The Pressure of Content Catalog Editor-How to Create Parts in CCE for AutoCAD Civil 3D

HEIDI BOUTWELL: I am Heidi Boutwell. I worked for CAD learning. I am their civil infrastructure content manager. I do a lot of e-learning and video training for everybody out there. I also work as a civil engineer on the side doing civil engineering. So this is right up my alley.

This class is going to go over content catalog editor, which is a part of Civil 3D on the outside. It makes your water pressure parts. And starting off, we'll just start off with a little quote I found online, which I thought was really cool because I had this Alice in Wonderland thing going on earlier this year, especially since my last class. We really went down the rabbit hole, literally. This is who's here, roughly. So your country is probably represented up there in some shade. Thank you all for taking the time to come here from outside of the US and in the US.

Now we are an FXP Touch live classroom, which means get out your phones, laptops, tablets. Go to your nearest web browser, Safari Google Chrome. I don't care. Put in the address up there. Sign in. It is free to join. You will be able to follow along on the slides, take notes, and email them to yourselves, number one.

Number two, I will have live voting in this class. So you'll see slides come up where you can select ABCD to let me know what my demographic is to make sure I'm speaking to you specifically. That's why we're doing this. You can also chat and ask questions, which we will be able to review at the end and answer them, besides coming up to me and asking me personal questions. I'm good with that.

But this app is really awesome. We did it in our earlier class yesterday, Jerry [? Berns ?] and I did. And it was really cool because as you're answering I can see the percentages of the responses. So it really gives me a good idea of who's here, and we can share that information. I will also be putting that website on every question that comes up when we have it.

So again, that's any web browser, Safari, Chrome, whatever you have. Log in. Create an account. Take notes. So we'll get started, and I'll give you a few more seconds to log in because I know it takes a little time to type all that out. Like I said, the address will be on other ones.

So yesterday, I taught Inventing the Civil World with Jerry [? Berns. ?] Now, after you take this class and about two weeks from now, you will have all these vocally and video recorded sites, classes that we've taken here, up online for you to go back and review. And I highly suggest after taking this class going and watching what's called Inventing the Civil World.

Civil 3D has two programs which create parts. We have Content Catalog Editor, which you're in here for, and we have Part Builder, which does our drainage parts. How many of you knew about Infrastructure Parts Editor that just came out of sandbox? All right. How many of you watched the webinar by Charlie Ogden a few weeks ago? All right.

Charlie uses a really simple square box and makes it grow, all right. I do a bit more than that. I do a single box, 70 by 37, with flumes that you get two, three, four, five, six, and back, each side left or right. And that's what we did in Inventing the Civil World.

We give you a crash course for civil engineers in Inventor because that's what it takes to make the parts for Infrastructure Parts Editor. You have to use Inventor or Inventor, pro or LT. And the only reason plugging this is because after you take this class, when you go into Infrastructure Parts Editor, things will make a lot more sense. Because it's kind of a combination of Part Builder, Inventor Parametric Modeling, and Content Catalog Editor all in one.

All right. So moving on. How many of you have actually used either Part Builder or Content Catalog Editor or none of the above? On the app, if you wouldn't mind responding. A lot of you have used Part Builder is what I'm seeing, and a good portion haven't touched anything. That's fine, absolutely fine.

I will say Content Catalog Editor does not do parametric models per se. So if you expect Content Catalog Editor to go in there and make a fire hydrant and put a stand pipe below it and get that stand pipe to grow four feet, five feet, six feet, it's not going to happen, unless you make the part for it that's either four feet or five feet or six feet, individually part it.

Infrastructure Parts Editor, though, you could because in Inventor you could give it a dimensional name, that height, and you could go into Infrastructure Part Editor and say, I want one that's either four, 4 and 1/2, five, 5 and 1/2, and it will make those for you without having to recreate the part every time. So all right.

On your chairs, you all saw the poker chips and just a really quick plug. Our company is giving away a seven-inch cube. And this is a 3D modeling cube. If you sign up, it is free to sign up, no charge whatsoever. When you sign up, you get-- input it into the raffle. That will be on the first of December for the 3D printer, which is kind of awesome. I thought it was really cool that they did this. If you didn't get a poker chip, there is a web address. You'll find that later, but I think I got all the poker chips on the chairs. That's my only plug.

