Samer Muhandes
InfoDrainage, our drainage design and analysis technology for creating sustainable and consciously green drainage networks, saw numerous efficiency updates earlier this year. Now, there’s even more value to add to your designs and BIM workflows with enhanced Civil 3D round-tripping functionality and newly added hydraulic grade lines and energy grade lines, which are an important new addition for our customers in the United States.
Now you can plot HGL and EGL
Autodesk strive to provide our customers with the most robust and intuitive drainage design technology. This latest update incorporates new features that allow users to plot the Hydraulic Grade Line (HGL) and Energy Grade Line (EGL) within the long section of the drainage network.
- Hydraulic Grade Line: The HGL is a graphical representation of the pressure and gravitational potential energy of water flowing through your drainage system. The HGL shows the energy level of the water as it flows through pipes, channels, or other conduits and allows you to visualize the change in energy due to pipe friction and changes in elevation.
- Energy Grade Line: EGL depicts the total energy available to the water, which includes the energy related to water velocity in addition to what is reflected in the HGL.
Plotting both the HGL and EGL gives you a clear, comprehensive view of how energy is distributed and changes throughout your drainage system. This helps you identify potential problem areas, such as bottlenecks, sections of the system where water may not drain effectively, or areas where high velocities could cause erosion or damage to the system.
This new feature represents our commitment to offering powerful, accessible tools for sophisticated drainage system design.
Part-family awareness in InfoDrainage
Pipes and manholes are fundamental components of any drainage system, and the materials used for these elements can significantly influence the construction cost as well as the durability under various constraints (eg, shallow pipes). As a significant new addition, you can now specify materials for pipes and structures/manholes to control the cost and durability directly within your project.
- Pipes Part-Family: Being aware of the pipe materials during the design process allows users to make and communicate informed decisions considering project requirements and constraints. With this new feature, you can now specify and select the type of material used for the pipes in your drainage designs.
- Manhole Material Part-Family: Similar to pipes, the material used to construct manholes can greatly affect their lifespan, cost and overall system efficiency. This new addition allows you to specify the manhole/structure type or material so it becomes an output of the drainage design rather than an afterthought. Also, if you have two names used for the same part-family, you can simply use the merge function which will update the drainage network accordingly, as well as merge the part-family list.
This new feature also facilitates improved communication and coordination with all of your stakeholders, contractors, and material suppliers, as drainage designs will now include explicit material specifications. This will help ensure that correct materials are used during construction and minimize potential issues and discrepancies.
Improved automated mapping when round-tripping with Civil 3D
With the part-family awareness in InfoDrainage being introduced, this allows you to preserve the pipe/structure part-family when round-tripping with Civil 3D. Previously, the drainage network would be categorised in the mapping process based on size. Now, with the latest enhancements, the mapping logic categorizes the pipes and structures based on size and material.
For example, if the mapping logic detects two pipes of similar size (eg, 300 mm) and different materials (eg, concrete and HDPE), these two pipes will be presented in the mapping in two different rows so users can assign a different part-family to each of them.
The technology will also detect the name and the size of the pipe/structure and link it directly to a part-family and a part-size from an existing list.
Free trials available
Want to try the latest InfoDrainage features? We offer a 30-day free trial – no credit card required.
Have you tried round-tripping with Civil 3D? You can also download a free trial of Civil 3D. Need help getting started? Watch one of our round-tripping videos.
Read the release notes
Go deeper into this release with our product release notes. Stay up-to-date on what’s coming next with our high-level roadmap.