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Displaying Manholes and Pipes in 3D Analyst

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03-04-2011 10:22 AM
MatthewBoyle
by
Frequent Contributor
‎03-04-2011 10:22 AM
Does anyone have a good way to displaying manholes and pipes within 3D Analyst?  I have a rim elevation, structure depth and invert elevation for manholes and for pipes I an upstream and downstream elevation.  To me, these seem to be the necessary ingredients for displaying these feature classes in 3D.  I'm wondering if anyone has tried doing this and if it's successful?  If so, what settings do I have to set in ArcScene or ArcGlobe to view a pipe network in 3D.

Thanks!
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NicholasGross
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Deactivated User
‎03-31-2011 04:50 AM
Does anyone have a good way to displaying manholes and pipes within 3D Analyst?  I have a rim elevation, structure depth and invert elevation for manholes and for pipes I an upstream and downstream elevation.  To me, these seem to be the necessary ingredients for displaying these feature classes in 3D.  I'm wondering if anyone has tried doing this and if it's successful?  If so, what settings do I have to set in ArcScene or ArcGlobe to view a pipe network in 3D.

Thanks!


I'm using a 60 day trial of 3D Analyst so I'm pretty new to this stuff, but I was able to accomplish this using the 'Feature to 3D by Attribute' tool. For manholes, set the height field to your invert elevations, these will then need to be extruded to the casting elevation height (you could also use your depth field without base heights in ArcScene, but assuming your pipe elevations are relative to sea level, they would not match up properly).

Use the same tool for your mains, this time using your upstream elevations for the 'Height Field' and downstream elevations for the 'To Height Field'.

Depending on the shallowness of your manholes, you may need to exaggerate the z values to really see what's going on.

To be perfectly honest, aside from the WOW factor of seeing your utilities in 3D for the first time, I really haven't found much practical application for 3D Analyst in a utility network. It really just looks like a maze, no geometric network analysis can be done in 3D, and the application really slows down when you start getting elevation rasters involved unless you clip them to a tight AOI. Then again, I haven't been working with it for long...3D is cool enough that, until my trial runs out, I'll keep looking for ways to MAKE it have a useful purpose 😉
GrantHerbert
by
Frequent Contributor
‎05-25-2011 07:50 PM
I have done the same process and it does work quite well. Symbolising pipes can be an issue, I couldn't get proportional symbols based on pipe diameter to work properly.


To be perfectly honest, aside from the WOW factor of seeing your utilities in 3D for the first time, I really haven't found much practical application for 3D Analyst in a utility network.


One use is to immediatley spot erroneous z attribute values, these show up very quickly.
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