Explore the powerful capabilities of Civil 3D in automatic subdivision parcel creation methods in this comprehensive guide. Learn how to navigate the parcel drop down, understand and utilise parcel sizing criteria, automatic layouts, and more.
Key Insights
- The article provides an in-depth guide on using Civil 3D to automatically create subdivision parcels, discussing parcel sizing criteria, automatic layouts, and how to adjust parameters for each.
- Users can control key parameters such as minimum parcel area, frontage, depth, and how to manage remainder parcels after subdivision. The article also demonstrates how to initiate the command to create parcels using slide or swing lines.
- A step-by-step walk-through of subdividing a parcel using the slide line create method further illustrates the process, highlighting potential errors and workarounds to ensure a smooth process.
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In this video, we're going to talk about some automatic subdivision parcel creation methods. So to do that, what we're going to go ahead and do is navigate up to the Parcel dropdown inside the ribbon bar.
We're going to drop down and select the Parcel Creation Tool button. Now that we have the Parcel Creation Layout Tools bar open, we're going to be working with this dropdown menu right here. What this dropdown menu has in it is our Slide Lines, Swing Lines, and Freeform Create.
We have Slide Line Create and Edit, Swing Line Create and Edit, and Freeform Create. When working with these objects or these creation methods, there are some additional parameters underneath the hood inside Civil 3D that we're going to be dealing with. Those parameters can be found with this double arrow dropdown.
So I'm going to go ahead and click the double arrow dropdown. What you're going to see here are these Parcel Sizing and Automatic Layout parameters inside of Civil 3D. We're going to walk through and talk about these.
What we're first going to deal with is the Parcel Sizing Criteria and then the Automatic Layouts. So in the Parcel Sizing Criteria, we have the Minimum Area. Every time you click in one of these objects inside of the parameters, you're going to get a nice illustration of what we're dealing with.
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So with Minimum Area, we have the minimum area of the parcel that we're going to be creating. Then we have the Minimum Frontage. The frontage is the path along which Civil 3D creates these new parcels.
You can have an offset for that frontage and whether you want to use it. If you want to use an offset on your frontage, then you would set your Offset Depth and choose to leave this as Yes. If you do not want to have an offset for your frontage, you can choose to select this as No.
Moving on from there, we have the Minimum Width of our parcel, Minimum Depth of our parcel, Maximum Depth, and whether you'd like to use a Maximum Depth.
If you have a parcel that is extremely deep and you only want to have parcels that are laid out at every 200 feet deep, then you would go ahead and set Maximum Depth as Yes. Then you would set your Maximum Depth to 200. Then you have your Multiple Solution Preference.
If you have multiple solutions to how Civil 3D would like to create these parcels, you would choose which way you want to create them, whether it is Use Shortest Frontage or Use Smallest Area. You can see here the example we have is a smaller area in this small parcel here or a short frontage where you have a very short frontage and then a very deep depth here. I often like to use the Shortest Frontage method, but if you start creating parcels and you're not getting the shape or type of parcel that you're expecting,
This is a common one that you may want to try using the Smallest Area rather than the Shortest Frontage.
Moving on from there, we have the Automatic Layout Methods. You have Automatic Mode On or Off. What this does is when you initiate the command to create your parcels using either Slide or Swing Lines, Civil 3D is going to show you what those parcels look like.
If you have Automatic Mode on, it will show all of the parcels at the same time, and you will accept all parcels in a single button click. If you have Automatic Mode turned off, it will show you one parcel, then you will initiate the command to create that parcel. It will move on to the next parcel, and then you will accept that parcel until you've moved all the way to the last parcel that you're creating.
I often like to have it turned on so I can see what all of the parcels are going to look like, and then I can accept all of the parcels. If I don't like it, I'll escape out and put in new parameters. So I'm going to go ahead and leave my Automatic Mode on, and then you have the options for how you'd like to distribute the remainder.
When you are doing these automatic subdivision creation methods, what you have happen is often you're left over with a parcel that is smaller than your minimum allowable area based on your parcel sizing parameters. So what are you going to do with that remainder parcel? You have three options available to you: Create Parcel from Remainder, Place Remainder in Last Parcel, and Redistribute Remainder. What we're dealing with here is Create Parcel from Remainder basically creates an individual parcel from that remainder of the area, and it just basically sets that as a separate parcel aside from everything else.
You have the option to Place Remainder in Last Parcel. It takes the last parcel that was created, adds the remainder parcel to it, so you have one parcel that is larger than all the rest of the parcels you've created before it. Then the last option you have is to Redistribute Remainder.
