So I spend the weekend playing with playdough to try to train my mind in the Clay Sculpture paradigm, but when I comes to pipes, I still dig my spreadsheets.

In the old days, I would make an 11X17 print of the site, and use a red pen (red=sewer in my head and always will) and mark in some prelim structure locations, pipes, etc. and use my scale to populate a simple sheet like this.

Today, I sketched my pipes and structures in my dwg as a pipe network. I have a composite FG for the rims to target, but otherwise I ignored the vertical- including inverts and cover.

Then I made my simple sheet. I did this entirely by hand for today, but I am working on some Excel magic to do lookups from info copied into Excel from the Prospector. Or perhaps something even better. We shall see.

I just have a really simple format that I like to follow.
(And yes, I know that in most parts of the world, you cannot connect a CB directly to another CB)

The above sheet is very basic- just the
Upstream and Downstream Structure Number,
Length of Pipe (2D CL to CL in this case),
Slope,
Size of pipe in feet (from outer top to invert- 15″ ID plus 3″ thick in this case),
Invert out Up Structure (or, start invert of the pipe)
Invert into Down Structure (or, end invert of the pipe)
Rim Elevation

There is a sample VBA that ships with Civil 3D that Nick mentions in his post today.

However, the format that it requires for reimport is nothing like my little goofy sheet.

But, not too hard to get where I need it to be. I just added a column for pipe name, then did a little copy and paste to end up with this:

Which I could sort to get this:

This last batch I just pasted into the sheet that the ExporttoExcel VBA makes, and executed the ImportfromExcel VBA. (Or whatever they are called)

Once Nick fixed the problem with the handles, it worked like a charm.

More to come, as this is a key component of my Stormwater Management using Civil 3D class at Autodesk University.

Many firms already have a sheet like this one, and it usually also has things like velocity, mannings equations, coefficients, etc. Those sheets you are already using can be added into this equation.

So maybe you will have to talk the boss into sending you to AU after all.