OK, so I was remiss the other night, thought I had posted this a long time ago. I’m not going to go too far into it, but as always, a couple of statements.
 1. My pipe rules are set up with mins/maxes, etc. 2. I don’t know everything under the sun about how pipe rules are calculating. I thought I understood it pretty well, then attempting to write them up with pictures, I couldn’t make it do what I thought it did. Clear as mud, right?
So, here’s what happens when you work from Top to Bottom when laying out your pipe network:
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Everything looks pretty good. The pipe lays out the first pipe on the right, sets the depth, sets the structure. The next pipe starts from there and goes downhill. Cool.
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Now, here’s what happens when I go from bottom to top:
This looks OK I guess…until you look a bit closer. Something’s not quite right at that junction…
Hey, wait a minute, I wanted the water to DRAIN in my system. Now, I know there’s probably a simple reason for this, and I could probably fix it with some tweaking of rules. But for my money, it’s just easier to work top to bottom.
Hmmm. That makes the program work. Unfortunately, in this part of the country, we build the sewer from downstream up, and layout our plans likewise.
Thanks for the comments, petrocat.
Laying it out has nothing to do with construction. Nor does the original direction of the alignment. The layout is to give your initial design something reasonable, not to finish your project. And the alignment can be reversed as needed.
I’m not suggesting you change your design or build process, merely the way you initially create the objects in your model.
Hope this clarifies.