Is there a way to import a AutoCAD Civil3D pressure pipe network into Hammer?

Question

I'm working with civil engineers within my company on a job that they have already designed a pipeline in 3d CAD. They have created a "pressure Network" complete with elevations and slopes and such and I would like to be as exact as possible and use this network in Hammer to do my analysis. Is there a way to import this network with slopes/elevations at the ends of the pipe? I'm not familiar enough with Civil3D to figure out how to make this work for my purposes. 
 
 The profile does a lot of funny things and we just want to be as exact to the design as possible in modeling.

Jesse Dringoli · Accepted Answer

Another factor to consider is how exactly the elevation data is stored in your data source. In HAMMER, elevations are stores at the ends of the pipes in the junctions (or other node elements). The Modelbuilder tool that Mark mentioned can map fields stored in your data source (DXF, shapefile, database, etc) to model element fields, such as Elevation for a junction. However if your elevations are stored as some type of attribute of the pipe, some manipulation may be needed. 
 Typically a HAMMER model will focus on just the main pipes that will tend to experience transient effects. So if this is the case, you could import the pipe network for that area using Modelbuilder in HAMMER. If configured properly, junctions should be created at the ends of the polylines, where there is a change in elevation/slope. You could then key in the elevations at those key points, which may be easier than trying to manipulate the data to import elevations at nodes. HAMMER also has a Terrain Extractor feature that can auto-populate elevations, but if you have a terrain model, it will likely be of the ground elevation. In HAMMER, you'll want the elevations to represent the actual pipe elevations . 
 I noticed you mentioned Civil3D - HAMMER doesn't have a LandXML import option, but our storm and sewer products do. If you have SewerCAD for example and your "pressure network" is stored a pipe network in Civil3D that can be exported to LandXML, SewerCAD can import that. You could then export the SewerCAD model to shapefile format, which should have elevations stored in the node elements, then import that using Modelbuilder in HAMMER.

MPachlhofer · Answer

Kathryn, 
 We have a tool called ModelBuilder that will allow you to import a CAD file (.DXF) or other file types to build the model as it's already been constructed by the other engineers.The easiest way that I've found over the past years to do this is to work with a shapefile rather than a CAD file though. Shapefiles tend to have caused me fewer issues, so if you can export the CAD files to shapefiles that would probably help you in the end. This wiki explains step by step how to use ModelBuilder to construct your model: 
 
 If you do choose to use a CAD file to build your model please refer to the directions found in this wiki: 
 
 ModelBuilder can be used in either the Standalone version of HAMMER, HAMMER for AutoCAD, Hammer for Microstation, or HAMMER for ArcMap. 
 I'm not sure how large this model is that you're referring to, but it might also be a good idea to read this wiki on preparing a model for analysis in HAMMER . It explains how to help assure you're using a skeletonized model that will compute more quickly and easily when you need to run a transient analysis. Doing this will help with the troubleshooting process should need to do any. 
 Regards, 
 Mark