Explore the process of creating an alignment from a pipe network, a workflow that, though not covered in depth in this course, provides important context for other related operations. By following along with the creation and subsequent deletion of a pipe network, you'll gain insight into the practical applications of these concepts.
Key Insights
- The process of creating an alignment from a pipe network involves selecting specific structures and pipes within the network, and the software Civil 3D aids in this process.
- When creating an alignment, there are multiple options for site, type, alignment style, and label set, depending on the specific requirements of the pipe network.
- Often, the main goal of creating an alignment for a pipe network is not just to establish the alignment itself, but to ultimately create a profile and profile view for the network, although this is not covered in this particular article.
Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.
So in this video, I'm going to go ahead and draw a pipe network off to the right-hand side of our drawing here. We don't deal with pipe network creation in this course—that's for a different course—but I do want to show you the workflow of creating an alignment from a pipe network.
So what I'm going to go ahead and do—and feel free to follow along, or you can just watch this video and then we'll start working again in the next video—but I'm going to go a little bit faster in creating this network. If you want to just watch, go ahead and just watch. So I'm going to drop down Pipe Networks.
I'm going to click the Pipe Network Creation Tool. I'm going to just skim through the rest of this and not go over it. I'm going to click OK so that I can get my Network Layout Tool.
So from here, I'm going to go ahead and select Pipes and Structures. Just like we've done for creation methods for our alignments, tangent to tangent—this is Pipes and Structures. So I'm going to go ahead and select a location for a structure, and another location for a structure, and another location for a structure, and another location for a structure. I'm going to hit ENTER.
Now I have this pipe network over here, and I'm going to drop down to my Alignments. So from here, what we're going to do is create an alignment from network parts. What Civil 3D is going to ask us to do is to select the first connected network part.
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So either a pipe or a structure. I'm going to go ahead and select my first structure. And then it's going to ask me to select my next network part. So I can continue to click through the rest of these structures and pipes, or what I can go ahead and do is select my last structure, and it selects all of the structures in between the first structure and the last structure.
So I'm going to go ahead and click ENTER. Now Civil 3D is going to give me the Create Alignment from Pipe Network window. So from here, I have the options for site—what I want to call it.
I'm not going to select a name because I'm going to end up deleting this alignment afterward. Then we have our type again: miscellaneous, rail, curb, offset, and centerline. Because this is a pipe network,
I could choose Centerline because it's going to be an alignment along the centerline of the pipe network, or I could go with Miscellaneous. That's really up to you. So I'm going to go ahead and choose Centerline.
Then I'm going to go ahead and select my alignment style. I have Proposed Offset Layout. I'm going to go ahead and go with Proposed.
And then we have our label set. So these are the labels that are going to be applied to our alignment after it's created. Then we have the option of creating a profile and profile view upon creation of this alignment.
This is here because, more often than not, when you are creating an alignment for a pipe network, the real purpose that you're trying to get to is that you want to be creating a pipe profile. You already know the alignment of your network because you've laid out your network. So just the fact of creating an alignment is not a big deal.
The big ticket that you're trying to get to is creating a profile and profile view for your pipe network. Now, we haven't gotten into creating profiles and profile views yet, so I'm going to uncheck this box. And I'm going to go ahead and click OK.
When I do that, it now creates an alignment along my pipe network that I have created here. So from here, I'm going to go ahead and draw a selection window around this. I'm going to click delete.
I'm going to get centered again. I'm going to save. And then I'll meet you in the next video.
