Find two clashes for objects crossing each other twice?

[JamesMaeding]

I model pipes as one 3d solid per pipe "run", so these runs may be 1000 feet long.

I am seeing NW treat multiple clashes between two objects as one clash.

So if one line crosses through the other twice, that is what I mean by two clashes.

I tried unchecking the various "ignore" rules with no luck.

Is there no way to have it report multiple clashes as multiple?

thanks

[Patrick_Aps_9121]

Not that i know of. Are these pipes compeltely welded on-site ?

If not, they are prefabricated and transported in segments.

So, slice your solid pipe into these segmement. Use save as to make a copy of the model with the sliced pipe and run your clash detection on that sliced model.

[JamesMaeding]

Patrick,

That may be the most profound reply I have got in years, here is why:

I have pointed out to Autodesk for years now that civil engineered underground pipelines are designed like necklaces with beads.

The "chain" is the horizontal and vertical alignment, the beads are pipes and structures whose location is inherited from the alignment.

If you make tools that respect what I said, you kill three birds with one stone - the alignment functions are already there from roads, the editing behaves properly because pipes are designed the same as roads, and you only have to develop one good interface for editing horizontal and vertical.

Getting that wrong leads to what we have now with Civil3D pipe networks. Autodesk has no idea how much money it is losing from making a bad utility tool that convinces people that 3d pipes are hard to deal with. I know because we did a tool that uses alignments properly (like every designer has done for years with regular alignments) and the 3d part of it and editing is slick. No duplication of pipe design using c3d alignments and pipe networks.

Having said that, the answer to your question is that the design process for underground pipelines generally does not care what the pipe lengths are, or lets say the final plans do not tell the contractor where joints are. I know that you do consider pipe lengths and other things in real design, but you never fully know how the contractor will implement. So trying to chop up into segments would be of no real life value during design, only a trick done to work around a navisworks behavior.

You could chop up if cml&c steel and you had shop drawings, but again that is irrelevent to finding utility conflicts.

I do not mean to imply your suggestion was a bad idea. It is the same thing I thought of, and am doing to some degree. So a Kudo for that 🙂

[dgorsman]

That could end up being a very bad thing in other places.  Consider two short pipes crossing each other.  How would you have Navisworks indicate that as a single clash while in your situation treat it as multiples?  In some cases you want it to treat single objects as single objects while in others it should not - a rather fuzzy distinction which computers are notoriously bad at.  Lets say those two pipelines are partially overlaid on each other for 100m; now how many clashes would that be?

[JamesMaeding]

I agree. I guess a conflict would be a contiguous overlap. So the 100' ovelap would be one conflict.

I was thinking the internal engine is actually detecting all the spots, its just eliminating the dupes.

Maybe it could show all with some kind of "same point" tolerance. So eliminate all with less than say 1' gap between.

I doubt this will ever happen, I will have to chop-chop pipe instead...