Utility Designers Unite!

[mike.lewis]

I have decided to get off my butt and see if I could enlist the help of all of the engineers, designers and draftsmen that are involved with pipe design of any kind, especially pipe that is buried. I would like to be able to send a wish list specific to pipe design work to Autodesk. We never use 80% of what we have and I am tired of paying for it.
So if any one is interested in developing a forum or collaborating on ideas for Autodesk, please send me an email.

Thanks,

Mike

[MHultgren]

Hello Mike,
I would watch my back if I were you! JK I think you caught something that is about to catch you! (I am talking about your Avatar.) Thought I should clear that up before it started something.

I have a question, how would you prefer ADESK to create the package? Allow the purchaser the option to select specific commands\routines (and all supporting routines) or give you a package that has all the tools you need (and granted quite few that you may never use) for a lower price. Granted, to purchase a new license is very pricey, especially for the small one or two man firms. If you get on the subscription program, you get the upgrades for five years for what you would pay for one seat if you were buying a new license.
Look at office equipment, a good computer (workstation) with the additional graphics and processing capabilities, will run you around $2500 - $3500 and you usually need to upgrade those every four or five years due to improvements in speed, capabilities, operating systems, etc. The bottom line is all about production and automation.
While there are quite a few folks out there that are self-taught (and with that goes some anti-productive practices and methods). Your most productive personnel are those that have taken a few courses and some form of training with the software. You wouldn't hire an E.I.T. that hasn't taken a single engineering course would you? Education is not cheap, but it is an investment in the firm's productivity and the personal growth of the person taking the courses. We promote a mentoring atitude in our firm to allow other users to share and develop methods that work well for ALL the people that work on our projects.
We usually have one or two of our top designers\CAD techs attend classes (and AU) and then they come back and spread that knowledge around to the other users. So, for a paltry $2500 (the price of a new lower end computer) we have two people that have attended a week long intense training seminar and all of our users benefit from it. We have about twenty users in our office. So that breaks down to a little over $100 per user to get the training. It doesn't take long to recover that expense in production. Even when you talk about a five day course at a reseller that may run you $1200 per day, the cost of the training is usually recovered within the first two months through greater production and better quality control.
Enough of my rambling, upgrades are a part of business if you want to remain competetive. You just need to look at the most cost effective way of creating a better mousetrap and maintaining costs. The subscription option is cost effective and keeps you abreast of current trends and methods. You don't still use a DOS based system do you? Although DOS does STILL have some capabilities that I continue to use.
Pipeworks is under revision (finally) and ADESK is working to make it even better, but they didn't do much to it for years (From DCA days - through Softdesk and into Land Desktop 2004 the module didn't change much, if any), but they have stated that they are working to improve it.
I hope my rambling didn't wander too much from what you wanted to address in this thread. :-)

[Jmurphy]

I have decided to get off my butt and see if I could enlist the help of all of the engineers, designers and draftsmen that are involved with pipe design of any kind, especially pipe that is buried. I would like to be able to send a wish list specific to pipe design work to Autodesk. We never use 80% of what we have and I am tired of paying for it.
So if any one is interested in developing a forum or collaborating on ideas for Autodesk, please send me an email.

Thanks,

MikeFirst off not to be degrading or call anyone names or what ever. But if you are using only 20 % of the program then it's time some one took a hard long look at the way things are being done in your office. I agree there's a lot of features in the new versions that may never be used but there's also a lot that can be used to make life easier. The key to it is look at the features and find a way to make them work for you. Just because Autodesk calls it a piping network does that mean I can't use it for something other than drawing a pipe? I'm looking at a way to turn that networking feature into something that I can use and I only do electrical distribution maps and 90% of that is 45' above ground.
If you want to make use of most of the features ask in here or on the Desker's News Group how it can be used to support your current practices.

[eckdahlrd]

I think the best thing they could add to the piping system is the ability to use fittings as opposed to structures. There's probably just as many pressure pipes as there is gravity pipes out there.

[MHultgren]

I built some fittings in the structure library for use on my water pipes but it is a bit troublesome to get the Valve Box to stretch to the surface like it should.

[eckdahlrd]

Are they standard fittings? You mentioned valves, but what about tees, wyes, elbows?

[MHultgren]

Since we normally use MJF fittings, they were fairly easy to build and add to the symbol library. Draw them up as separate drawings and then add them to your Symbol Manager Directory as a new folder or in the Cogo folder and just create a new catalog for them. Then go into your Pipeworks Structure Librarian and set them up. The hard part is when you have them changing vertical direction, you need one for down and one for up, one for left and one for right. so for each fitting, you need four drawings. :roll: Something like MJF90-L or MJF90-D. Now when you change direction you need to know which way according to the alignment direction, but at least it places the symbol for you. Now, if you have a 45 that is sloped at say, 30 down, it gets a bit tricky. :-D
OOPS - I thought I was in the LDT-Civil Forum. My Bad, Gotta start reading the forum name more often before I open my big mouth.

[eckdahlrd]

I thought it sounded too good to be true.

[jstew]

I thought it sounded too good to be true.


Actually...

What I've done is created different structure styles to represent the different plan views and profile views of the waterline structures. As default I just have the waterline structure style to show in plan as a very small block or union at each max. 20ft segment. In Profile view that default style is not displayed with the pipe. But then if I need a valve, hydrant, etc... I just change the structure to a different style, which in turn updates both the plan and the profile view. I just created simple blocks as representations of the structures.

My only wish, which I posted, is that there be an "Apply Minimum Cover" option to the pipe rules. Since the water is not designed by slope, but rather the minimum cover from a surface.

Hope this gives you some ideas.

Jonathan Stewart

[luke.104954]

Nice setup Jonathan! I appreciate it when someone works with what they are given.

[eckdahlrd]

I appreciate the info. But I want a fitting (like a standard 45 degree elbow) that will show up as two line piping (in plan). This really isn't an issue if I'm showing just the centerline in the plan view.

[MHultgren]

So if I get this correctly, you would like to be able to place two lines perpendicular to the pipe alignment with the insertion point of the line being the midpoint and at an offset of say .67' from the selected endpoint and automatically know what the bearing is for each line starting at the endpoint (intersection) selected. So in the case of a 45 degree fitting, it would draw two lines .67' from the intersection selected and rotate one of them 45 degrees north or south (using the bearing of the first line as being East or West for this definition). But in the profile veiw, you want it to draw a flanged fitting?