Sloped Pipe - Elevating and Connecting in Plant 3D - Best Practices

[EEEEE_Liminator]

After drawing in sloped piping in 3D, what are the best methods for adjusting elevation and making connections?

Like ACAD MEP when a pipe has slope it appears to lose the grip that allows for chaning the BOP, COP, TOP, and relative elevation.  It does't seem like you can adjust the start or end elevation from the properties pallete either.  So far the only way I have been able to adjust the elevation is to grab the grip at the top a vertical riser where it meets the 90 and stretch it up or down.  Since everyting is connected it moves the attached horizontal sloped pipe while maintaining slope.  This works okay, however it if I want to match the slope of a parrallel pipe I pretty much need to eyeball it, is there a way to match the elevation of an adjacent pipe?  With flat pipes I can grab the elevation grip and click on any pipe to match an elevation and it ignores the x/y coordinate.  Filtering out .xy doesn't seem to work when trying to move with the grip.

*I'm refering to the cyan node as the grip, I believe that is what they were called in acad MEP.

I just noticed "Toggle Elevation Snap" in the tool bar, this appears to allow the grip to move the sloped pipe vertically and allow for relative changes in elevation.  I've attached a screen shot of the image for reference.  If anyone has anyother methods or experience in dealing with sloped piping, please share.

It still seem very difficult to connect sloped piping together, for example if you have multiple branches starting at the equipment connecting to a main overhead.  Its hard to get the alignmnent correct so that it keeps the risers vertical and the autorouting doesn't seem to work that well.  I've tried pulling the pipe back to give it more room to calculate a route and it doesn't seem to help like it does in MEP.  The program doesn't seem to maintain the slope of the pipe it is drawing off of.  Is the only way to re-draw from the mains down to the equipment?  This seems to acceptable, except for when you need to make changes for coordination, you shouldn't need to redraw everytime for adjustments.

Also when you do get pipe to connect it often leaves a joint, is there a way to merge the two pieces of pipe into one?  I've just been deleting one segement then extending the pipe to the next fitting.  It works, just wondering if there is a better way.

[viet_protocad]

Sloped pipe is the achilles hill of many autocad programs, unfortunately.

What I do usually is make router lines and draw along those lines. END and NEAREST are my best friends in that case. With the router lines, I'll then rotate my fittings (tees, elbows, etc) to snap to the nearest of the router lines.

The other thing I do is change the slope tolerances in the "defaultconnectorsconfig.xml" to be something like 2-3 degrees. Otherwise you're going to have a heck of a time trying to connect waste pipe.

Other than that, I really don't mess too much with the elevation snaps or whatnot.

The other thing you may try is the "line to pipe" command, which works with varying degrees of success. Sometimes it will bomb if the routing is too crazy, though.

[EEEEE_Liminator]

I don't want to mess with the elevations after it drawn either, but for coordination it might will be necessary.  It does look like this will help.

Where can I find the defaultconnectorsconfig.xml file?

[viet_protocad]

Right, that xml is in the project folder.

I recommend making a backup copy before doing ANY xml editting. Also be careful with the slope tolerances. Obviously, you still want the pipe to be represented realistically.

You can edit xml files in notepad, but I prefer using Foxe. Its a free editor that makes it easier to see the settings.