Create Duct Bank

Creating a bank of ducts one duct at a time can be a lengthy process. The Create Duct Bank Tool allows you to create a linear duct bank, an entire duct bank, and its associated features all at once.

If you’d like to add ducts to an existing duct bank, see Create Ducts for details on how to create one duct at a time.

IMPORTANT: Before using the Create Duct Bank tool to create a duct bank between two vault features, make sure the WallHeight attribute for each of the vaults is populated. It must be populated in the same units as your map, for example, in feet if your map units are in feet, or in meters if your map units are in meters. The Z value for vaults is measured at the ceiling of the vault polygon (not the floor).

For example, a vault with a Z value of 0 (ceiling is at ground level) and a wall height of 3, means your duct bank Z value must be between 0 and -3.

To create a duct bank, follow the steps below.

Click on the Create Duct Bank Tool button.

Snapping is automatically turned on and snaps to the closest available feature. In the example below, a circle indicates where your cursor snaps to on a duct bank end and a vault. You can also click in space where no features exist.
Move your cursor around to change the location to snap to. Click once to snap to the closest available feature and start drawing a Duct Bank Line. A red line helps visualize where you are drawing the line.
Add additional vertices, if necessary, to draw the linear duct bank between vaults in the case a duct has curves or bends between vaults. Hold the spacebar down to turn temporarily off snapping.
Clicking on a vault ends the line, or double-clicking in space or pressing F2 ends the line as well.
The Duct Bank Details dialog displays. Type the number of rows and columns for your duct bank, along with the depth (in feet) of the duct bank.

TIP: The values selected or entered for the attributes in the Duct Bank Details are applied to all the ducts present in the duct bank. These values can still be edited on individual ducts later on. If your duct bank is not made of identical ducts, creating a duct bank with the Create Duct Bank Tool could still save time editing by attributing the duct bank with attributes that are shared with the majority of ducts on the bank.
1. Select the Diameter of your ducts from the drop-down and type a Spacing distance in inches between ducts. The spacing distance value is measured distance between the center of two ducts.
2. Select the Cross Section, or shape of the ducts from the from the drop-down. Then select the Material for the ducts.
Click OK to start creating the duct bank and associated features. It may take a moment to create the features. A dialog indicates if it still processing.
When the process is complete, the new features are displayed in the Attributes pane.
The process creates the necessary amount of associated features according to your inputs in the Duct Bank Details dialog. The features created are:
- Structure Line : Duct Bank
- Structure Edge Objects
- Structure Junction : Duct Bank End
- Structure Junction : Duct End
- Structure Junction : Duct Bank Hub (if this feature already exists for a vault, a new one is not created)
The tool also populates these features according to your inputs in the Duct Bank Details dialog; material, cross section shape, Duct ID, etc.

Vault wall layout is automatically created and viewable in the Conduit Manager Layout Editor.

Snapping to Existing Duct Bank Ends

You can snap to duct bank ends that already exist.

Move your cursor within the vicinity of a duct bank end and click to snap to it..
When creating a duct bank by snapping to an existing duct bank end, the ducts in Layout Editor share the same knockout rectangle, and the ducts are color-coded according to the duct bank that contains them. Expand the DuctBank Color Key to see the destination of each duct bank.