So today what are we learning about? We're going to describe the best practices, of course, for creating pressure parts of Civil 3D. As it said when you signed up for the class, this is basically just a quick review of what you signed up for. You're going to use the parts that we create in Civil 3D. We're going to make sure that they actually go into a project. And we're going to be able to edit them in Content Catalog Editor.

Now, I will warn you right now most of this class I do video a lot, and then at the end we do a live demo. Keeps me on track and gets you guys out of here for your next class on time. That's the whole idea. And, hey, it's my job. I do e-learning. I should be able to do this in a class.

So just a quick review. We're going to start off with the 3D modeling review. I know a lot of you probably haven't drawn in 3D in a while, and I'm not talking about the type of 3D where you go and you create a pipe network for Civil 3D and you put a catch basin out there, and now it's in 3D. Not that type of 3D. No.

We're talking solids. We're talking boxes and polygons and cubes and cones. And your extruding. You're using lofts, and you're unioning and joining. That type of 3D. That's what you have to do for Content Catalog Editor to make your parts. It's not a simple just go grab a 2D drawing. That doesn't happen.

So we're going to do a quick 3D review. We're going to talk about online parts. What can you find on the web today and use so you don't have to do that 3D modeling? Because there's a lot out there. And then we're going to go over creating an actual catalog and putting the part in it, making pipes and parts, the structures and the pipes side because Content Catalog Editor does both pipes and structures, or in this, case fittings and appurtenances. And then we'll talk about updating the parts list for pressure pipes in Civil 3D.

So our next question. How many of you guys actually modeled in 3D? A good majority of you guys. This is good. That means my 3D modeling review will be-- I'm not the best 3D modeler in the world. I'm going to be the first one to admit it. So we're going to review our skills real quick.

So things to know about 3D before we review our skills. Content Catalog Editor only takes solids that are unioned. So what can be unioned and what cannot? So obviously, these are the three items that cannot, surfaces, meshes, and polyface meshes. And they must be unioned. If you have three or four solids in the file, they have to be one. They have to all be joined together. That's very important as they are one part.

So you could take-- I'm going to do a water meter with a box on top of it, your typical standard residential water meter. So you can go ahead and put the water meter solid in there, put the box solid in there, and combine the two, make one big solid. That's what it means. So here's our quick review. Kind of quick. About eight-minute review maybe, more or less. I might speed it up. We'll see.

Anyway, so what we're going to do really quickly is we're going to make a drive-through sign. We have simple polylines out here right now. We have a box and all that. I want to double-check my units, make sure I'm in feet because we're doing a big drive-through sign. Drive-through signs aren't small. So I'm going to go into our change our angle because I want to make sure I'm looking at everything.

I want to make sure I'm in the 3D modeling workspace for Civil 3D. Once we're there, we're going to go ahead and select our rectangles, because we have a couple of different things. We can move things around. We got to set it up because everything's on a 2D plane right now.

So we'll go ahead and we'll move what I need to be the top of the base-- and this is our base for our sign. I need to move it up and remind myself what I need to do to remove it up. It's F8, your ortho button. It goes straight up because I don't want it left to right because we're now [INAUDIBLE]. And from there we're going to loft between the bottom and the top by selecting the bottom polyline and the top polyline. And, oh my gosh, now we have a 3D. Instant 3D solid in wireframe.

So it's pretty fairly simple to get our solid frames out. Let's take a quick look at it in a different view, in conceptual, to make sure that it married all together. And to remind myself again, we use shift and wheel to orbit. Now, on my computer, every time I try to do orbit with typing in orbit, it freaks out. So I have to remind myself shift and wheel. All right.

Next we'll do the top of the sign. We'll take the polyline that we got, and we'll extrude it up. And a shift wheel to orbit again. And, like I say, we have to do a little bit of review to remind ourselves what we can and cannot do in 3D modeling.

So once we get through the shift wheeling, we're going to move the sign using our three-dimensional osnaps. And we'll have to turn on a few extra snaps just to make sure it works right. But we're going to actually move the sign from its position there to the midpoint of the actual base. So I want to make sure I get all the stuff on there.

We're going to select the sign. Right-click with the control, and select midpoints between two. And since most of us know 3D modeling, when I get done with the sign, we'll move on to the next one. Because if we all know it, then we pretty much don't need our big review.

After we get there, we'll double check to make sure things are good. And we'll look at it conceptually. Now there's a lot more you can do. We can go through, and we can draw an actual face where we could put the image, per se, of the sign for our drive-through on here. And the only reason, like I said, we're doing this is that we have to make 3D parts that Content Catalog Editor can actually accept.

