Measuring and Labeling DZ Between Lines and Surfaces

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This question comes up pretty frequently

“How do I accurately determine the DZ between a Line e.g. a pipe and a Surface Model e.g. Design Surface”.

The additional questions would also be

  • Where along the line do you want to calculate the values
  • Do you want to Label the line locations with the values
  • Do you want to create a spreadsheet output of the results of the queries
  • Do you want to color code the DZ values based on defined depth brackets
  • Do you need the selected line or an offset to the selected line (e.g. Pipe Invert to Crown etc.)

There are several tools that you can use to achieve this goal, all are shown in the videos below

  • Use the Create Text command using Smart Text to label the lines at the desired locations with the values needed e.g. Station, Elevation of Line, Elevation of Surface, Delta Z between Line and Surface. To do this you will use Smart Text Codes as shown below, and reference the Design Surface and the Pipe Line to determine the values

@<S,LD,F>@
@<ELL,LD,F>@
@<ELS,LD,F>@
@<ELS,LD,F,2,T,T>@

This will create a label like this. Use Leader Lines to highlight the point at which you need to determine the values. This is a manual process where you label each location that you need manually.

image

Video shows you how

  • Use the RPS Point Creator command to create Points along the line and then use the RPS Label Points Command to label the points with the desired values at each point location. This is a more automated method to label a lot of locations along a line at frequent intervals along the line.

You can also create the Pipe as one line, make a copy of the line and then use Change Elevation command using Surface mode to elevate the copy to the design surface elevation. Once you have the two lines with the appropriate elevations, you can then

  • Create a Profile View and load the Pipe Line and the draped copy line into the view to review the DZ values between the lines
  • Use the Explore Object command to explore the pipe in reference to the draped copy line so you can see Z1 and Z2 - this doesn’t show you the DZ but it shows you the two elevations so you can compute the DZ.

Video shows you how

  • Here is a third method you can use - it involves creating an alignment from each of the lines that you drew for the pipes and then cutting a Surface Profile along the alignment and then opening the Alignment in the Profile View where you can then use the Create Linear Dimension Command to measure and annotate your DZ values. Then you can create images snags or create drawings from the profiles onto Custom Sheets to produce your deliverables.

There will also be a new command from RPS shortly that provides line labeling directly with a host of label options to work with that will also do this requirement.

Hope that this helps

Alan

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