Levels for "junction" items
When using the "junction" connection item, it always sets the cover level on the item to 0. This is true even if you had a manhole that had a proper cover and invert level input, if you switch the manhole to a junction (for instance because you don't want to falsely include the volume of a manhole that isn't actually there) then it jumps the cover to 0 and the invert to -1.5. (It might not do it if you have a ground model in, not sure, I usually work without).
You can fix it by going across to the pipe data and changing the upstream/downstream cover and invert levels there back to what they should be, but if you have three pipes that's six bits of data to edit, and because you manually edited the pipe data you have "disconnected" those pipes from each other and from the junction, so if you update values around them they will no longer follow those updates and need to be manually updated forever afterwards.
Could the "junction" item have the ability to input a cover and invert, which would then be adopted by all the incoming and outgoing pipes, so that it is exactly like a manhole with no volume, and so that if I move something I only have to change the level once, at the junction, instead of having to change every pipe?
Lucy Moxon
shared this idea
Thank you for the suggestion and thanks to those who commented and voted.
In InfoDrainage, junctions are used as nodes without volume to enable modelling a Y or T junction, or it could be a point in the middle of a culvert that is getting wider for some reason.
You are right; when the pipe US and DS cover levels are 0, and the junction has a level of 0, the model will find no way to design the system and run the design wizard. Therefore, to address this, we've implemented a warning message that will stop users from proceeding with the design if they have junctions and the associated ends of the pipe have a 0 level (that hasn't been overwritten). Users can still use the level 0 but they need to overwrite the default 0 to proceed. The warning message will be made available to users in a future release of InfoDrainage.
As for the simulation, junctions are ignored during the simulation, so their level won't have any impact as long as the levels of the pipes are set correctly.