Civil 3D – Make Smooth Pipes in Section View

Written by Eric Gates.

Are your Civil 3D pipes not smooth in your section views?

Do they look more like diamonds then pipes?

Here is a little gem that will smooth out this problem.

The smoothness of the pipes in the section view is created using the Civil 3D variable Facetdev  (Facet Deviations) which is set at the drawing level at 0.5 as the default.

This variable controls the curvature smoothness of the pipes in section by defining the amount of segments used to create the curves. This means the more segments that make up the pipe edge, the smoother the curve.  The lower the number is set, the more segments are used to draw the pipe, because this number represents the maximum distance from the middle of the segment (chord) to the arc defined by the pipe size.

The maximum segments a curve can have is controlled by the Civil 3D variable Facetmax, which can be set from 100 to 10,000.

Set Facetdev by entering the variable name at the command line and typing a smaller number.  Adjust this number until you are satisfied with the result.  Keep in mind a setting Facetres lowere and Facetmax higher will effect Civil 3D performance.

A good idea is to set these variables in your template drawings, or even make them part of an acaddoc.lsp file. (see previous tip on acad.lsp & acaddoc.lsp)

 

Eric Gates

Eric is EnvisionCAD’s Senior CAD Specialist and provides Civil3D and Autodesk Infrastructure software consulting, management and production assistance.

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2 comments on “Civil 3D – Make Smooth Pipes in Section View

  1. Somebody Reply

    If the variable is saved in the drawing file, then you do not want to add this to your “acaddoc.lsp”. If you do then DBMOD will be changed each time you open a drawing prompting you to save even if you didn’t do anything to the drawing.

  2. Eric Gates Reply

    Thanks for the comment. Very Good point and one that users should be aware of when selecting how to proceed with automation.

    Setting these in a Template drawing has the advantage of the save prompt not being issued, on the other hand it also means that any drawing that was not started using the template will need to be set manually and someone will need to keep track of what those settings and values are.

    Use both or one or the other to best fit your companies workflow.

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