Being Civil

ANALYZING HGL WITH TAIL WATER CONDITION

I would like to show a very simple yet commonly mistaken procedure committed by many SSA users with tail water condition at the outfall of the system. Below is a screenshot of a profile plot with fixed water elevation at the outfall, however the profile plot shows a different HGL where one would expect the HGL to match the fixed water elevation i.e. 980 ft. for this model.

Figure 1. Profile Plot for tail water at the outfall @ 980 ft. using Kinematic wave routing.

The reason for the above profile plot reporting a Max HGL at outfall as 977.40 ft. is due to Kinematic wave routing used for the analysis which provides a non-linear reservoir formulation for channels and pipes, including translation and attenuation effects that assume the water surface is parallel to the invert slope. It does not account for backwater effects or flow reversals.

The key to analyzing any tail water, flow reversal or looped network is to analyze with Hydrodynamic routing method. It solves the complete St. Venant equations throughout the drainage network and includes modeling of backwater effects, flow reversal, surcharging, looped connections, pressure flow, tidal outfalls, and interconnected ponds.  

Notice the change in the Max HGL for the same profile plot when using Hydrodynamic routing method. The Max HGL reports at 980 ft. at the outfall that match the Tail water elevation as expected.

Figure 2. Profile Plot for tail water at the outfall @ 980 ft. using Hydrodynamic routing.

I hope this helps. Stay tunned for more tips to come.

 

 

 

 

 

64-bit operating systems and Excel/Access connections

As more and more of us are able to move to 64-bit operating systems, the question of how to connect to recalcitrant Excel and Access files comes up regularly.  To address that, we've created a new technical solution: http://usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=TS18307898.

The TS above is mainly targeted at the most common instance, where you have Office installed on a 64-bit operating system already, and can't get the FDO provider or link template to work properly.  This is due usually to having the default version of Office installed, which is 32-bit.  You can either add 64-bit drivers via the 64-bit Access Engine linked in the article (works for Excel too), or just switch to 64-bit Office, which is much easier in the long run.

There is one caveat that isn't in the TS - if you are a Vault users who leverages the Office addin, that is 32-bit only - you'll have to decide if you want the Office addin, or ODBC connectivity.

 

Edited Jan 23.

Fortune Magazine named Autodesk to its annual list of 100 Best Companies to Work For in the United States

Autodesk, Inc. is once again among the country’s best places to work, according to FORTUNE magazine’s annual survey. FORTUNE released its list of the “100 Best Companies to Work For” today. To pick the 100 Best Companies to Work For, Fortune partners with the Great Place to Work Institute to conduct the most extensive employee survey in corporate America*. The complete list of companies will appear in the print issue of the magazine, available on newsstands January 23, 2012 and on www.fortune.com today. 

Why is working at Autodesk so great?

First thing first: Autodesker’s can bring dogs to work! Besides that perk, Autodesk employees are also entitled to a six-week paid sabbatical every four years. To learn more about why we came in at #52 on the annual list of Best Companies to Work For, check out our entry: http://autode.sk/wYbNby.

Interested in working for us? Stay connected with the latest opportunities through our Careers page for the latest on job openings and internships: http://autode.sk/w4CF0g

 

Cannot Remove Selection with SHIFT+Pick

There are hundreds of small things and settings in AutoCAD that make drafting lot easier, but when some of them accidentally get turned off or on, sometimes it’s really a major effort to look for them and set the settings the way we wanted. For instance, using Shift-pick for selecting and de-selecting… When selecting multiple objects in a busy drawing often some things get selected by accident, so instead of starting over, we want to be able to just deselect the item and keep selecting more. I also have a habit of using SHIFT to select/deselect objects when I have selected too many.

That’s what Shift+Click is good for. Off course, this all work pretty nicely until there was a change in setting introduced for any reason or by conflicting settings in Raster Design that may be installed on the same machine. Our user reported that suddenly the SHIFT+Pick stopped working after a crash. If you have raster Design installed and configured on AutoCAD Civil 3D and your SHIFT key stopped working for "Shift+Pick" to remove objects from selection sets, or "Shift+Pick" to make multiple grips hot, then this might be the solution.

Without further ado, I will go ahead and provide you two usual suspects.

• MAPIOPTIONS settings
• IOPTIONS settings

Please do following:

1. In command line run the IOPTIONS
2. Go to the User Preferences tab
3. Uncheck the toggle Shift+Left Click Image Select

Also

1. Run MAPIOTIONS command
2. Go to General tab and uncheck “Shft+Left Click Image Select"

 With these two selections unchecked program should work like before. 

 

Civil 3D Performance Part II–How Much RAM is Enough?

My second post in the series from my class at Autodesk University (CI3200-P Improving Performance with AutoCAD Civil 3D) is going to be dealing with memory and will put to bed a few myths and misconceptions.

As usual, follow the link for the full article!