Importing a CAD Drawing- WaterCAD V8i

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Importing A CAD Drawing Using Modelbuilder [TN]

Applies To Bentley WaterCAD, Bentley WaterGEMS, Bentley HAMMER, Product(s): Bentley StormCAD, Bentley SewerCAD, Bentley SewerGEMS, Bentley CivilStorm

Version(s): 08.11.XX.XX

Environment: N/A

Area: Layout and Data Input Subarea: N/A Original Jesse Dringoli, Bentley Technical Support Group Author:

Overview Some older versions of the Hydraulics and Hydrology product line (WaterCAD, WaterGEMS, StormCAD and SewerCAD) used a much different procedure for converting "polylines to pipes", compared to the 08.XX.XX.XX versions. This TechNote provides tips and techniques for effectively importing a CAD drawing into V8 XM or V8i using the new method. This procedure is similar for WaterCAD, WaterGEMS, HAMMER, StormCAD, SewerCAD, SewerGEMS, and CivilStorm.

Background In older versions of WaterCAD, WaterGEMS, StormCAD and SewerCAD, the user would import a CAD drawing (.dxf or .dwg) via File > File > Import Import > Polyline to Pipe. Pipe. Upon release of the V8 XM edition, this functionality was mer ed into into Modelb Modelbui uild lder er,, whic which h is is a ower owerful ful tool tool used used to im ort man differ differen entt t es of data. data. Sinc Since e the the ste ste s

Importing A CAD Drawing Using Modelbuilder [TN] - Hydraulics and ...

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for a CAD drawing, which could initially cause some confusion to new users of V8 XM and V8i.

Preparing the CAD Drawing 1. First, you should take some time to clean up your CAD drawing prior to performing the conversion. Look for entities that should not be converted, such as leader lines, and move them to their own layer. Turn off or remove layers that you do not wish to convert. Do a quick review of your drawing and correct any potential conversion problems that you may find. ��: �� "��" �� , �� .

2. Next you will need to save your CAD drawing into a DXF format, as this is the only format that Modelbuilder currently accepts. DXF is the "drawing exchange format", so almost all CAD programs have the ability to save to it. Whenever possible, try to save to the earliest DXF format, for better compatibility. For example, in AutoCAD, go to File > Save As, and choose "2004 DXF" as the format.

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1. Open WaterCAD/GEMS and start a new project. Ensure that the correct unit system is specified.Go to Tools > User Data Extensions. 2. Right click on "Pipe" and choose to create a new user data extension. We will import the layer name into this field so that we can assign diameters at a later point. Give it a name, keep the default data type of "Text" and click OK.



3. Start Modelbuilder by going to Tools > Modelbuilder. In the main window, click the "New" button to start a new Modelbuilder run. 4. In the first step, select "CAD Files" as the Data Source type and browse to your .dxf file. Once selected, a table will be displayed in the lower left corner, showing all the layers that exist in the drawing. Layers that you would like to be imported should be checked. Unchecked layers will not be imported. The layer type will be displayed after the name of each layer, showing you if the layer contains points, lines, or polygons. In this example, we have checked only the layers that represent water distribution pipes of various diameters. Layers containing roads, annotations and other irrelevant items have been unchecked:



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5. Click the Next button to proceed to the second step. In this step, you should select the appropriate unit and also make sure the check box next to "Establish connectivity using spatial data" is checked. This option allows Modelbuilder to use the spatial information inside the CAD file (lengths, coordinates of endpoints/bends, etc) to build the model, instead of the user needing to explicitly specify the start/stop node (which is typically not possible for a CAD drawing.) In addition to this, the "Tolerance" field will allow Modelbuilder to automatically connect pipe end points that are within the specified value. Make sure "Create nodes if none found at pipe endpoint" is checked. In most cases, only polylines are imported from a CAD drawing, so you'll want junctions to be created at the ends of these.



