Bulletin UASVM Agriculture, 66 (2)/2009

Print ISSN 1843-5246; Electronic ISSN 1843-5386

AutoCAD Civil 3D 2010 with Hydraflow Extension

Powerful Software for Drainage Design
Irina GRIGORE 1), Severin CAZANESCU 2), Raluca Alexandra CAZANESCU2)
1)
IPCT INSTALATII, 21Tudor Arghezi Street, Bucharest,Romania; irina@ipctinst.ro
2)
Land Reclamation and Environmental Engineering Faculty, USAMV,
59 Marasti Boulevard, Sector 1, Bucharest, Romania; cazanescu@gmail.com

Abstract. In our days, communities have to face high level of water and food consumption
based on uncertain supplies and growing demands. Thus, they work to prevent floods, soil erosion, to
supply fresh water for population, industry and irrigation and to redirect streams and rivers in order to
increase the food production. On the other hand, climate changes increased the frequency of extreme
events like droughts and floods, and water management became a matter of great concern, in order to
protect and preserve fertile land and drinkable water resources. Powerful software are needed to help
environmental specialists to develop reliable projects for sustainable land development, in a short
time. In the present paper, we will briefly present AutoCAD Civil 3D 2010, the most powerful
software application released by Autodesk Inc., a short time ago. Using AutoCAD Civil 3D 2010
components together with new set of extensions, named Hydraflow Extension, land development
specialists can deal with a large variety of hydrologic and hydraulic aspects, such as delineating
watersheds and drainage areas and computing time of concentration and other rainfall-runoff
relationship for the designated basins.

Keywords: Civil3D, Hydraflow Extension, sewage, drainage, irrigation

INTRODUCTION

AutoCAD Civil 3d 2010 is a powerful designing solution based on a new software

approach, which provides a full set of tools to help land development professionals, as well as
drainage and irrigation engineers to develop a new workflow for their land and water projects.
The process is based on a digital design for hydrology and hydraulics.
This way, the process of analyzing, designing and documenting new and sustainable
projects becomes faster and easier.
In the past, users had to work with spreadsheets and other third party products to
analyze the hydraulics and hydrology of civil engineering projects due to the lack of
functionality in Civil 3D. With the Hydraflow Extensions, customers now have a solution that
is included with Civil 3D and supported by Autodesk, eliminating the need for third party
solutions. Hydraflow Extensions are easy-to-use and easy-to-learn programs that help you
solve problems ranging from simple to very complex design and analysis.
Now, using modern software tools and a fully redesigned User Interface, AutoCAD
Civil 3D 2010 allows the large watersheds and land areas to be more effectively mapped and
studied by importing and analyzing a large amount of information, including Geographic
Information System (GIS) data.
Topography for large sites can be imported from a big variety of sources, in order to
build surface terrain models for land and watershed.

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 MATERIALS AND METHODS

In order to increase the power of the software application and to facilitate the
hydrologic and hydraulic design, Autodesk added three new extensions to the core
application, as follows:

1) Hydraflow Express Extension – a collection of powerful calculators to help solving

everyday hydraulics and hydrology challenges;
The Hydraflow Storm Sewers Extension for AutoCAD Civil 3D is a full-featured
storm sewer design and analysis package. This extension adds important technology to
the environmental engineering solutions.

2) Hydraflow Hydrographs Extension – a comprehensive solution for watershed

analysis and detension pond designs;
The Hydraflow Hydrographs Extension for AutoCAD Civil 3D software extension is a
comprehensive solution for watershed analysis and detention pond design, from simple
sites to complex watersheds with interconnected ponds.

3) Hydraflow Storm Sewers Extension – a full-featured, easy-to-use storm sewer

design and analysis package.
The Hydraflow Express Extension for AutoCAD Civil 3D software provides you a
collection of powerful calculators that solve everyday hydraulics and hydrology
problems. It addresses a wide variety of tasks including culverts, open channels, inlets,
hydrology and weirs.

In AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008, these hydrologic and hydraulics extensions were

available only for subscription payers, while in AutoCAD Civil 3D 2009, all three extensions
were delivered with the main software application, but as separate add-ons.
Only beginning with AutoCAD Civil 3D 2010, Hydraflow Extensions are delivered
with the main application and are fully integrated in this highly effective software.
Designing and analyzing stormwater systems with this highly effective software
application and with its integrated simulation tools for point collections, surfaces, ponds and
culverts design help reduce post-development runoff and prepare accurate and sustainable
projects. The software assists environmental engineers and land development specialists in
validating their projects and preparing detailed reports, including hydraulic and energy grade
lines as well as energy consumption assessments.
On the other hand, AutoCAD Civil 3D 2010 software helps land development
specialists and environmental engineers to make each project more sustainable using an
accurate and robust digital model of the site and offering a wide array of alternatives with
more innovative solutions and sensitive constrains.
Using AutoCAD Civil 3D 2010 as an environmental engineering software application
for hydrologic and hydraulic design, both Rational Method and SCS Method can be applied.
The Rational Method provides the peak discharge for an event and is calculated using
a runoff coefficient (C), rainfall intensity, and the area to be modeled. The accuracy of
rational method depends on the selection of runoff coefficient and delineation of catchment
areas. Rational Method is a rather conservative method and is primarily used for small
catchments.

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 Runoff Coefficients, also known as “C” values, are used in the Rational Method
calculation and are derived from a combination of soil characteristics and level of
development for a specific area. The value is often taken from a list of standard values for
varying site conditions.
The complete list with Runoff Coefficients (C) can be download form www.epa.gov,
which is a website developed and maintained by Environmental Protection Agency from
United States of America. On the same website, one may find environmental references,
publications and public domain software.
Another useful website is www.hec.usace.army.mil developed and maintained by the
Hydrologic Engineering Center (HEC). HEC is an organization inside the US Army Corp of
Engineers, specialized in technical areas of surface and ground water hydrology, water control
management and other related fields of interest.

SCS Method was developed by the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) - now known as
National Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). This hydrologic method is widely used for
the analysis of both large and small watersheds. The result of the method creates unit
hydrographs with any known design storm, which are typically more accurate than the results
from the Rational Method. This method uses basin area, total excess precipitation, and time to
peak data (which includes time of concentration, curve number, etc.).

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 Because AutoCAD Civil 3D 2010 with Hydroflow Extension has comprehensive
hydrological and hydraulic functions, it can be used easily for land developed projects in any
country. There are personalized packages developed for many countries, and Romania is one
of them, thus is easier to use AutoCAD Civil 3D 2010 for local projects. The Romanian
country package was developed with the support of MaxCAD Bucharest and is available both
on Autodesk website and on the MaxCAD website.
Rational Method can be applied for small catchments in Romania without any change,
using the standard Runoff Coefficients (C).
In order to establish the runoff coefficient either SCS Method or INHGA (National
Institute for Hydrology and Water management) statistic data are used. The land use
classification and CN indexes were adopted also in Romania, the Romanian specific values
being obtained by the aid of “Corine Land Cover 2000” thematic layer (performed by “Delta
Dunarii” Research and Development Institute in Tulcea, Romania).
For basins larger than 10km2, in Romanian norms the spatial temporal method
developed by Professor Constantin Diaconu is applied. This method is based on the 24 hour-
rainfall data collected from 19 stations located in the southern part of Romania, across an area
of 10000 km2. Considering the annual maximum estimates of the 24-hour rainfalls, professor
Constantin Diaconu derived the "temporal" quartiles of 2%-90% for 50 stations in an area of
10000 km2 (Diaconu si Serban, 1994). A series of 50 temporal quartiles is formed from values
obtained at each station. Then, a "spatial probability curve" for a given temporal quartile is
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drawn. Using all the rows of 50 items for the temporal quartiles, the estimate of the 24-hour
maximum rainfall of a certain probability in terms of time T and in space S is determined. The
spatial-temporal method was developed for the entire territory of Romania, where five large
zones of regionalization were found.
This approach was not tested yet in AutoCAD Civil 3D in our country and some
precautions and great care are needed during the test phase.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

AutoCAD® Civil 3D 2010 environmental engineering software uses building

information modeling (BIM) to help environmental engineering project teams to estimate
more what-if scenarios earlier in the design process and get land development and
environmental projects done faster and more efficiently.

AutoCAD Civil 3D 2010 helps environmental engineering the following directions:

- to optimize project performance with geospatial analysis;
- to identify the best project site,
- to perform stormwater analysis for more sustainable designs, quantity takeoff and
dynamic earthwork calculations;
- to optimize material usage,
- to use 3D visualizations for a better understanding of the project impacts on
environment.