So we actually have to remind ourselves, how do we draw in 3D? So we have to be able to change faces. We have to be able to move our UCS to the y and get from there, and then add on another rectangle.

And what this is going to do is I'm going to actually push-pull this rectangle in a minute just to give it a little bit of a lift so it kind of sticks out a little bit. And we explode the rectangle first because I don't want it to be the full up-down width. We may need it to be an offset from the top and offset from the bottom. So I'll offset the lines after I exploded the rectangle up and down. And we'll use our selection to do that so we don't accidentally offset the solid.

So our selection cycling's on. And if you forgot where selection cycling's at, it's over here on the more button. And again, we'll offset the bottom line up. And now, when we use push and pull, or in this case, press pull, it'll just grab the face that's inside of those lines. And it will actually let me press it or pull it to a new position.

And you can type in a default depth for say 0.25 or a foot or whatever, and that's where it will stay. And we'll rotate again just so that we can see the lip that we just created. So that's our press-pull. It sticks out. At this point, you could apply a material image to this, and you'd have an nice sign.

But we'd also have to union everything together to make it one thing. Also, we can fill at the edges. So we can round them so they're not all square. And we can change the radius of that to something pretty small, but it makes a nice concrete filleted edge.

And you can flip through. When you stay in fillet edge, you can keep flipping through and staying in it until you're done. And finally, we can union the whole thing so it's one big solid. So there we go. One big 3D solid, which at this point I could save as a drawing file, or in this case, make a content file out of it and put it into Content Catalog Editor.

Now, there's some other things let's not forget. If you left over the gizmo and you right-click, you'll get the option to do different gizmos, whether that's the rotate gizmo, the scale gizmo, or the move gizmo. That's another little thing I always forget about when you're over the gizmo.

And the last one is our move. I'm thankful that most of you guys know 3D modeling in here. So it makes it much easier for me to show you stuff and walk you through. Don't forget you can also move individual faces and lines within the 3D object just by selecting specifically that line and grabbing the grips. So I can continue drawing, but we're going to move this along because eight minutes of the same thing over and over is not cool.

All right, so let's talk about online parts really quickly. Above, you see some standard websites I have found. I am certain there are other websites out there. And these websites I have found have all provided drawing files and different file formats that Civil 3D can accept. The ones that you want are DWG, STEP, IPT. And there's a list, a long list, of drawing files that Civil 3D will actually take.

You have to be careful, though, with some of these files. You bring them in, and they'll insert as a block. But you can't use a block. You have to use a solid. So, of course, you're going to have to explode it. And what you find out sometimes is that you explode something like an STEP file, and it's a polyface mesh. It's not a solid.

And as we all know, you can't convert a polyface mesh to a solid. It's like a useless part for us. It really is. So now you're recreating it and it's-- Yeah, it's not fun. So here's one of the websites. This is WATTS. They have a really big collection of water parts. And just to show you what you can get from some websites-- not everybody does this. WATTS though is really good about it.

You can go and you can find different back flow prevention devices and other things, drainage products. And they have a BIM section, and you can select the size that you want. And under the size that you select, you can get varying different models and download different models.

Now, I happened to know when I downloaded this model from WATTS and I exploded it, it was a polyface mesh. And I was like, that's so disappointing because that's a really nice backflow preventer. But there are other things on WATT's website. You may find that you'll stumble across maybe relief valves, ARVs. And WATTS-- again, not all websites have this. They will provide a link. You can click on their stuff, once I find one that I like.

And when you select it, and you go into the stuff, sometimes there may be nothing there, even though it's there on their website. So don't be shocked if you go hunting around and you can't find what you want. That's why we have to learn how to draw in 3D again to recreate what we want. They also have double-check valves.

Now the one that they did have here actually, when I exploded it, was a nice solid. So it's like they have very different files, and how the person makes the STEP file or how they create those three-dimensional files really does matter for us. And you can download the STEP file and go from there, basically. Insert it. Explode it. If it comes up a polyface mesh, you just wasted five minutes. You're hosing it and recreating it yourself. If it comes up as a solid or some type of solid that can be unioned together, it come up multiple solids and you can just do a mass solid union? Awesome.

