Civil 3d Pipe Network Structure Labels - Multiple pipe directions with Identical invert elevation

[Ryan Bingham]

I'm putting together a Storm Drain design using Civil 3d Pipe Networks. Right now, based on the connecting pipe inverts, my label says:

 

Const. SD Inlet Box

Rim 79.79

Invert 73.68 (N)

Invert 73.68 (S)

Invert 72.00 (E)

 

The numbers are the "Connected Pipe Invert Elevation" and the directions are the "Connected Pipe Direction". Since the north and south directions have identical inverts, it would be nice if the label could automatically be shown more concisely as:

 

Const. SD Inlet Box

Rim 79.79

Invert 73.68 (N/S)

Invert 72.00

 

Anyone know if there's a way to make this happen? Hopefully I've posted in the correct category/forum - if not, I apologize. Thanks for your help!

Edited November 11, 2021 by Ryan Bingham

[CyberAngel]

This is the proper topic for everything related to Civil 3D. Welcome to CAD Tutor!

 

I'm almost certain you'd have to write some code to do what you want, because you'd have to check for matching inverts. I don't think the labeling system is smart enough to do that, since it processes only one pipe at a time. In effect you'd have to rewrite the labeling system just to get one tweak.

 

The brute force approach would be to define a similar style that combines both directions, but if either of the inverts changed, the label wouldn't reflect that. You'd have to constantly check the inverts to see if you should revert to the original style.

 

There's probably some kind of expression magic to do this, but I'm not good enough at programming to figure it out. You might be able to check two adjacent pipe components and combine their directions. Here's a trick for doing something like that, just to give you an idea of how you can do this type of thing.

[BIGAL]

Forums/autodesk has a CIV3D forum it may be worth asking there also. A lot of smart CIV3D people.

[Ryan Bingham]

Thank you CyberAngel and BIGAL for responding. For some reason, I hadn't seen a notice of response through email or whatever, so I assumed that I hadn't received a response here (a year and half later). A google search on the topic today brought your responses (and hence, my embarrassment) to light. 

 

CyberAngel,  I'm interested in the brute force method you've described, but after consulting the link you provided, I realize even that approach might be over my head. I'm stuck at the attached screen shot in my quest. I wonder if there's a simple way to make a style only show like a downstream invert, or maybe just the lowest invert connected to a structure... Like if a structure had two flowlines (98.30 East and 98.10 West) if we could just get the label to simply say: "FL  98.10" and nothing more. Since 95% of my structures do not have multiple invert elevations, I would just use that style by default. On the rare occasions I have a structure that needs multiple invert elevations shown, I would just revert the style of that label to the one that shows different elevations/directions. Thanks for your help!

 

 

BIGAL, I'll give CIV3D a try. Thanks for the suggestion!

Edited January 16, 2023 by Ryan Bingham
Added a screen shot