Tricks & Tips for fast irrigation drafting

I'll go!

Use head auto snap.

Draw your mainline first, if you can, then drop your valves right onto it.

When you have a bunch of areas exactly the same, like square tree wells or planting areas in pavement, do your head/bubbler/drip area polyline layout, then copy and paste. For example, I'll put three bubbler symbols around a tree, then just copy them over to all the other similar trees. Do this BEFORE you draw and size the pipe.

Use "copy along a line" and "copy along a polyline" a LOT.

For polylines for drip areas, copy them over from an xref, if you can. Get good at breaking and joining polylines if you need to divide up large areas. I have a client that shows hydrozone areas on their plans, so I just copy those p-lines over into my drawing.

Use Verify Laterals frequently to catch pipe hops and unpiped emitters as you work, instead of saving it all for the end. This is very helpful on large projects.

Size your main line frequently as you work to make sure you stay within the hydraulic parameters.

For page layouts, in model space I'll put a matchline on a non-plot layer and use that to line up my viewports in paper space. Then I'll use the LandFX matchline in paper space.

I like to screen back the plant symbols in the xref'd planting plan, so I can see tree locations, etc. It helps, obviously, with placing tree irrigation, and, for lateral pipe routing, so I'm not showing pipe under a tree root ball.

That's what I can think of for now.

Who else has tips?

Tom

I will add to Tom's suggestions:
-If you have repetitive emitter or equal head areas, pipe them and use XCOPY and XCORO
-For polylines for drip areas- Use the BOUNDARY command to quickly create new closed polyline areas.
-If you need to split and divide areas, use the Polydivide Tool
-Try using the New Viewport tool

If making modifications to a plan, make sure you are using the following tools to your advantage:
Move Piped Equipment
Delete Station
Mimic Equipment
Clone Equipment

Nibal,

Keep a little chrome clicker so that you can count each head. Then look at the catalog to see what the flow is for each variation of head. Then have a chart or memorize the flow and velocities for each size and type of pipe. You should have a hard-copy of the plan on your drafting table so you can keep notes of flows as you calculate. AND THEN hope that a change never happens. "Count the water". OMG. People don't even know that term nowadays.

Or just use LandFX. <smirk>

Nibal, You know that I'm just kidding.

Tom's and Jakes suggestions are great. I'd append Tom's suggestion only to incorporate one of Jakes suggestions into his workflow (Your welcome Tom). We also use multiple bubblers (or drip ring with a flush valve and a transition point), but we'll connect these elements with laterals. But if you want to copy these together you have to use XCOPY. Not Copy. This will allow LandFX to notice them as distinctly separate elements. One way to test to ensure that it's working properly is to Xcopy the elements once and then use the LandFX move Piped Equipment. It will be obvious if it worked (or more obvious if didn't as the piece to be moved attaches itself to the original).

"Count water."

Seaweed

Happy Holidays to you and yours!

I admit, I have never used XCOPY....