Right now, I am in the process of leading a firm through a pilot project. This project involves going through several alternative pipe designs. Part of the pipe design includes making sure that house laterals (from houses that currently exist with septic systems) will be able to connect to the proposed sewers.

So…. we have to draw laterals…

I typicallly work with one large pipe network for my entire site. This means, every single pipe in my Site Sanitary Sewer Network (whether connected or not) would wind up in the same pipe network.

When I tried this for laterals, it didn’t work so well. Why? It didn’t work so well because it broke the pipe it connected to in two parts, AND stuck in an extra structure. Even if I dealt with the structure (using a no show style) it still broke the pipe

The best solution I have found so far, is to make a “Lateral Only Network”. Is still use my no-show structures (like I do with water), but it allows me to place pipes on top of each other without “breaking” any. Then, once I override the profile view style of just that pipe, I can drag it into the right position, or use it as a guide for my designed main pipes.