Still no 15" HDPE Pipe size?

[jfalkowski]

Just a dumb question...For years now, there has been no 15" pipe option in the "HDPE Pipe" part family.  This is the most common storm drain pipe we use in the industry today.  Is it that hard to add it without creating my own in part builder?

The "Corrugated HDPE Pipe" part family has the 15" option however it will not allow the material to be manually typed in.  The material in this part family is hard coded to read "Corrugated HDPE Pipe", the other part family lets you override the material and manually type in "HDPE".  This is important so that we can create a pipe label style that reads "150 L.F. of 15" HDPE @ 1.0%"  for example.  It pulls the material from the part, whether it be HDPE, RCP or PVC for example.

This just goes to show you the disconnect between software programmers and real-world users.

Let me know how you guys are working around this...

Jon

[Kevin.Spear]

2 things to comment here...

first - adding a new value to a part is done inside part builder and is not terribly difficult. Making the material editable is also done inside part builder and equally simple. But to detail the steps here would be rather lengthy.

second - because this is a relatively small thing to edit and NOT a bug, or major stop to running the application, it would fall pretty low even on your priority list.

If you would like detailed help with the part builder, there are several sessions on the AU website (au.autodesk.com) that can help. If you prefer direct help, try your reseller first. IF they can't help, reply back to this post and i'll do my best to show the steps...

[jfalkowski]

Thanks Kevin, not much experience in part builder here but I'll look into it.  There should be no constrained parameters to the part since it's circular...I should be able to add the size to the stock part right?

You're right, its not that impactive to my day to day operations but it's an annoyance when all I want is a 15" pipe and it's not available out of the box.  Seems like it would be a desired pipe size for most users.  That's like having 3", 5" and 7" Ductile Iron water mains but no 4", 6" and 8".  My point is that it should be there OOTB instead of me wasting hours of my work day watching AU videos and learning how to use part builder...

Jon

[Kevin.Spear]

Hey.. just did a quick check. The pipe catalog with 2015 has that size. Maybe you're still looking at an older catalog you have shared on the network?

[Jeff_M]

It's also in the stock pipe catalog for C3D2012. However, my pipe catalog that I've used forever does not include the 15" size. Time to update the catalog I guess.

[jfalkowski]

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@jfalkowski wrote:

The "Corrugated HDPE Pipe" part family has the 15" option however it will not allow the material to be manually typed in.

Jon

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I am aware.  So what's easier, modifying the HDPE pipe to add 15" or modifying the Corrugated pipe to accept manual override of material description?

[Jeff_M]

It's quite simple to edit the HDPE available sizes. I never use a 14" pipe, so just edited that to be a 15" in this short video.

[jfalkowski]

Awesome Jeff, thank you so much.  That was pretty easy...

[jfalkowski]

One small glitch with fixing the pipe size.  I followed your procedures and got the 15" pipe to show in the part family, however when I type in HDPE in the Optional Property Material box and hit OK, it dissapears.  For some reason it will not let me apply the text.  The default material is blank though...

Thanks,

Jon

[jfalkowski]

Any idea why I'm experiencing this?  What are users putting in their pipe schedules and labels, the full "Corrugated HDPE Pipe" notation? 

Jon

[Jeff_M]

Jon, see the next to last post on this page by ParterCAD for instructions on getting the Material list to display and hold. 

[deltacoolguy]

I'm going to defend the OP.  We invest a great deal in this program, in terms of both time and money, and just because it can be added relatively easily does not excuse the fact that a common size should be included as a matter of standard operating procedure.

I get that sometimes things are missed, but once it's been pointed out to them Autodesk's response should have been to include it in the next release.  Apologies on behalf of Autodesk on something like this are misplaced.

[jfalkowski]

Thanks again Jeff, now that that is complete I've notice yet another problem...

So I used that procedure to fix the 'Concrete Pipe' and 'Corrugated HDPE Pipe' part families.  Kind of a pain that you have to delete the part family and re-add the family for it to hold but worked like a charm. 

Anyway...now I've noticed that my other part lists have nothing listed in the optional property material column.  For instance, now my PVC , Ductile Iron, and Horizontal Elliptical Arch Pipe families do not have a material by default.  See attached.

When I try and select one of the defaults it kicks me right back to a blank column.  The others were doing this before I applied fix you directed me to, however these part families do not allow you to modify the material in the same manner.  There is no material column in the 'parameter configuration' for these parts when modifying in part builder.  Uhg!

Thanks,

Jon

[Jeff_M]

Sorry, Jon, I obviously don't know the inner workings of all of the Part Builder XML files and how they relate to one another. It would be nice if Autodesk would just fix these to work correctly in the first place. For those part families that have no Material column, you can easily add it with the New button, one of the options to add is Material. You can the change the "unspecified material" to be "PVC" or whatever it should be.

One of these days I might have time to sit down and study these more so i have a better understanding of them. But, by the time that happens, Autodesk will fix them and/or make it easier to edit these values.

[jfalkowski]

Thanks Jeff, as you were typing I had just figured out that you could add a material column in part building for each family where it was missing.  When I added the column, the default was undefined.  They all seem to be working now.

Now I gotta figure out how to push this out the the other users since we just deployed yesterday. 

Jon

[Kevin.Spear]

To push it out to your users, the best bet is to put the pipe catalog on the network (much like your templates) and send instructions to manually change the pipe catalog path in c3d (or send a hyperlink that points to a registry file updates those registry keys). That way, any changes are always available to users.

[Anonymous]

I get around things like this by using the description instead of the material in both the pipe and structure. I then populate the description instead of material in either a label or table. The decription I am talking about is if you click the pip or structure and open properties in the information group, the third line down under name.  You can even select similar and edit mutiple pipes. It is helpful becuase often times we may need to add detail descriptors to pipe in cases like class etc. Just a thought. 

[jfalkowski]

Yeah I used to do that too but found when you swap the part out the description resets itself. 

Plus the description can be used for more useful information or notes related to the structure as opposed to using to work around Autodesk's F'up.

Jon

[annw2]

Except for when my computer crashed and had to be reformated.  The default c: drive for the OTB cataglog changed all my 15" HDPE to 16".  I had to go back and fix every single one. 😞