Jermiah,

Thank you for the quick response! It makes sense that is in place for conceptual development. I can imagine that it is difficult to have to accommodate the design methods that vary drastically. For our region, water resources are critical, and the plant palette we have to select from is enormous and varied so it makes most sense for us to specify as emitters on a plant by plant basis as you suggested. In the short term, the multiple drip area would allow us to differentiate, but the best solution would be for us to be able to access the plant list. I am attaching a screenshot of a typical emitter schedule that we produce.

Thanks,

Andre

PS I have looked at your forums A LOT, and you guys are always super helpful! You all are a good group of people.

Andre,

Thanks for sharing that.

Yeah, that was pretty much our assumption, that generating something like that would be necessary.  We could piggy-back off of the Plant Schedule, so it could certainly be generated quickly and accurately, it just would require a large amount of space on the sheet.

The multiple Drip Emitter Areas should be available in the next month or two.  But being able to assign emitters by plant will require much more engineering, but is definitely on our radar.

--J

Was just thinking about all this as I was assigning emitters.  Not sure if it should continue here or be a new thread. 

A thought I had was could it be possible to add fractions to the "Number of" list.  This would allow for using a multiport to water multiple plants. 

Ex. Bowsmith ML200 has 6 ports so offer a 1/6, 2/6, 3/6 . . .  option.  The legend would of course then have to do the math to provide an accurate count.  Of course this would only work if all plants were using the same precip rate emitter and the designer would have to determine lowest common GPH and specify additional outlets for higher water requirements plants. 

There's probably no way to get a perfect system so it might be all for not.

In either case it's still an amazing piece of software and it would be difficult to work at an office that doesn't have it. 

cmunson1,

This capability is something we have discussed in the past, and it is definitely a valid thought. However, each time we think about how it could be done, we end at the same result: We are simply unable to create a scenario where a multi-port emitter “knows” which emitter to assign to which shrub.

Simply placing the emitters individually and making a note with instructions for the contractor outweighs the sheer volume of code it would take to accomplish those calculations.

The additional thought of what the contractor will actually do vs. what the designer says on the plan also weighs on our minds. Past the design phase, what the contractor does in the field is often out of the designer’s control, so if you choose to use the multi-port emitter, the system will fill every spot with the emitter size you select so it can handle the worst- case scenario.

I hope this explanation helps ease your mind so you can come up with the next great feature we can implement!

What we do is add custom container sizes 5-gal Tropical, 15-gal Desert, 1-Gal Accent, Etc. and then you can control how many emitters and what size they each get based on size and description. our job might have 9-12 shrub container sizes if it is something that requires extreme irrigation control.

Just a thought.

Bob

Bob, 

Thanks.

That's the same work around I thought of also.  Glad to hear others are using it with success. 

-Clay