Irrigation Tips & Tricks

• Intro & TOC
• Common Functions & Tools
• Placing Equipment
• Editing, Revision, and Verification Tools
• Schedules
• Caps

0:00 – 3:06: Intro & TOC

3:07 – 26:19: Common Functions & Tools

Suggestion: Once you’ve added all your equipment to your project, run an Irrigation Schedule with the Entire Palette option selected. This practice will give you a guide in case equipment is accidentally deleted from your project. (3:40)

 

 

NCOPY Command: Allows you to select nested objects from an Xref and bring them into the main drawing. (5:30)

 

 

Placing Equipment (6:50)

 

 

Shortcut keys (Press K when placing equipment to see the available keyboard commands) (7:50)

 

 

Example: Use the E key to upgrade the nozzle size for a head, then use the R and Tab keys to toggle through the available nozzle sizes (8:30)

 

 

Placing heads using our Copy Along Polyline tool (9:00)

 

 

Using Match Head to place heads (10:13)

 

 

Using our Smart Arc tool to record a head’s nozzle size and place that nozzle (10:25)

 

 

Copy Along Polyline respects fixed arcs recorded with the Smart Arc tool. (11:15)

 

 

Offsetting a polyline and using Copy Along Polyline to place additional heads (13:00)

 

 

Options for piping (14:40)

 

Using the Circuit tool to create zones before laying out the system design (14:55)

 

 

Toggling a zone layer on and off while drawing lateral pipe by pressing the Z key (15:25)

 

 

Pressing H for Head AutoSnap to snap pipe to heads automatically when dragging over them, without the need to click (15:55)

 

 

Pressing U for Unhook to disconnect pipe from a head and make changes (16:30)

 

 

Checking the flow for a zone in the Command line (16:50)

 

 

Snapping pipe to a specific angle in Ortho mode by pressing S for Snap Angle tool (example: following a building line) (17:07)

 

 

Non-plot layer for initial mainline layout, along with the ability to toggle between mainline layers by pressing the T key while drawing mainline pipe (18:30)

 

 

Drawing curved mainline by pressing A forArc (20:00)

 

 

Placing valves (20:45)

 

 

Note that valves connect automatically to mainline pipe when placed upon it.

 

 

Options for placing valve callouts (22:10)

 

 

Deleting valves using the Delete Station tool (23:50)

 

 

Note: We’ve applied an optional background mask to our valve callouts. (25:30)

 

 

26:20 – 43:54: Editing, Revision, and Verification Tools

 

Trading out one piece of equipment for another using our Match Properties tool (27:20)

 

(Note: You can draw a window to trade out multiple pieces of the same equipment at a time.)

 

 

Checking the flow for a valve/station using our Highlight Station tool (29:20)

 

 

Adding a color for the mainline by pressing the C key (31:00)

 

 

Using the Verify Mainline tool to ensure that (32:55):

• The drawing has no errant pipe fittings/callouts
• Valve callouts are all pointing to a valve
• A controller has been placed
• All laterals have been sized, all valves have been piped
• All valves have been called out

 

 

Option (when assigning a number to a valve) to duplicate a valve number that has already been taken or to increment the remainder of the valve numbers to account for the new number (35:25)

 

 

Using the Verify Laterals tool to find heads not connected to a valve and locate errant linework (36:50)

 

(Note: Remember to clean your drawings and to zoom to extents in order to see any errant linework.)

 

 

Using our Uniformity tool to see how many heads are covering an area and determine coverage with a color-coded pattern (39:40)

 

 

Creating a flow zone around a group of heads to determine the area’s flow – even when the heads aren’t connected to a valve (42:00)

43:55 – 58:19: Schedules

 

Valve Schedules (44:50)

 

Running a Valve Schedule and creating a system of colorized zones (44:50)

 

 

Showing wire lengths and including elevations (46:10)

 

 

Overview of a Valve Schedule, including using the Valve Schedule to locate an unlabeled valve (46:55)

 

Regenerating the Valve Schedule to reflect changes in the system design (52:10)

 

 

Editing a valve in the Block Editor and resizing the lateral pipes to improve the valve’s precip rate (53:05)

 

 

Watering Schedules (55:00)

 

Sending a Watering Schedule to a spreadsheet. Note that formulas are added to the spreadsheet automatically. (55:50)

 

 

Runtime Schedules (57:20)

58:20 – end: Caps

Placing caps on lateral or mainline pipe and sizing the pipe to account for future demand (58:20)