Pipe Network and Pressure Network Issues

[Kyle-Evans]

Hey Everyone,

I am here more to come up with a potential fix as opposed to troubleshooting... 

Bit of background... I teach Civil 3D in a University, 32 (ish) students per class to multiple classes. Normally everything works smoothly and things go great with very few hiccups. We go through everything from Points, Surfaces, Grading, Corridors, Alignments, Profiles and then Pipes....

Que up Pipe Networks and Pressure networks and the classes go spiraling downhill in an epic fiery disaster. Over the last 3 years, teaching networks has gone poorly with every year getting worse than the year before. I can sit in my office, and sit at the instructor podium and demo everything flawlessly. No issues, no crashing, no bugs (ect), however, for any students following along, random things happen even if they click on exactly what I do. And when they are working on their assignments the weirdest issues pop up.

I have attempted to alleviate some of the issues by placing common Parts Lists (both gravity and pressure) on a shared network drive, but alas that has also not worked well this year either. They do not have their own computers, and they travel around to 10 different computer labs. We rebuild all Parts Lists and Rules and pipes at the beginning based on the network drive and there are still major issues. I have tried my hardest to eliminate the "C" drive requirement of Pipe and Pressure Networks

Students are having issues drawing storm and sanitary pipes, connecting them together, and having things display properly. Some students can only work on their networks on specific computers, sometimes they can draw pipes, sometimes they cannot draw pipes. They can insert structures, but as soon as they try to insert pipes the commands cancel themselves. 

Same goes for Pressure Networks. We are all using the same template/drawing and when some students draw in the fittings they just do not appear, but they are definitely there. They can be accessed via Toolspace, and interacted with. They just refuse to show up. The display of their objects changes randomly, sometimes they open the drawing and they can see their Pressure Network Items, and sometimes when they open the drawing the items are not visible. It is not layers or styles or any of those simple solutions...

I am just at a complete loss of words here, nothing I have tried has worked or solved this. 

Any suggestions or insight is greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

Kyle

[EBDBC3D]

I would leave pressure networks out of a classroom. We abandoned them after so many glitches, crashes and needing to use so many workarounds. We have gravity parts lists pushed out to each C drive and it works fine though. What version of Civil 3D is this?

[Kyle-Evans]

We are always on the latest version. 2023 Currently. 

I am thinking about abandoning Pipes in general... however they are in our course outlines so must be taught!

[rl_jackson]

@Kyle-Evans 

To remove any issues, you're having with Pipes and Pipe Networks you remove any notion of the Network when using C3D. All files should be placed on the local machine, from templates to parts list and everything in between. Once you have C3D going out to the server for anything that is a resource to the program, it will jam things up.

[Kyle-Evans]

Yeah, I understand it should be computer specific. The problem is that our students move around to 10+ different classrooms and computer labs. Trying to get IT to deploy the standards and whatnot to every machine will not ever happen I think.

Placing these items on a server is the only thing I can think of to make this easier, unless you have a better solution?

Thanks!

[rl_jackson · Accepted solution]

Attached is some valuable information on how to make this happen with little effort from IT once it's setup... There is also a AU Course of the same name, I'd recommend you and/or IT review it. This is the best solution to resolve you issue IMO.

[Kyle-Evans]

I will have a call with our IT department then and see what they have to say.

Thank you! I will let you know what they say. 

[Kyle-Evans]

Thanks @rl_jackson ,

I talked with the IT department and they had a concern that it would overwrite the pipe networks for everyone else using the 10+ computer labs, however I do not see this being a problem myself as I am the only instrcutor teaching underground utilties here. 

Are there going to be any foreseeable issues with the Windows Registry if it is set up on a machine in Room A, then the student continues working on the project in Room B, C, D (ect)? Literally every class they have is in a different building/room, nothing is consistent! 

Kyle

[rl_jackson]

In my opinion that should not be an issue as IT would have to set the permissions based on their windows profile. So I would think that this would carry over to various PC's regardless of location. I'm no IT guy by any means, but between the class reference I provided and the AU presentation, it's doable. IT should review both, but in a nutshell, this works.

[vince_villarreal5AVJ3]

_AeccRegenPressureSolid

Reload your parts so they will appear normally.

VV