So today, we're going to look at a water meter. And water meters, they come in a variety of different things online. The one I ended up finding I believe is from Bibliocad. But as you can see, there's quite a collection here. We'll go ahead and take a look at other visual websites that you can actually find this stuff at.

Yeah, and I have Google-fu, which my husband loves to call Google-fu. If you know how to really search well, you can find things. So typing in the right query into Google will get you really good responses. We're going to go with this water meter. And when you're looking at parts online, make sure that you read the comments about the parts if people have used them. You'll find out if they're good parts or bad parts real fast.

This is a metric water meter, but it can be scaled up, which is just fine. So we'll go ahead, and we'll use this specifically for our part. And it's got some really good graphical representation. The person who made this actually spent some good time with this. So I was impressed. I was like, all right. That's a good part to use. We'll use that.

And that's the one we'll go ahead and download. Yeah, Bibliocad had this whole new thing going on. And every time I log into it, you keep getting all those little pop-ups. All right, so we get through that. Just out of curiosity, on your FXP Touch, would you guys actually use online parts if you could find your part online? I mean, I know I would. I think most of us would. So why not?

Save the time. Don't do the 3D model. Go grab somebody else's stuff. Double-check its size, though. Make sure when you download it, you bring it into CAD, make sure that the ends pieces are the right size for what you need. If it's a two-inch going in and a two-inch going out or at least it's supposed to be, double-check. Make sure that's right. Sometimes they draw them in metric and then convert them, and they don't quite size right.

So Content Catalog editor. Now that we've done our review, let's talk about it. First of all, of those, have you used them? I'm assuming most of you guys have used Part Builder. And that's good. So you're familiar with Part Builder. You're familiar with the parametric modeling of Part Builder. That kind of works. And that's good to know, and none of the above is fine.

So what do we need to know. We need to know that Content Catalog Editor runs as a separate program outside of Civil 3D, which means you can be in it at the same time as Civil 3D if you so choose. I don't recommend it, but you can. It only does pressure parts, strictly water or force mains. And just remember, you're making a pressure list-- you're making a pressure network, pressure talks to pressure. It does not talk to gravity.

It runs off of an SQLite file, which means it's supposedly constantly saving. In reality though, you do have to hit the save button in the program. It only accepts, for structural parts, fittings, and appurtenances, a .CONTENT file, which can only be created in Civil 3D. And it is 100% dialogue driven.

First off, about Content Catalog Editor, where it's located and things to know, how many of you in here are running Civil 3D 2015, '16, '17? And the rest of you are either '18. Older than '15? Things you should know. We're going to go through creating a pipe and importing in, where it's at on the computer, and things about '16, '17, and occasionally '15, things I learned last year.

'15 and '16 and '17 refuses to start. You double-click it, and it does nothing. And you're like, what? That's because they at the time were in the programming change, and they forgot in their programming change that they installed the parts in this folder when in reality, they were pointing it at this folder in the code.

So you need to go take a photo of that, go to your location. And literally, you make the config folder, and you copy the files from the other folder into the config folder and then try it again. It will start. I guarantee it. That is very important. That's like cheating hot topic. Everybody I taught to this to before was like, yeah, it won't start. And I'm like, that's why. It took me a while to figure out why it wouldn't start until I realized what they had done. So everybody got that? That's also on your slides to send home. It's also in my handout. So there is a handout with this class. Everything I'm teaching you, solids, everything, is in the handout.

So let's talk about starting Content Catalog Editor. You will find it buried under the Autodesk Civil 3D folder down there on your Windows start menu. So Autodesk Civil 3D folder, Windows start menu, Content Catalog Editor. It runs by opening the SQLite files. So you have to go find your pressure part files and open them up.

On the left, where I'm selecting items, this is known as the data tree. It is the collection of everything that's in your catalog, pipes, pumps, valves, all of it. And on the right are your parts that you've added. And below the right is the data window where you can do the actual data manipulation.

If it is bold, it is editable. If it just screened back, it is not. To make a pipe, you don't need a Content Catalog file. You just need to start. This is simply making a pipe. You do need to fill out anything with an asterisk minimal. So your inner diameter, material, a description. And we're going to keep going and find something that we like, steel wrapped or something, a part, the actual description.

And the description is what will appear in your catalog. So if you're going to do a two-inch or three-inch or four-inch, that's where you need to put it is in that description field. We'll continue on once we get everything filled out that we forgot about, like cut length and diameter and inside. Then I go through here and I fill out a few more things. You don't have to fill it all out, just the asterisk parts. Although, if you know it all, go for it. Fill it all out. It never hurts.

