Pipe networks in Civil 3D and Revit

Did you know you can send your C3D pipe networks to Revit as pipe families? Coordination between civil engineers, structural engineers, and architects just got easier with the Speckle C3D connector: extract network pipes and their connecting structures with comprehensive data properties, and recreate entire networks in Revit with just a few clicks!

Prerequisites

To follow along with this tutorial, you will need to register with Speckle and install the required connectors 🔌. It takes less than 3 minutes!

For a comprehensive overview of this connector, check our docs 📚!

If you are not familiar with the basics of sending and receiving models with Speckle Civil 3D or Revit, we strongly recommend following our Getting Started tutorials first before coming back to this one!

Speckle treats pipe network elements as geometry objects with additional properties attached - we refer to these as BIM elements. You can receive these elements in any Speckle connector software as native elements if that software supports them, or as a mesh if not.

We'll take a look at sending pipes and connecting structures from Civil3D, exploring their properties on the web, and receiving them as pipes and direct shapes in Revit.

Send your Civil 3D pipe network with Speckle

Open up your Civil 3D file with pipe network elements, or download our sample file. Select your network elements, and send them to a stream!

Explore your network properties on the web

When you send a C3D pipe to Speckle, a Speckle pipe is created with the following basic properties:

• the base curve
• the diameter and length
• a display mesh representing the volume of the pipe

Additional properties specific to Civil3D are also added if they exist:

• name, description, and its network name
• start and end structures and stations
• cross sectional shape
• flow direction and flow rate

Click the "Open in Browser" button on the top right of your stream in the Civil 3D Speckle connector, and check out these properties in your web browser! Or take a peek at the example pipe network here:

Do more with properties

You can receive your pipe network with our Grasshopper and Dynamo connectors and retrieve element properties directly if you'd like to use them for your fancy computational or generative scripts!

Receive your pipe network in Revit

Open up a new Revit file and receive your pipe network with the Speckle Revit connector. Watch as your pipes come in as Revit pipes, and structures come in as generic models.

Q&A

Can I send my Revit pipes to Civil 3D?

Currently, our Civil 3D connector does not support receiving pipes or other BIM elements, but this feature can be added if you ask nicely on our forum 🙃

Why can't I send my pressure pipes?

The Civil 3D API doesn't support pressure network element access at this point, and unfortunately our connectors are limited by their corresponding software APIs. If Autodesk updates their API, we'll add them to our connector!

Conclusion

We hope you enjoyed this tutorial and found it useful!

Speckle is an Open Source project and we really ❤️ feedback, so if you have any questions, comments, critiques, or praises please let us know on our community forum.