The H-Factor

This is the second in a series of posts on how to self-diagnose errors
you may encounter while elevating your drawing to 3D or while running
AutoCalc or AutoList. HydraCAD includes a number of tools to assist you
with the diagnosis and correction of these errors, and these post will
review some of them.

Sometimes when you AutoCalc only some of your pipes actually make it to HydraCALC, or you get an error that prevents you from loading the job into HydraCALC. Both of these can be traced back to a problem with how your pipes are connected.

 The drawing below would not calculate for a customer:

They got the following error when the AutoCalc process handed the job off to HydraCALC:

Here is how we diagnosed the problem:

1. We started the AutoCalc Process (SAC)…

2. …and picked the Check Model button. This analyzes the piping system starting at the supply and proceeding as far as it can. When complete, this highlights all the flowing pipe using dark blue polylines, starting at the supply. The problem area becomes apparent immediately:

The dark blue pline doesn't make it very far. After we zoomed into the end of it, we were able to see an unusual piping arrangement that was to blame for the problem. Once that was reconfigured, we started the process again and picked Check Model again and all of the piping was traced in blue this time.

Using the Check Model button is similar to the old View Flowing Pipes and Paths feature in V45 and earlier versions of HydraCAD. Try is next time, problem or no.