Pressure Network Fitting and Appurtenance Display

[taneum]

Has anyone prut together a pressure network and actually plotted it out for a project?  Are the fittings and appurtenances even readable?  I have a network setup on 40 scale plans and when plotted out, you can't even tell what a recuder is compared to a valve.  Tees are obvious but thats only because of the branch pipe coming off of it.  Our company uses the old basic symbols that are blown up big enough that dimensionally, they are not correct but visually they look really nice.

So what is a work around this?

[SethHall]

So do you want the fittings to display and plot at a larger (dimensionally incorrect) scale? After looking into this, I am not sure if this can be done.

[taneum]

Well.......that is the issue we are having.  With 40 scale viewports setup on 11x17 sheets, you cannot see the fittings at all.  Our plans are color and the water main is blue.  If I make the fittings and appurtenances red they show up but just as dots.  So, with this new pressure network, how do you make the plans readable so you can see fittings and actually depict what they are?

We, like a lot of companies, use the old school symbols in the plan view for bends and valves and such, but, the scale of those symbols is incorrect which affects your station and offset callouts, but, they are ledgible.

What do you do?  Has anyone been using the pressure netoworks for plans production?

[SethHall]

Hopefully someone can answer your last question, as we in Support do not use the product in a production environment. Maybe they can offer some helpful hints.

In regards to changing the sizes, I did not see any option to do so. I would suggest leaving feedback about your workflow here: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=1109794 

[taneum]

Its amazing to me that a software developer doesnt even put their product to the test.  To me this is a major failure on Autodesks part.  This software is design for engineers and drafters to produce a set a plans that a contractor can build a project from, yet, they do not even test the software for things like ledgibility of features when put o paper.  Makes we wonder if I should have even wasted my time learning it.

[SethHall]

I can assure you that these features have been tested, however being in Support, we do not work with a project from step A-Z. We may only help with steps S & T for one customer and C & D for another customer. That is why posting in the forums is great, you can get input from your peers and their experiences in their day to day work. I apologize if my previous statement came out wrong.

The scale exaggeration on these fittings that does not yet seem to be part of the functionality. As you may have noticed, pressure pipes do not yet have all the functionalities of "regular" gravity networks. This is why i suggested that you make your requests known by offering your feedback. This type of information is important to help us understand how you would expect these objects to perform.

Thanks!

[apweng]

Fitting and appurtenance styles can be displayed as i) pipe centerline ii) catalog defined block or iii) user defined block.  

You can only apply scale factors to the user defined block option in the style.  If you use catalog defined block, the fitting is displayed based on it's definition in the catalog.

The parts in the catalog are far too detailed for creating / plotting typical infrastructure and land development plan sets, in my opinion.  

Neither of options ii) and iii) will scale when you change the drawing scale.

Andrew

[taneum]

Have you ever used the user defined block option Andrew?  Any tips for getting started on it?  I'll look into it.

Thanks a lot.

[taneum]

Alright so I see already, the user defined block is set for the whole style.  I used the "stand" style for all my fittings so when I change it to "user defined" and I pick a block out of my blocks directory, that block is applied to every fitting.  So, I am thinking that I want a style for every fitting..........tees.....bends.....reducers......etc......

[TCCompany]

My plan to address this issue is to; Set up the style for the fitting that referance the parts catalog, they work well for model and profile views.  Before I print I am going to shut off the fitting display in the plan view and add my different angled fitting blocks manualy.  For valves I assigned my block to plan view and will have to adjust the scale of the block for the scale at which I intend to print.  Again, the model and profiles view are going to work for me. 

Now I can just have one style for all my different components.  Yes, it is not in the nature of how civil3d should work, but that seems to be the best work around I can figure.

[kathy.pendergast]

We are like most of you still using old style symbols in plan production. Here's what we are playing with. After we have developed our Pressure Network we can go back and pick an appurtenance such as a valve. Highlight it and go to Appurtenance Properties. Once there pick "Edit Appurtenance Style" a dialog box comes up, go to plan and change it to "display as user-defined block" substitute a block that shows up like you prefer it to look like. This changes the look of your fittings or Appurtenances but it does not change the design as far as pressures and depth checks. I am having some issues because it does not differentiate between valves of different sizes. If anyone has found a better way please let me know.