we need to take two approaches to the water line layout. This first few feet will have two bends in it, two very distinct bends, and then once we get into the sidewalk, we're going to do this long sweeping motion where we follow along the road in parallel. That's a great way for us to explore two main layout tools. But how do we get started? I'll click the Pipe Network dropdown menu, and then click Pressure Network Creation Tools. I'll have to answer some questions like what's my network name, and I'm just going to simply call this Water 1. Parts List will be water, Surface Name I'm going to use is EG and Road, and that's a combination of my EG Surface, which is out here, outside the road corridor, and the road elevations themselves. So I don't have to worry about whether I'm on the road or off the road, I'm always going to have the right elevations. You may be thinking why are elevations important? Because I'm going to set this water line at a certain depth below the surface, and that's going to define its elevations. Alignment Name for referencing stations and maybe even placing this in a profile view later on, that's going to be Shady Ridge Lane. That's this center line right here. Then we have the opportunity to assign some label styles, so that the labeling happens automatically. I'm going to leave those all at none, and we'll do our labeling later on. So with that, I'll click OK, and my layout tools will show up here on the Ribbon at the top. So just showing what our choices are as we move from left to right, we can access the network properties, and answer some of the questions we already answered about the surface name and such, default styles and that sort of thing. We've also got handy menus to choose the surface alignment and parts list, as well as assign the cover, and I'm actually going to go into this field here and assign a cover of 4.5 feet. Three feet just isn't deep enough in this rather cold region of the world. Next to that I can choose my size and material for any pipes that I create. I'm going to use a 12-inch pipe in this case. Then I've got two tools, Pipes & Bends, and then Pipes Only. I can use either one of these, and these are going to be our two tools of focus for this video. From that point to the right, we've got fittings and appurtenances which we'll address later on and I can choose the parts for those. I've got some editing tools that we'll also address later on. One section here that we can talk about right now is the compass section. So here's my tool to turn the compass on and off, and you'll see that in just a moment. It's a tool or a design aid that helps me adhere to the standard bends and deflections that are associated with my parts list. I can set the color of the compass and the size. Once we start laying out this pipe network, you'll see exactly what I mean. So to get going, I'll click the Pipes & Bends tool. This is what I was talking about earlier, to start off we need to create a few bends, so I'm going to use this tool and then later on, we'll switch to this tool. When I use Pipes & Bends, it prompts me for my first point, so I'll do Shift + Right-click, Nearest. I'll choose a point on this existing water line, about in the middle of the lane. I'm going to come back to about right here, trying to stay fairly parallel to the curb line, and here we see the compass. You can see how it shows me and it snaps to standard bend angles, based on my parts list. So here we see zero degrees for a straight pipe, 11.25, now my tool tip settings right now are rounded to the nearest degree, but this is actually 11.25. This is 22.5, 45, and 90. This helps me as I'm drawing the pressure network to lay it out according to my standard bend angles. I'm going to come up here at a 22.5 degree angle, pick a point in the center of the sidewalk, and then bend again at 22.5 and pick a point down the way on the sidewalk, about here. Now I'm going to switch to Pipes Only, because, for one, I don't want to create these bends, and for two, I don't want to be locking into these various compass angles. I'll switch to Pipes Only. It kind of restarts the command, but that's not a problem, I can just put the cursor near the end of this pipe. You can see the little symbol that pops up, that lets me know that I'm connecting to the end of the pipe. Then I can click on the end of the pipe and it will connect right to it. You can see the compass is little different now. It's showing me the deflection angle. Instead of putting a fitting there, I'm actually connecting one pipe to the other end to end. When you do that, there is an allowable deflection at that joint. So Civil 3D is allowing me to operate within that deflection, but not outside of it. With that set, I can now come down here to where the sidewalk begins to curve. Now I'm at a curved portion of the road. I can type C for Curve, or click the word Curve. I'll just simply pan down this curved area and pick a point where the curve ends. Now if you don't get it perfectly, don't worry about it. We're going to have a chance to fix it up later on. Now that the curve is ended, I can click Straight or type in S for Straight. I'm just going to come out here a little bit further to the end of my graded area. You can see the end of the contour, so I'll click that point, and press Enter. We're going to say that maybe that's the end of phase one. That's as far as we're going to go with our water line. So now we've got our new pressure network in place. We've got some pipes, some standard bends, and then some end-to-end joints as well as a curved area here. As you can see, specialized tools in Civil 3D assist you while you lay out pressure systems, keeping you on the right track with standard bends and deflections as you work.