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Michael Kinnear/3 min read

Annotating Pipe Networks in Civil 3D: A Step-by-Step Guide

Pipe Network Labels

Pipe Labels

Length, slope, material, size along each pipe segment.

Structure Labels

Rim and invert elevations on manholes and structures.

Profile View Labels

Pipe and structure crossings in profile view.

Tables

Auto-generated pipe and structure tables for documentation.

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This Civil 3D tutorial walks through annotating pipe networks in civil 3d, covering essential tools and techniques for your projects.

So, now that we have our pipe network in a profile view and we also have it in plan view, we're going to go ahead and talk about annotating pipe networks. So, as we've done before on annotating objects in Civil 3D, we're going to go ahead and use this annotation dropdown.

This is my favorite way to annotate things inside Civil 3D. If you want to have a little bit more control over adding labels, you can go to Annotate and select Add Labels, or you can select Annotate > Add Labels from here to bring up the Add Labels window, where you can then select the type of label you want to add. So, you can go to Pipe Network and select the type of label you want to add, and then select the style you want to add.

I generally like to quickly add the label and then make modifications as I need. So, I'm going to go ahead and go to Annotation. I'm going to go ahead and go to Pipe Network Labels, and then I'm going to go ahead and select Entire Network in Plan, and then I will do Individual Pipes in a profile.

So, I'm going to go ahead and select Entire Network in Plan. Now, Civil 3D is prompting me to select a part contained in the network to be labeled. So, I can pick any part inside of my network.

I'm going to go ahead and select this structure, and from here, you can see that Civil 3D has now added all of the labels for all of my structures and for my pipes. So, I can go ahead and take these labels now and do edits to them as I need. So, what we've got going on here is I can take this structure, move it out, and it gives me information on my rim, my sump, my station, if I had an associated alignment, which I do not, the Structure ID, Invert In, and what type of pipe is coming into it.

So, these are all pieces of information that can get modified based on your Label Styles. So, we'll get into talking about Label Styles after this. So, I've got these structures put in.

I probably don't need the structure labels. They're a little bit overkill, but I do really enjoy having these labels for my pipes so that I know the length of the pipe, I know the size of the pipe, I know the slope of the pipe. So, this is great.

I'm going to go ahead and go into my profile view. I'm going to go to the Annotation tab. I'm going to go ahead and go to my Pipe Network Labels.

I'm going to go to Single Part in Profile. Now, we don't have a section view, but if you wanted to do network parts in a section view, that's here. So, we can go ahead and select that, but I'm going to go ahead and do Single Part in Profile.

So, clicking Single Part in Profile, Civil 3D is asking me to select a structure or pipe in a profile view. I can go ahead and select this pipe, and Civil 3D places that label for me. I can go ahead and pick this structure, and Civil 3D will place that label for me as well.

So, I'm going to go ahead and actually place these labels on all the pipes, and then I'm going to go ahead and save this drawing, and then we'll discuss Label Styles for pipe networks.