Core features and functionality of AutoCAD Civil 3D include:

* Geospatial analysis integration in conceptual design
* Surveying and coordinate systems
* Surfaces, grading, and dynamic relationships
* Building information modeling for watersheds and drainage areas
* Intelligent pipes layout
* Integrated hydraulic and hydrological analysis for storm water management
* Facilitates team coordination—synchronizing design changes
* Dynamic quantity takeoff and earthwork calculations
* Styles, CAD standards, and production drafting

The Hydraflow Package included in AutoCAD Civil 3D is based on the software

developed for more than 20 years by Intelisolve Corporation.
Intelisolve was founded in 1985 by environmental consulting engineer Terry Stringer
and was the industry leader in easy-to-use hydraulics & hydrology software. The Hydraflow
series programs are used by thousands of civil engineers in both public and private sectors. Its
simple-to-use interface provides quick and reliable answers to your everyday hydraulics and
hydrology engineering problems.
With his background in civil engineering, land development, municipal engineering
along with industry-wide, intimate knowledge of the profession, environmental expert
engineer Terry Stringer provided the perfect insight into producing the most innovative and
easy-to-use software for today's practicing civil engineer. That focus has resulted in success
for Intelisolve as well as thousands of customers world-wide.
Intelisolve was the recognized leader in the category of simple-to-use, yet
sophisticated computer software for storm water management. That open communication

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complements Intelisolve's unique technical expertise and market experience, keeping the
Hydraflow products current and on the cutting edge. From now on, all these advantages will
be passed on to Autodesk for further development.
Hydraflow Storm Sewers was the first commercially developed software to offer an
Hydraulic Grade Line (HGL) calculation for a storm sewer system, one that optionally
balances the computed HGL with time of concentration. Other pioneering features include
interactive on-screen routing schematics, built-in rainfall IDF curves, built-in design storms
available in any time interval, 2,880-point hydrographs, the Enhanced Modeling System,
built-in cost and quantity estimating, PondWizard(TM) and it's accompanying Interactive
Pond Designer. The list goes on, all the key elements remaining focused on one key feature:
ease of use.
Since the Hydraflow Extensions were included in AutoCAD Civil 3D environmental
engineers and land development specialists can spend more time on design and less time
worrying about drafting and about the overall quality of the service provided to clients.

CONCLUSIONS

Until a short time ago AutoCAD Civil 3D was a powerful software application for
environmental specialists and land development engineers, but it had no support for
hydrology and hydraulics. Since Autodesk bought a specialized company (Intelisolve) a new
line of software applications were developed and integrated in Autocad Civil 3D as
Hydraflow Extension. Togather, they are a very successful combination.
Hydraflow Extension was developed by a very successful company in the field of
applied hydrology and hydraulics (Intelisolve) and will be further developed by another well-
known company with an innovative technology: Autodesk Inc.;
Hydraflow Extension comes freely with AutoCAD Civil 3D and works fine with all
hydrologic and hydraulic features from within this gorgeous software application;
Hydraflow Extension is fully integrated in AutoCAD Civil 3D 2010 and can be
launched from within the program.
AutoCAD Civil 3D 2010 with Hydraflow Extension has two powerful competitors:
StormCAD developed by Haested and StormNET developed by BOSS International. They are
mature software products, but unfortunately they are expensive and need another Autodesk
software package to unleash their full potential.

REFERENCES

1. *** - Order no. 976/2008 regarding the approval of the Methodology for the establishment of the
hydrographic basins exposed to floods where human sites exits. – Ministry of Environment and sustainable
Development - Published in Official, Part I no. 647 in 11/09/2008.
2. Autodesk Inc. – Autodesk Civil 3D 2006 – using Autodesk Civi; 3 D for Hydrologic and Hydraulic
Tasks;
3. Chendes, V. (2007). Liquid and solid runoff in Sub-Carpathian Mountains of Courvature . PhD Thesis.
Geography Instute. Romanian Academy.
4. Diaconu, C. (1988). Space –Time Analysis and probabilities in Meteorology and Hydrology,
Bucharest.
5. Drobot, R., P. Serban. 1999. Application of Hydrology and Water Resources Management, Ed. HGA,
Bucuresti, Romania.
6. West Tanya, Autodesk Inc, - drawing In H&H? Hydrology and Hydraulics for Beginners;

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