Duct Banks - Intergraph Smart 3D - Help

Intergraph Smart 3D Electrical

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English
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Intergraph Smart 3D
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Smart 3D Version
11 (2016)
SmartPlant Foundation / SDx Version
10

A duct bank is a collection of conduits for the underground routing of electric and telephone lines, as well as other utilities, protected by a concrete encasement. In general, two or more conduits routed side by side create a bank. Duct banks are generally sloped to drain condensation.

A duct bank system consists of the following:

  • Duct banks entering the ground

  • Duct banks exchanging cables at pull pits or manholes

  • Duct banks emerging from the ground

The software allows you to route both the casing and its conduits simultaneously. You can later customize each conduit, as necessary. In addition, you can also join a conduit in one duct bank with a conduit in another duct bank at a pull pit or manhole using the Auto Connect command. After modeling, you can generate drawings and reports for the duct banks.

You create duct banks using the Route Cableway command with a duct bank specification. On the Create New Run dialog, you select the duct bank specification and the Multi-Route tab changes to the Duct Bank tab. You use this tab to design the duct bank. You can set all conduits to the same size and relative position, or you can define the individual conduit runs on the Duct Bank tab. See Duct banks.

Recommended Work Flow

We recommend that you route the entire duct bank as a continuous segment. Routing two or more discontinuous segments might duplicate the cross-section values for each segment. You need to resolve any incompatibilities that might arise during the merging of discontinuous segments.

Modifying Duct Banks

After you have modeled the duct bank, you might need to modify it. The available modifications include the following:

  • Delete or move the duct bank as a whole or move a section of the duct bank.

  • Extend or shrink the duct bank.

  • Change the angle of the turns.

  • Modify the relative position of a conduit in a duct bank.

  • Add or remove conduit from the duct bank.

  • Extend the end of conduit past the encasement end.

  • Merge two segments of a duct bank.

    Before merging two duct bank segments, make sure that the conduits have matching cross-sections and signal types or merge the two segments using Auto Connect.

Pull Pits and Manholes

Pull pits are concrete chambers where a cable from a conduit in one duct bank is fed to a conduit in another duct bank. Use Place Equipment to place the pull pit. You can route duct banks out of the pull pit. To route cables in the duct bank, the cable paths must be contiguous. Use Auto Connect Cableways Command and zero-spec cableway (Cws-0) to connect the conduits at the pull pit.

Minimize auto-connect counts to join only necessary conduits based on purpose of pull-pit. If pulpit is used in long duct bank just for a straight pulling when conduit length would exceed distance for pulling cables, auto-connect should be done just between corresponding conduits, if pulpit is to split cables between more duct banks (branching) or if I need to change cable to another side as will be branching out between pull-pits in next section, auto-connect can be done specifically between corresponding conduits of identical signal type to achieve that.

Branching Duct Banks

A duct bank might need to branch at some point to reach all its destinations. When branching occurs, the number of conduits from the original duct bank might not match the number of conduits in the branch. That is, each branch may carry only a subset of the original conduits.

  • To route duct banks, select the DBS-0 duct bank specification on the New Cableway Dialog.

  • To successfully move the duct bank, select the entire duct bank: conduits and encasement.

  • Use Format > Surface Style Rules to set the pull pit color to translucent so that you can accurately branch the cables. You can also set the encasement color to translucent. Setting the encasement to translucent is also helpful. Similarly, you can apply styles based on conduit signal types to verify that multiple signal types in a duct bank maintain continuity. You can set the colors use Format > Surface Style Rules.

  • On the Duct Bank tab cross section, row 1 (x) is at the bottom and column 1 (y) is on the left. The cross section origin is indicated by a blue point to provide orientation feedback.

Enclosing Run and Enclosed Run

To modify a conduit in the duct bank, select Enclosed Runs (inner conduit runs) from the Locate Filter. To select an entire duct run select Enclosing Runs (outer duct bank cableway run).

Enclosing Run

Enclosed Run