One of the main benefits of using object based design is having the ability to make the “drafting” a much more efficient task or bi-product of the design. A basic drafting entity shown on plans is the location of concrete pipe encasements. These encasements are usually required when utility crossings don’t allow for enough vertical or horizontal separation or if the fill height is too shallow and may need structural support. A typical concrete encasement on a sanitary pipe is nothing more than a concrete poured surrounding, a minimum of 6 inches thick around the pipe, for a required minimum length. When they are needed to be shown on both plans and profiles, I see many users taking a lot of time to draft these concrete encasements “manually”.
Civil 3D gives us users another, (not so obvious), option. In this post, I’ll share with you an idea of using the Pipe Network tools to give us a better, (I think more fun), way to add these encasements to your projects.
