Labeling Pipe Networks and Using Viewports in Civil 3D

Hi, I’m Charles Ellison. I’m a Civil 3D designer and trainer at autocadcivil3dtraining.com. You now know more about Using Viewports to Your Advantage in Civil 3D. Today we’ll be continuing our look at viewports and how they can be used in conjunction with labeling our pipe networks. Let’s take a look.

Let’s label up some pipe networks. I’ve got my plan view right here and my profile view. So let’s make this easy. Let’s go ahead and click add labels. Click feature, pipe network. Click the entire network plan. And I’m good with the label style right here. Click add. Let’s move this off to the side. Wow, look at that. Well, that’s a real time saver, isn’t it? Zoom out of that.

Let’s start labeling our profiles. Entire profile. Click add. Bam. Click add. Actually, hit the space bar. That gives me the same command. Space bar. Space bar. Do that again and we’re golden. Look at that.

But as I’m going through my pipe networks, I’ve got a crossing right here between my storm and my sanitary. Now, I’d like to be able to refer back to my profiles whenever I can if I’m ever making a change to this area, and I want to make sure that I have enough depth between these two pipes. Okay. We don’t want these things crossing into each other.

So, as we’re making our edits to this area, I hate having to go back and forth between the plan view and the profile view. See we’ve got our crossing right here. Going back and forth like this is very, very annoying to me, to be quite honest with you. So, I solve that with viewports.

Click two vertical and we can zoom in on our area and zoom in on our profile. So right now as it stands, we have enough clearance between these two pipes, but still, it just makes it nice. It gives me a sense of orientation as to where I’m at within my profile.

Okay. So, I hope that tip helps you. Have a great day.