The last time I did this when I actually went through and made my own catalogs a couple of years back, I spent three days doing it. I went and got the JM PVC pipe catalogs that you can get online, the PDFs with all the sizes in them, and I went through and made my own set. And it took me about three days to translate by hand everything.

So this was not the fastest thing in the world, because you have to literally put in a size and a size and a size. And you have to do this for every size. Import, import, import, import. So unfortunately. When you get here, now you're going to designate for this one part what type of joint end it is. You need to put in the nominal diameter, that's the overall diameter you want it to state, if it's a three or four or five.

What is the true outside diameter of the pipe, and what is the true deflection of the pipe? That's after pipe connects to pipe connect, that deflection between the two pipes. How much do you want to give it? The wall thickness is the actual wall thickness of your pipe. It does it's own computation from outside diameter minus wall thickness. Then it knows the inside diameter. So it actually knows that. Rows one and two must match. So what's going on is it's pre-setting port one and port two. And the ports are your ins and outs of your pipe, S1, S2.

So you have a row one for one port and a row two for the other side, the other port. Unless you have some manufacturer who's giving you some type of pipe that magically grows from port one to port two, they should match. I've never seen a manufacturer do that yet though, which befuddles the mind. Why do we need two ports here? I mean, I get that, but why do I need to fill it out twice?

So you get it in there. It shows up over here on your data tree. It will show up over in the parts window at the top. It is, again, dialogue driven. There are menus up top, there are menus below. You can set things up you can copy and paste, which is good. You can open up recent files.

And let's talk briefly just about this. Notice the dates on here. It's 2013 was the initial run of this, and 2014 was the last update. And we're in 2018. Yeah, they have not changed this since 2014, so it's the same. There's the Show/Hide column, which allows you to control all the columns that you see up above.

And, like I said, anything dark you can pretty much go through and change. Anything light, you can't. When you select an overall topic, you get everything, including the very last one that we just added. Let's see here. Where else we going? And that should be it for that one.

So that's a simple part. Now, all I have to do is hit Save. And when I hit Save, and I go into Civil 3D and I open up my parts list for pressure, and I go right-click and say add family and right-click and add parts, that will be there. There's no regen catalog. There's none of that. It will automatically be there, which is really awesome.

So we've gone through a quick review of 3D modeling. We've inserted a part. We've looked at the web. These are the next steps. So maybe we want to put a fitting or an appurtenance in there, whether that's a water meter, a fire hydrant, an ARV, something special that's not already included.

So this is what we're going to need. We're going to need the unioned solid, the .CONTENT. We're going to update the list, and add these parts. And again, with the solids it has to be a 3D solid. And we're going to create a water meter. And those are the last two steps before you can actually make the .CONTENT file is making the connection points and doing the .CONTENT.

So here it is. This is my water meter, my box. I'm going to start off with the box. It's a simple polyline set. Want to make sure I change up the colors so that you can see the difference. We have outside polylines and inside polylines. Some water meter boxes are round, some are rectangular, and lofted or angled up.

So the top part will be my light brown. The dark blue is my bottom. I'm going to move both of the polylines up and make sure I'm in the right 3D modeling workspace so that this goes through the whole mess. But we're actually going to create the water meter now.

So we'll move up the parts and get them to a distance. Water meters run between a foot to two feet deep depending. So you can type in a specific distance and put them exactly where you want it. Not a big issue. Once I get them up-- and it won't take very long-- we're going to loft the pieces together outside to outside, inside to inside.

So we'll go ahead, and we'll loft the bottom to the top. And then we'll do it one more time for the outside, the blue to blue. So now I have a water meter. It looks great. It's kind of weird because I'm missing lines. It looks like a missing lines because of the wireframe, but in reality, it's a solid. So I'm like, OK. At this point, I'm trying to figure out why am I missing lines on the outside? And I realize it's a wireframe. That's why.

So I look at it, and I'm going, OK, there's something wrong here. I'm missing something. Oh, yeah. I've got to add in my water meter part here in a second. And I need to make a hole so I can put my water meter under it. So let's go ahead and make the hole.

We'll subtract the bottom from the top from the bottom again and make our hole. Now we have our hole. So water meter boxes are basically covers. They just go over the water meter. You can get really fancy with this, cut out little oval circles or something to go over the pipes and all that. We're just keeping this really simple. We don't want them to be two things.