So what that does is it takes the remainder area, divides it up into the number of parcels you've previously created, and then adds that area back to all of the other parcels. I often like to do Redistribute Remainder, but if you have an instance where you have to hit a specific frontage width, then you may not want to do Redistribute Remainder. You may want to do Create Parcel from Remainder.
I'm going to go ahead and go with Redistribute Remainder for the creation method that we're going to be working with now. I'm also going to change some of our parcel sizing parameters. I'm going to set our Minimum Area to 5,000.
I'm going to set our Minimum Frontage to 50, and I'm going to set our Frontage Offset to 30, and I am going to set our Minimum Width to 45. So from there, I'm going to go ahead and initiate our Slide Line Create. So I'm going to click that button.
Civil 3D is going to prompt me to give the parameters or the options for the parcels that we're creating: which site it's going to be on, what the style is going to be, what layers it will be on, and what labels we'll be adding to that parcel when we create it. I'm going to go ahead and leave all of the options selected as Civil 3D has automatically filled out, and I'm going to click OK. So what Civil 3D now is going to do is it's going to prompt me to select a parcel that I want to have subdivided.
So I'm going to go ahead and pick the area label for the parcel that I want to subdivide, and then Civil 3D is going to prompt me to select a point on the frontage that I would like to subdivide. So I'm going to start over here at the beginning of this curve, and Civil 3D is going to start showing me the frontage for this parcel. If for some reason your frontage is not drawing properly, you may need to exit out and restart your frontage command.
Restart the Slide Line command, then pick your parcel, then pick the point on the frontage. But there are commonly issues with snapping for creating a frontage, and you can also get issues where your frontage is not drawing correctly. That's just a matter of hovering your cursor around on the screen until your frontage starts to draw the way you want it to.
So I want my frontage to draw around that curve, coming across the front here, and then I'm going to snap in on the end of this curve here. Civil 3D is going to give me an indication of my start point as the circle, and my end point as the arrowhead over here. Then I'm going to be asked to specify my angle.
I want to specify the angle of the slide lines that I'm going to be creating. The slide lines are basically these lines that are going to radiate out from my frontage. What angle would I like those slide lines to be at? I want them to match up with these outside edges, so I'm going to snap on an endpoint here, and you'll see the red line that I have here is what the angle of that slide line is going to be. So I'm going to go ahead and pick on the endpoint of that same line, and Civil 3D is going to show me what my automatic parcel creation method is, and I get to say whether or not I want to accept these results.
I'm going to go ahead and click Yes to accept, and then I'm going to move on to doing the same method to the remaining three parcels. So I'm going to go ahead and select my Property 4. I'm going to start over here. I'm going to come around.
I'm going to end here. I'm going to specify my angle, and then Civil 3D will show me it. I will accept it.
Then I will select this parcel. I will select my starting point, which will be over here. I'm going to work my way over to this side over here.
I'm going to select again. I'm going to specify my angle as this line back here. Civil 3D will then show me the parcels.
I will accept them, and then I will move on to my last one. I'll select it here. I will select my start point, and you'll notice when I did that, I am getting a little bit of an error here.
When I go this direction for my frontage, my snap for some reason is showing up in this upper quarter here. If I zoom in here, going this direction, you can see it is drawing upwards, but I'm going to go ahead and escape out, and I'm going to hit ENTER. I'm going to drop down, select Slide Line again.
I'm going to select my parcel again. I'm going to attempt to go from this corner now, and now you can see my snap is drawing correctly. I'm having a little bit of trouble coming around this corner.
Now I've made it around this corner. I'm going to end here. I'm going to specify my angle, which is from this point here to this point here.
Civil 3D is going to show me my results. I'm going to click Yes. Now I did get an unexpected error.
The lot line could not be adjusted. Now this happens sometimes inside Civil 3D if there is an issue with your assemblies or your sub-assemblies, sub-parts. So you can see here the sub-entities.
The sub-entities are the lines that create the outer boundaries of the parcels. I may have an error in one of these lines along here, and so what I'm going to go ahead and do is I'm going to actually use my back line as my frontage. So I'm going to select here.
I'm going to pick on this line here. I'm going to come across the back here and pick there. Civil 3D is going to show me my frontage.
I'm going to hit ENTER, and my angle that I had already specified as this line or this line back here has retained, and I'm going to say yes, accept the result, and it subdivides properly. So sometimes you'll get an error like this. It may be an issue with the frontage that you're using.
Just choose a new frontage or we can work on different creation methods. We've gone through the Slide Line Create. In the next video, I'm going to talk to you about Swing Lines and Freeform Create.
