Discover how to add fittings to your main alignment in Civil 3D after creating laterals, and learn the process of modifying them to touch the centerline of your main trunk alignment. This article provides a step-by-step guide to assist you in your pipe network development.
Key Insights
- In Civil 3D, laterals might not always connect properly into the main pipe network. This can be rectified by manually modifying the laterals so that they are touching the center line of the main trunk alignment.
- Modifying laterals involves selecting the pipe, grabbing the square grip edit, and shifting it perpendicular to the main alignment. This process is repeated for each lateral pipe getting them all aligned to the main trunk.
- Adding branch fittings in Civil 3D involves selecting the trunk and lateral at each intersection. Civil 3D automatically inserts a T-fitting between the trunk and lateral, facilitating the creation of a comprehensive pipe network.
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Now that we've created these laterals, we're going to go ahead and add some fittings in to tie them into our main alignment. So what I'm going to go ahead and do is I'm going to zoom in.
And what you'll notice on all of these laterals is that while we had a glyph appear, sometimes Civil 3D does not actually connect those pipes in and doesn't even actually get them into the pipe itself. I can see here that my pipe is actually sitting off of the face of the main trunk. So what we're going to go ahead and do is we're going to modify all of these so that they are actually touching the center line of our main trunk alignment.
So I'm going to go ahead and click on my first pipe. I'm going to grab my square grip edit. I'm going to go ahead and shift right click, and I'm going to go perpendicular to my alignment and hit escape.
I'm going to do the same thing following along all of these. I'm going to go ahead and grab this grip, shift right click perpendicular to the alignment. I'm going to go ahead and grab this one grip, shift right click perpendicular to the alignment.
I'm going to go ahead and grab the next one, shift right click perpendicular to the alignment, shift right click perpendicular to the green alignment. I'm going to come in here, grab this, shift right click perpendicular to the alignment. Again, coming in here, perpendicular to the alignment.
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Shift-right-click, perpendicular to the alignment. Moving onwards, I'm going to select Box Grip Edit, shift-right-click, perpendicular to the alignment. Shift-right-click, perpendicular to the alignment.
Again, grabbing the square grip, shift-right-click, perpendicular to the alignment. My last remaining three, I'm going to go ahead and select Grip Edit, shift-right-click, perpendicular to the alignment. Coming up to this one, I'm going to select, shift-right-click, perpendicular to the alignment.
And then my last one, Square Grip Edit, shift-right-click, perpendicular to the alignment. Now that I've set all of these laterals to the centerline of my pipe network, I'm going to go ahead and do a branch fitting. So from here, I'm going to go ahead and select Add Branch Fitting.
Civil 3D is going to prompt me to select my first pipe at intersection. I'm going to go ahead and pick my trunk, and then it's going to ask me to select my second pipe at intersection. I'm going to select my lateral.
When I do that, Civil 3D automatically puts in a T-fitting here from my trunk to my lateral. So I'm going to go ahead and do the same thing for the remainder of my laterals. Moving on.
Add Branch Fitting, trunk, lateral. Now, it shouldn't matter which orientation you choose. You could choose lateral and trunk.
I'm going to go ahead and try it here on this one. Lateral, trunk. It works just the same.
Add Branch Fitting, trunk, lateral. Add Branch Fitting, lateral, trunk. Add Branch Fitting, trunk, lateral.
Add Branch Fitting, trunk, lateral. We've got our last remaining three here. Add Branch Fitting, trunk, lateral.
Add Branch Fitting, lateral, trunk. Add Branch Fitting, lateral, trunk. Now that we've set all these fittings in, I'm going to go ahead and zoom out.
I'm going to save my drawing, and then I'll meet you in the next video.