So now I'm going to type import. That's about the only way I know. There might be another way to get that from a button command. I'm a very keystroke-driven person. I'm going to import in the water meter I found, and it's going to process in the background. And luckily, it's a small the file it'll show up.

Now what's interesting is it'll show up in outer space somewhere once I bring it in. OK, so here's my water meter. Awesome. Now where's my box? Oh, it's way up there. OK, so now I got to move it because it's miles away from each other. I need it to be right next to each other, preferably inside of it.

But we're going to start by just getting it there. All right. So we're at the box level now, of course, and we're going to rotate. And I'm like, OK, I'm getting close. Let's get to the bottom. Now we're going to line it up and get it inside. Now the problem is I'm in conceptual view, so I can't see it when I go on the side. I'm like, OK, that's great. Now how do I get it up in there so I know where it's at?

I'll go back to wireframe, and I'll move it up. And I want to be inside the box, not below the box, if possible. But I don't want to be the very top because it's a water meter, and we don't put water meters at the very top of our boxes. So just kind of rough it up. And you get real specific with this. You can make yourself some construction lines and put it a specific distance from the bottom of the box and all that.

Now I'm realizing this is a block still, and I can't make a unioned solid out of a block. So now I'll explode it. Now I've got two blocks. OK. What if I explode it again? Once I get there. And I still don't have it. It's getting there.

Once I explode it all the way, they become solids. And then I can union them all together as one big solid. So adding connection points. To type, the word is Autodesk connection point. When you start typing it, it will show up. You pick the point you want to put the connection point on. Then you pick it again and then the direction it's going. It's going to be this big circle with an arrow.

And water meters are pretty small, and this connection point's pretty big. And it's a block, so you can rescale that. You don't have to leave it as huge. So we'll rescale it down so it's a little bit smaller. Now, I obviously picked the wrong direction. I can have them pointing both in, pointing both out. The point is it's supposed to tell Civil 3D, is this an in or an out or is it a both into the water meter?

Now, water meters can be dual direction. So you can either have both pointing out or both pointing in. You don't want them both pointing the same way because you want to be able to go in or out with it from both directions. So we'll do it twice. We'll do one on each side, an Autodesk connection point, for each location that a pipe has to be connected. Notice I'm not doing it on the box. I'm doing it on the actual meter. And I'll resize them down and scale them down.

I will say this. This water meter is 18 inches by 24 inches. And when I actually tried to put it into a project, I discovered that it's so stinking small you can't see it because my project's got 12-inch pipes. So last night, I went and exploded everything and bumped it all up 12 so you could actually see it. So when we go live, it'll be a lot larger than what it truly should be.

Lastly is you need a center line construction point that goes through the connection points and the pipe where the pipes go. It needs to be a line or a polyline. Really doesn't matter. I'm changing the color so it's kind of blue so you can kind of see it and center line it. And now we're going to publish the part.

When we publish the part, we select the solid. Then we select that center line that we just added. It disappears, like you saw. We have to tell it what type of part it is. Is it an elbow, a hydrant? What is it? And not all of these work, by the way.

Then we're going to save the file in some location that you can find again. You only need to do this once. So if it's your desktop, if it's your network, I really don't care. You get it into the SQLite program for Content Catalog Editor, you can get rid of it after that. But you do need to save it where you can find it, and you need to save it as a name that you can find it under.

So we're going to call this the water meter, 3/4 inch, because it's a smaller pipe. I'm still debating what I'm calling it. OK, fine. Water meter. Come on now. We're going to save it as a .CONTENT file. It's going to export out a JPEG and a .CONTENT file. And the JPEG should appear in the box when you go and bring it into Content Catalog Editor. And that's all you have to do.

You will occasionally get this error down here. I don't know why it's doing that. To be honest with you, I have not got it to stop erroring out, and it's been doing that since '17. So it makes me wonder if there's something going on. But that's fine. I'm going to ignore the error and continue on.

So quick break, because I know that you guys need to stretch your minds. So you got two minutes and 30 seconds. Get up. Talk to your friends. Grab water. Hit the bathroom. Be back here before that clock stops. Go for it.

Yeah, hopefully it's back. All right, so we've gone through. We've made the .CONTENT file, and now we're going to put it into the catalog and all that good stuff. So here is our water meter.

