Thursday, 31 January 2019
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In my 20 years of irrigation design on CAD systems, I have yet to get any software to correctly size piping on a golf course.  I end up sizing it the old fashioned way (manually) much faster.  Every so often when do a golf course irrigation design (using valve in head rotors of course), I attempt to have the software size the pipe for me, when I have time.  Just the prep work involved with flow zones for each individual fairway, green and tee is time consuming.  The big problem I have though is when I attempt to "size mainline".  Most recently on a smaller 9 hole course, I actually let it attempt to size the mainline overnight.  When I came back to it in the morning it was still on the first pass, it was at something like valve path 11,000 of 18,000.  I quit the process and found most of the pipe was sized, and pretty close to how I would have done it, so maybe it's getting better.  I understand with golf courses it's much more complex thanks to loops within loops within more loops, etc... 

I just want to ask the question, is it normal to be that slow or am I perhaps doing something wrong? 

I'll continue to just size piping on Golf Courses manually for now (I'll always be more comfortable with the manual method anyway), but if there have been any enhancements to the software in regards to golf course irrigation that I'm missing, let me know.  It's been a while since I reviewed the webinar, then again that video is over 3 years old.  It might be a good refresher though...


Thank you!

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We do have an upcoming webinar on golf irrigation, although I don’t believe it is going to go into detail regarding sizing. 

As you note, we have most pieces in place. For now, we recommend closing Shut-Off Valves, and sizing just for each green and fairway at a time. 

The pending final perfection, is going to be adding the logic to discard certain valve paths. Of the 18,000 in your case, it needs to get that down to certainly no more that 1,000. A previous attempt at this was not perfect, and left some pipe segments unsized. 

As part of the prep for the upcoming webinar, we’re hoping to get some of these golf wishlist items tackled. 

 

—J

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We do have an upcoming webinar on golf irrigation, although I don’t believe it is going to go into detail regarding sizing. 

As you note, we have most pieces in place. For now, we recommend closing Shut-Off Valves, and sizing just for each green and fairway at a time. 

The pending final perfection, is going to be adding the logic to discard certain valve paths. Of the 18,000 in your case, it needs to get that down to certainly no more that 1,000. A previous attempt at this was not perfect, and left some pipe segments unsized. 

As part of the prep for the upcoming webinar, we’re hoping to get some of these golf wishlist items tackled. 

 

—J

Thank you for the update J!  I just wanted to make sure that it wasn't just me doing something incorrect.

I had a brainstorm this morning (in the shower of course!), and have an idea on how to reduce the number of valve paths.

If you could send over that design through the Tech Support feature, I'd like to try out some code on it.

 

--J

I sent it over on a support ticket J.  Good luck!

I just replied to your tech support ticket.

Our VIH support for sizing mainline already supports piping Lateral pipe, from the Shut-Off Valves to the VIH rotors, to help the system prevent from creating an infinite number of valve paths.  Once we redrew that pipe in your drawing as Lateral pipe, it was fewer than 400 total valve paths, and took about 2 minutes to size.

 

--J

2 years ago
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#4638
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Sorry to open up an old post, but I'm working on a re-use irrigation system that utilizes a VIH system, much like the original post, and I'm having a similar issue with the length of time it takes to size the mainline. I started with caps for the future demand in each zone and it worked in less than a minute. Once I've added the heads into the sizing, using lateral pipes as suggested above, the time for sizing becomes unreasonable for us to use for production. We've been using WaterCAD to size our mains and then use separate POC's for each zone with the appropriate pressure from the water model.

I also want to make sure that I'm not setting this up incorrectly like the OP feared. The sizing when using caps works great and is very close to what we would normally expect in terms of size. I'm enjoying the integration within LandFX features and want to be able to fully utilize its capabilities. Any help is appreciated.
Clay,

If you send in your files, we can use them as a test case and see what can be done.
We have plans to revisit the VIH pipe sizing this summer.

--J
2 years ago
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#4640
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Submitted the support ticket last night. Thanks and I look forward to your VIH updates.
2 years ago
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#4747
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Clay,

If you send in your files, we can use them as a test case and see what can be done.
We have plans to revisit the VIH pipe sizing this summer.

--J


Just wanted to follow up to see if there was an upcoming update on the VIH pipe sizing?
Clay,

We have assembled a few test cases, and have schedule some time over the next two months to investigate the VIH pipe sizing.
We are also currently working on revising the data stored with irrigation objects in the drawing, which should improve the performance of sizing.

--J
2 years ago
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#4752
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That sounds great. Thanks for the update J!
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