Cut generated from a pipe network?

[C3Dguy123]

Is there a way to have C3D calculate your cut generated from a pipe network? I have a site with storm, sewer, and water lines. All of which are on 3 seperate pipe networks. I also have my finished grade surface established.

I know you can get the volume difference between two surfaces (EG&FG) but you would think you could do this for the pipe networks as well...

Thanks!

[wfberry]

Perhaps I am wrong but I do not think so.

I always have an alignment along the pipe path.

I always draw a finish profile along the invert of the proposed pipe grade.

NOW, I can get automated info from the profile.

Bill

[C3Dguy123]

Ok. I understand what you did there. Now how would I get a cut volume calculated? What tool butto/ path do I use? I just don't know what command/button/tool to use for this.

[wfberry]

Well, I read your first sentence and assumed you wanted to generate a "Cut" sheet for staking the pipe line.

Now, back to your volume calculations.  From my past experiences I know of several variations of pipe trench ideas of "for pay" calculations. Some use vertical walls, some use slope back situations.

So what does your method use?

Bill

[C3Dguy123]

I'm not sure I follow you on that last post.

As of right now I am having to hand calc our trench volumes for all the pipes. This method takes quite a bit of time, and can become quite convaluted for really big jobs. I was curious if you could have autocad calculate a trench volume for the pipe network. My thinking is that you would take the pipe network (which knows the depth of the pipe) and your finish grade surface and give it a dimension for the width of the trench and then it could spit you your number. Thats how I would do it anyways...

This is being used for grading volumes. On large sites we have quite a bit of cut left over from our pipes since we backfill with structural material. So we need to know how much cut volume our pipes take up so we can redistribute over the lot. We also do this so we don't blast our client with a huge hauling bill for hauling thousands of yards of material off site.

[wfberry]

To my knowledge Civil 3D will not give you much in this respect.  I am not so sure I would know what kind of parameters to give it, if it did.  Do you excavate all your pipes with a Trench Box?  Around here we have pipe trenches with a 2:1 of flatter excavated slope or some in pre-split solid rock trenches that are fairly uniform. 

Perhaps Autodesk would see too much of a liability problem for something like this.

One thing that I have done on occasions is to draw a polyline around my entire pipe profile and get an instant area.  Multiply this area (adjusted for scale) by the "near as possible" trench width.

Bill

[C3Dguy123]

Bill

I am assuming a trench box for all my volumes calculated. Your method is more or less what I am doing now to get my volumes. However when you have over 5,000 feet of pipe with 15+ profiles this can become time consuming. At least more time consuming then a few mouse clicks from autocad to spit out a number.

Thanks for the help so far.

[Joe-Bouza]

This might help. I have never done it but there is a corridor assembly for that task

http://docs.autodesk.com/CIVIL/2010/ENU/AutoCAD%20Civil%202010%20User%20Documentation/index.html?url...

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/AutoCAD-Civil-3D-General/Trench-with-pipe-corridor-falls-to-zero-eleve...

[Jeff_M]

I've been meaning to try this for years and have always managed to get by without it. So I just put it to the test on Phase 1 of a project that has been in a holding pattern for 5 years (owner went bankrupt). I already had a corridor and a subgrade/datum surface for the roads. I used the TrenchPipe2 subassembly for the Assembly. I created alignments & profiles from the pipe network objects, then added a corridor and included all of these new alignments and set the pipenetwork as the target for the pipes and the roads datum surface for the upper surface target. Once the corridor built I created a new surface for it from the datum links setting the maximum triangle length to just slightly longer than my frequency setting to eliminate it going across the lots, then made a volume surface using the 2 datum surfaces for comparison. The result was within 2% of what the contractor had shown for trench spoils in his bid, so I guess it worked well 

Oh, this whole process took about a half hour, is completely dynamic, and more accurate than approximating the average depth.

[Joe-Bouza]

Cool. I'll have to give it a try