For the "Tolerance" options, take the following CAD line for example:

In this zoomed-in view, notice that a gap exists due to drawing imperfections. This gap is 1.5ft wide. Now, if we import this CAD file with 1ft set as the tolerance, it will create two nodes at the actual end points of these pipes:



This is because the distance between the end points was not within the tolerance. If we were to instead import this drawing with a 2ft tolerance, it would connect these end points and join them at a junction:

6. In the next Modelbuilder step, you will only need to keep the "Add objects to destination if present in source" box checked, since we are creating new elements based on the CAD drawing data. 7. In the next step, accept "Current scenario" and "Label". 8. In the next step, you must configure how the data in each layer is mapped to WaterCAD/GEMS. Click each layer from the list on the left and then configure the attributes on the right:

"Table Type" This is used to select the type of element that a layer will be imported as. For a CAD file, you will most likely be importing polylines only. So, this field will be set to "Pipe" (for WaterCAD, WaterGEMS and HAMMER) or "Conduit" (for SewerCAD, SewerGEMS and CivilStorm).



This is the field used to create labels for the elements created by the modelbuilder process. It is also used to link up elements when updating existing ones. In the case of importing a CAD drawing, most likely a field containing unique labels does not exist for the polylines. So, you should select "" for each layer. This will cause Modelbuilder to automatically generate unique labels, utilizing a combination of an element's layer type label, its shape type, and a numeric ID that represents the order in which it was created. "Start"/"Stop" Choosing the "Establish connectivity using spatial data" causes the connectivity information to be taken from the CAD drawing, so you do not need to specify a start/stop node field for the pipes/lines. So, simply leave these as "". "Attribute" At the bottom right corner of this Modelbuilder step, the user can link fields in the source data to fields in the program. In the case of a CAD drawing, typically there are no additional, useful attributes. However, you could link the "Layer" field to the user data extension attribute that you created in step 2. In this example, the user data extension was named "AutoCADLayer":

By linking this field, there will be an attribute in the WaterCAD/GEMS model that contains the name of the layer that the pipe came from. Later on this will be useful.



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9. In the last Modelbuilder step, choose to build the model. Modelbuilder will then import the layers and provide you with a summary, including a "Messages" tab that you can use to view informational messages about the import process. In this case, there are some messages about nodes being created due to missing start/stop nodes. This is expected since we were only importing polylines, with the "Create nodes if none found at endpoint" option selected.

10. After closing the summary and closing Modelbuilder, you will be prompted to synchronize the drawing. Choose "Yes" and your model should show up in the drawing area. If it does not, then go to View > Zoom > Zoom Extents.



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Assigning Pipe Diameters Now that our model has been created, we can assign diameters to the pipes, based on the layer attribute that we imported. 1. Open the pipe flextable via View > Flextables. 2. Click the yellow Edit button ( ) and add your user data extension. To do this, first find it in the list on the left side, click on it, and then click the single arrow button pointing to the right side. Click OK and you will now see a column in the flextable, containing the layer that each pipe came from. In our example case, the layer "12_WATER" represents 12" pipes, "16_WATER" represents 16" pipes, and so forth.



3. Right click on any of the column headers, choose "Filter", and select "Custom". In the query window, double click on your user data extension field from the list on the left and click the equals sign button. Then, click the green button on the top-right corner to retrieve a list of unique values from this field. Double click on one of the diameters (layer names) shown. In our example case, we'll start with the 10" layer:



When you click OK in the query window, the flextable will be filtered to only show pipes that came from the layer that you queried on (those from the "10_WATER" layer in our example case.)

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4. Now, assign the correct diameter by right clicking on the "Diameter" column header and choosing "Global Edit". Keep the operation as "Set", and enter the appropriate diameter as the value. Click OK and your diameters will be assigned. 5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 for each layer, assigning out all your diameters.

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See Also Product TechNotes and FAQs Haestad Methods Product Tech Notes And FAQs

External Links Water and Wastewater Forums Bentley Technical Support KnowledgeBase Bentley LEARN Server

Importing a CAD Drawing- WaterCAD V8i

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