Hydraulics and Storm Calculations

I would like to know how yall do your hydraulics and storm calculations?

Do you us one of the following?

1. Flowmaster
2. Hydroflow/Hydrograph
3. Personal Excel Spread sheets
4. StormCad
5. PondPack
6. CulvertMaster
7. HecRas
8. Hand calculated
9. StormNet
10. Water Networks
11. other

Storm Pipe Hydraulics Part II

I was looking over my hydraulics labels for my storm pipe and notice if my pipe flow direction method was not set to either "start to end", "by slope", or bi-directional" my calculation would not work because of the negative value of my slope. Another thing I would like to point out is that you can assign Manning Coefficient to pipes so you can use them for your formulas in expressions. I made a mistake in adding mannings coefficient in my formulas in expression. This will not work if my pipe is not RCP. I noticed this because I was using PVC for my storm pipe at some locations.

Another thing I would like to point out, is when you insert the stm file from SSE for your hydraulic calculations the flow rate you had assigned will be revised based off what SSE calculated. When I designed my storm pipe I assigned the flow rate based on cumulative flow. In SSE the Q inserted into each pipe sections is the amount being added and not accumulative. Now my storm profile labels for calculating velocity and depth changes. Now i have to figure out how to just add the HGL line into my drawing from the SSE file and not have it updated or recreate a pipe network structures. I will keep yall posted on this.

Video Card Maintenance

I don't know how many if you have keep your video car drivers up-todate, but Civil 3D has the capabilities to do video card driver updates for you. If you go into your options dialog manager select the System tab. Then select check for updatse option. Civil 3D will link to the Autodesk database and search for updates for your video card and install them for you. I did this last year and I noticed a slightly better difference in performance. If you select View Tune Log and your will get all the information you could possibly want about you video card and drivers. You should check this out one day.

Storm Pipe Hydraulics

Doing storm pipe hydraulics is one of the most time consuming parts of designing. Here is a few quick tips to save you time. You can create a pipe profile label that can calculate the velocity of your pipe running under pressure flow (full flow slope) with the simple formula of Q/A. I did a post 2 months ago on how to create an expression for calculating area of pipe. One important step is to plug in your Q (flow rate) for each pipe section if you want your labels to work. Once you get into partial flow, the formula to calculate velocity becomes more complex. I have designed an expression for this but I am still running test to make sure all the bugs are out of it before I post it. I also want to add in the Civil 3D help catalog, there is a section covering mannings formula with expressions. Hope this helps you. Later

Removing Excel Spread Sheets From Drawings

I don't know if everyone knows this but the best way to remove Excel spread sheets that have been attached to drawings is go into the data link manager Simply type the datalink command and the dialog box will appear. In here, all the spread sheets that have been attached to the drawing will be listed. Just right click on one of the files and select delete. The reason I brought this up was because I helped a fellow coworker today with this same issue that he could not figure out. He wanted to remove these files that were listed in the xref manager but it would not let him. I simply walked over and provided him the command to do this. Anyways I hope this helps a few of yall techs and designers.

Creating a Quick Storm Pipe Network

For those designers that need to create a quick pipe network when under pressure to get your design done you can use the Creat Pipe Network From Objects option. Just simply create poyline for your center of pipe and select that polyline for your pipe network.You can also use your storm centerline alignment. On your command line, it will ask you the flow direction. If you look on screen, you will notice flow arrows on your polyline or alignment. Hit enter once you have the flow going upstream. The Creat pipe network from object dialog box will appear. What I like to do is use null structures at all structure locations and PVI's. You can later come back and swap the structures to whatever you need. I personally think this is much faster then going down the line and swapping structures and pipes while you laying out your pipe network. Hopefully this will be helpful to you.

Naming Assemblies with Field Labels

For those of you that like to keep your design information in order and user friendly here is a cool tip to keep you assemblies in order. You can create dynamic name fields for your assemblies so everyone that opens your drawing will know which assembly to use when designing. To create fields for your assembly click on the Insert pull down menu or select the field option on the far right. The field dialog box will appear. Scroll down the Field Names and select Object. Then select the option button at the top middle of the dialog box. Now just select your assembly. In the property list select Name and hit the OK button. You should see the name of your assembly attached to your cross hairs. Just hit enter once you have decide where to place the field. See images below for better understanding.

Controlling Insertion Points in Assemblies

Hi everyone. Hope yall had a great weekend. So last week I went to user group meeting in the area and learned something new with 2010. I thought I would share this information with you. The instructor show us how you can move the insertion point of subassemblies on the assembly. If you click on the the circle at the middle of the assembly you will get a small square and circle. If you click on the small blue circle the middle insertion point turns from a square to a diamound. Now you drag the circle to what ever location you want. This can be handy when creating subgrades and roads with medians and super elevated roads. I'm going to play ground with this some more to see how else it can help me. Have a great week.

2010 CORRIDOR BOUNDARY

Well I was playing around with 2010 tonight and notice that there is an option for "create boundary from corridor" under the home tab/ creat design tab. This can come in very handy when creating a boundary for your corridor if you do use the "corridor extends as outer boundary" for your boundary in the corridor properties. One thing I did notice from 09 and 2010 is in the corridor properites/boundary tab, if you create a boundary with "add interactiviely" option you can not edit that boundary in 2010. I will try to modify the assemblies and see how my boundary will react to the new surface tomorrow. I just thought I should share this with yall. Thanks for stopping by.

Grading Tips for C3D 2010

Ok today I was looking over the grading plan I did on my subdivision and decided to fix a few things that can not be seen on paper but in 3D object viewer. I ran purge and audits and had no errors. Then I decided to look at my event viewer and noticed a lot or errors in my surface. If you don't know where the Event Viewer is, it's under the View tab, toolspace, under the palettes pull down. I decided to start going through each error and trying to fix the issue. I just thought this would be some helpful information for everyone. Later.

Profile & Alignment Criteria Design Standards

Here are some quick tips on how to modify, edit or even create profile and alignment design criteria standards for your design. If you go to you profile pull down menu and select design criteria editor the editor dialog box will appear. Here you will notice there are already ASSHTO standards set for you. You can make edits or create your own design standards for your street profiles and alignments. Some cities have different passing and stopping sight distance so this is where you can make that change. Hope this helps.

Storm Sewer Extension 2010

Hi everyone. Hope everyone had a great new years. Ok I ran an analysis for a small pipe network and I noticed one thing about the results. It seems that the results for the velocity is calculated for full flow slope which is actually less than what it should be. The velocity should be calculated for depth of flow or pipe flow. If you notice below, my full flow slope calculations done on flowmaster came up with basically the same answer as Storm Sewer Ext. I looked around in all the settings to see how I could changed the formulas in SSE but I got no where. The only good thing about this is that when I re-insert the SSE file back into my C3D the hgl line will be shown which I can now manually edit. If you have any input please feel free to comment or even correct me if I have done something wrong on SSE.