Labeling Pipe Invert Elevations in a Profile View

The question has been posed – “Can I label my pipe invert elevation in the band set of a profile view.” That’s a pretty standard request, right? A lot of agencies require this on all Sanitary Sewer Plan/Profile sheets. So, naturally, I tried to set my band set profile reference to the pipe profile. Uh, there’s no pipe profile listed.

After some thinking, and a bit of cursing the team in Manchester (I still love ’em, but the little things drive me crazy), I did come up with an answer. It’s not perfect, but it does work. There are two main downsides – 1) It requires the manual drawing of a new profile, and 2) It loses the dynamic link to the pipe network – but more about that at the end.

So, we’ve got this profile view – you can see that I have my existing ground, proposed finished ground, and pipe network profile all shown in the profile view. Here’s what it looks like – and the profile is just for illustrative purposes, because not many agencies here in the southeastern US would allow me to design a roller coaster like this:

Now, to get this pipe information in my band (the area at the bottom of the profile view that shows FG elevation and EG elevation….), I’ll need to create a new profile by layout. I’m going to call it “Pipe Profile,” give it a label style of “none” and draw it tangnet-tangent (no curves).

When I draw this profile in, I’m going to snap each PVI to the start and end invert of each pipe. Make sure you have a profile display style that will actually draw in the invert of the pipe (I simply have a style that shows inside walls only). You can see my profile here:

Now, to label this information, I’m going to go to my Profile View Properties, click on the Band Set tab, and change my Profile 2 setting for that band to my new “Pipe Profile” profile. Now, I’ve created a new label style that shows which one is the FG elevation and which one is the pipe invert elevation:

One problem though – there’s no way to keep the dynamic relationship with the pipe network. If I change the pipe network at this point, I’ve got to go back in and redefine that new profile that I created. It’s quite a bit of a PITA, but it’s better than the way we used to do it – calculating by hand and labeling manually. I personally hope that those great guys in Manchester can see fit to make this a bit more automatic in the future.

Have fun!

One comment

  1. Anonymous says:

    I am not sure that I should sign up as a blogger…but…in response to this whole “workaround” issue regarding design and display of invert levels on pipes on profile views, it seems to me that if AutoDESK would enable C3D to
    1.design inverts across a manhole rather than on cl,
    2.have pipe ends terminate at manhole inner walls (not only for display, but really terminate,
    3.allow invert levels reporting at pipe ends (at inner walls)
    4. allow access to surface level above the pipe ends (in a pipe network band) for reporting “depth to invert”
    5. create text in pipe bands offset horizontally as necessary so that chainages and levels can be reported both sides of manholes…..
    then we would really start cooking with C3D and pipes.
    We don’t feel that we can seriously start working pipes on real projects in C3D until these issues are resolved. A real shame at this point because the potential is that C3D will blow the opposition out of the water …i hope it is soon.
    Peter T. (New Zealand).