Storm Sewer Extension 2010 Tips

Today I will go over making a few quick edits in 2010 storm sewer extension. When you insert the stm file you need to varify a few things before you run the analysis. First make sure the inlets are the correct size and shape in the Inlets Tab. I noticed that my dome grate inlets were square in SSE so I have to change that to circular under the Structure Shape column. Second insure that every inlet has a know Q displayed in the Pipes Tab. ( The Q is not accumalative along the pipe run) Third, varify the N value for the pipe sections also. Also look at your Inlet Time. (Based apon your city standards) When you run the analysis you should type in your begining invert elevation and starting HGL elevation. Here you can have the analysis reset the pipe sizes and elevations for you also. See below for examples. After you complete the analysis you can save the stm file or export the file to an XML file. The only problem I have seen when I reinsert the stm file into C3D 2010 my structure and pipe labels reset which is not good. Write me back if anyone else has experience this same issue. Well I hope this small amount of information helped yall. Have a great day.

Simple Grading Tips

I just want to say I hope everyone has a great New Years.!

I think one of the hardest area to grade is residential subdivision. Corridoring the street is easy but the lots have become cumbersome. The last two subdivision I have graded I was not able to use grading groups or corridors. All the lots were graded with feature lines. In addition, I had on average 20 retaining walls. Most subdivision grading design I have seen online, occur on flat surfaces where there are no retaining walls or swales between lots. With subdivision lot grading you have to take into account the max. slope front and back of lots, and grading around existing trees that are to be saved. With trees spread throughout your lot, it becomes more challenging. Sometime you have to create tree wells or blockouts to save the tree. On top of that, I lost count how many swales I had to create. Some techs and designers asked me why I didnt use subassemblies for the retaining walls and swales but that would only take more time and make the drawing twice as large. (Not good when its already 10 mb) Anyways here are a few tips I can give you about grading subdivisions.

1. Make sure all your breaklines are on the correct site
2. When grading the lots, dont grade the lots in one surface. Break them up into 3-5 areas then paste those
     surfaces into your PG.
3. Make edits to the surface definition to build a more accurate surface. For example, in the surface definition you can set max and min, elevations so any surface points below the min. and above the max. will be excluded from the surface. You can set the max. triangle lengths.
4. Look at the operation types in the surface definition and see what items need to be removed.
5. run audits to insure there are no errors in the surface.
6. Turn on your surface slope arrows to insure grades are correct.
7. To tie lots to back of walks along the street frontage you can extract featurelines from the corridor and add to the surface.
8. Minimize flat areas in surface edits
9. Simplify surface in surface edits
10. I would do your best to add names to your featureline that are added to surfaces.

Christmas Vacation

Good morning everyone. Well I'm in North Carolina spending my christmas holidays with my 8 yr old daughter. It's my favorite time of the year. So far we have gone to the movies a few times, chucky cheese's, shopping, and a few indoor parks. For the past 2 weeks I have been hearing her talk about Nintendo DS and I think Santa Claus got a Wii :( humm. . Before I left on my vacation I was playing around with 2010 Storm Sewer Extension and learned a few new things. Once  I get back, I should be able to do a new post. Anyways, I hope everyone has a great xmas and happy new years.

Tony

Command Shortcuts

Good afternoon everyone. Wow it felt great relaxing this weekend and not having to worry about homework and work. Anyways two weeks ago I was surfing around and came cross some autocad command shorts that I would like to share with you. I will have to find out what website I found this, so I can thank them. I typed a few command shortcuts below.

Ctrl+1   Properties Pallette Set
Ctrl+2   Design Center
Ctrl+3   Tool Pallettes
Ctrl+4   Sheet Set Manager Palette Set
Ctrl+6   db Connect Manager
Ctrl+7   Markup Set Manager (For DWF)
Ctrl+8   Quick Calc
Ctrl+9   Command Line
Ctrl+0   Clean Screen
Ctrl+N  Create New Drawing
Ctrl+S   Save Drawing as
Ctrl+Q  Quit/Exit
Ctrl+V   Paste
Ctrl+X   Cut
Ctrl+Z   Undo
Ctrl+Y   Redo
Ctrl+A   Select All
Ctrl+F    Insert Field
Ctrl+M   Repeat last Command
Ctrl+L    Ortho
Ctrl+B    Snaps
Ctrl+U    Polar Tracking
Ctrl+R    Find/Replace

No more Classes!

Wow I haven't posted in a long while. Well I have been busy with getting my project finalized at work. On top of that, I have been studing for 4 semester exams. Today is my last final exam.(Hell yeah!!) Wow talk about having no life with taking a full load of classes and working full time. Anyways, I did have a chance to watch a few of the AU virtual webcase last week. I found a few very interesting. I will be working on creating a post about HGL labels in 2010 next week before I go on my trip to North Carolina to see my daughter. Well later boys and girls.