We're going to go through. We're going to start our Content Catalog Editor again. Now, like the pipe, you're just going to simply ask it to import. Actually, first, you got to open up the catalog. Note the catalog location is buried, of course. It is in your program data file, your Autodesk Civil 3D 2018 ENU-- not ENU, that one, and pressure pipes catalog.

Yeah, I can see why. That yellow is so thick. I'm going to have to recreate these. These are the SQLite files. I didn't realize how thick that was until now. When you select them, that's what you get for your catalog. You can put it into any catalog because it's universal. You can right-click on stuff and tell it to go import.

We're going to put it in as a valve. I know that if you try to put it in as, say, a pump or a hydrant, it doesn't quite work in Civil 3D. And I don't know why. I really don't know why. But we'll go ahead and import it in. And that's our actual program. It's not a very big file for the whole catalog. So we'll bring it back in in a second.

Right-click import. And now we're going to actually import it in from a Content Catalog file. We'll go browse out to our .CONTENT file, which for me is buried in a different directory than anything else. And we'll continue on.

And just like the pipe, you're going to have to give it a part type, whether it's a plug, a valve. And you need to match it up to whatever you created it as in Civil 3D. So if you created it as a valve, make sure you set it as a valve. But just like the pipe, you need to go in there and do everything in the asterisks minimally.

So we're going to go through. We're going to designate what type of valve it is, and it's a water meter so we could call it the globe valve or we could call it other or we could-- there's several things we could call it. We'll go with a check valve.

We're going to give it a type, whether is it coordinated? Is it cast iron? What is it? Or ductile iron. And this is the words that are going to appear in Civil 3D, residential water meter in ground. Your part family is already preset. You need the actual-- is it electrical? Is it a hand ribbon? What is the size of the pipe going into my water meter? What type of coating?

AUDIENCE: We have a question [INAUDIBLE]

HEIDI BOUTWELL: That's a good question. We got a question. Can you actually add meters to the water list on the left while we're going through this whole process? Just briefly, no. I wish we could, because that's tied to when you made the .CONTENT file. And the .CONTENT file has that same exact list in it. So if we could, that'd be great. But I don't know how you'd get Civil 3D to recognize that. But as far as I know, there's no way to add another category under water for meters.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

HEIDI BOUTWELL: Yeah. If they update the [? entity. ?] And that's where Infrastructure Parts Editor comes into play, because you can. Again, like a pipe, you need to make sure that the ports have matching information top and bottom, outer diameter, deflection, all of that, wall thickness. This all pertains to the pipe going into the water meter, the connection point.

And once we get done, we hit finish. And it's in there. You get a quickie image of it. It doesn't rotate or anything, but you can see everything from there. And we're going to save it. And once we save it, it should now be accessible in Civil 3D.

So creating new parts and using them. We've saved the SQLite file. Now we need to update the list. We need to set the catalog location. So if you're doing networks and you're sharing a catalog, just set the catalog location. You're good to go. Once it's saved, we're ready to go.

Now, I should have enough time for a live demo. I've only got a few minutes left. So just quickly, that's my Civil 3D file. I've got this big huge surface out here. I've already got the pressure parts list going. I wanted to put it in my flange. Now, I made this under the flange instead of the other one the other day. And right now, we have valves and pressure relief.

If I add a type, there is my water meter. And I add it in. I have to give it a size, and, of course, you got to give it a style. And here's the style I used, valve. You have to hit OK. And now, when I go up here and I ask it to edit the plan layout tools, and I want to make sure I'm on my flange list. And I go over to my appurtenances.

There is my water meter, and I can hit add appurtenance. And I can stick it out here in the middle of nowhere. And, like I said, I blew this up this morning so that you guys would see it. That's my water meter in all of its 3D glory.

Now if I move this in line-- if it lets me load a line-- and I do a little bit of rotation, and I right-click. And I'm not getting it square on the money, but that's fine. I'm going to put it in the profile down below. Now the kicker here is, when it does show up, if I can find it, it's darn tiny. Oh, that's right. We can't see it yet. That's the reason. We can't see it because it's at negative three.

We've got to give it some elevation. And then once we see it, there it is. So now I've got my water meter, and it looks like a little valve. And that's it, because of the style I chose. Even if you do a catalog part, this water meter comes as a valve because I selected it when I created this as a valve as in the .CONTENT. So it gives it a default idea what it should do when it's in profile when you're selecting valve, cap, elbow, and all that. How should it behave in profile?