Learn about parcel creation in Civil 3D, beginning with some initial housekeeping steps to prepare your drawing. Discover how to change the layer of the boundary, save a new version of the file, and begin working with parcel creation methods.
Key Insights
- The boundary layer must be changed before beginning with the parcel creation process, using the v-prop pl layer, to ensure the drawing is on the correct layer for a boundary.
- When working with parcels, there are manual and automatic creation methods available in Civil 3D. Manual methods involve the use of parcel creation tools, while automatic methods involve creating a parcel from objects or creating right-of-way parcels.
- All parcels in Civil 3D are associated with sites, which organize objects and determine whether they can interact with each other. When creating a parcel, it's essential to select the appropriate site and style for the parcel, and to ensure the object is closed for a successful parcel creation.
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In this video, we're going to do a little bit of housekeeping to get our drawing ready to move into our next topic, which is parcel creation inside of Civil 3D. So, to do that, the first thing that I want to do is I want to change the layer of the boundary that we created using our Traverse Editor command.
It's currently on an incorrect layer for a boundary, so I want to go ahead and select that property boundary that we drew in, drop down, type in v-prop, and then select the v-prop pl layer. So, from here, what I'm going to go ahead and do is I'm going to hit escape, then I'm going to go ahead and do a save, then I'm going to drop down and select save as, and I'm going to save off a new version of this file. We're no longer working with survey, we're going to be working with parcels, so I'm going to go ahead and save this as civ 201 parcel.
I'm going to go ahead and click save, and then from there, we're now in our civ 201 parcel.dwg. So, now that we have this file ready to work with for parcels, we're going to start talking about the creation methods of parcels for large parcels inside of Civil 3D or main portion parcels before we get into subdivisions and that kind of stuff. So, the first thing that we're going to talk about is the drop down menu for parcels. So, up here in the menu bar, if you click the drop down menu, you'll notice that there are three options available to us, and generally what they can be categorized as is manual creation methods and automatic creation methods.
So, the parcel creation tools is the manual creation methods, and the create parcel from objects or create right-of-way parcels is an automatic creation method. So, inside of Civil 3D right now, we could either dive into the parcel creation tool, or you could create a parcel from an object, and that would be something like a line, an arc, a polyline, and then if you had an alignment inside Civil 3D, then you can create right-of-way parcels using that alignment and set widths as the alignment runs through existing parcels inside of Civil 3D. So, we don't have any alignments, so we're not going to be able to create any right-of-way alignments, but we do have a parcel, so we can go ahead and do an automatic creation method for this boundary that we drew in using our traverse editor command.
So, the first thing you have to make sure when you're creating a parcel from entities inside of Civil 3D is that they close. If they don't close, you won't create an actual parcel. It will create a parcel object or a parcel entity, but it has to have a closure to be able to create a closed parcel object inside Civil 3D.
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So, what I'm going to go ahead and do is I'm going to select this polyline that we've created, I'm going to right-click, I'm going to go to properties, and inside of properties for the polyline that I've selected, I'm going to go down to the bottom, and I'm going to look at whether or not this object is closed. So, when we drew this in, we drew it from a starting point, went around clockwise for this parcel, and we stopped at the end of this curve. Now, it's probably extremely close to being closed, and probably if we had drawn it in using any other method in Civil 3D, it would have closed, but with the traverse editor command, unless you initiate a closure or you have some form of editing to do, then it's not going to close 100%.
So, what I'm going to go ahead and do is I'm going to drop down, and I'm going to click yes for closure, and I'm going to close this window, and then I'm going to go up to the parcel drop-down in the ribbon bar. I'm going to initiate the create parcel from object command, and from there, I now have the create parcel from objects window. So, inside of here, we have what site is our parcel going to be associated with.
All parcels in Civil 3D are associated with sites, and now what sites do is they organize objects inside Civil 3D on whether or not they can interact with each other. So, if objects share a site, they also share interactions with each other. If they're on separate sites, they will not interact with each other.
So, Civil 3D has already created a survey site for us when we did our survey import. I am not working with our survey anymore. I'm going to be working with development parcels, so I want to create a new site.
So, I'm going to drop down. I'm going to select create new, and then I'm going to change the name of my site to development. I'm going to click apply.
I'm going to click okay, and now I have a development site. So, from here, we have the objects style, so our parcel style. So, you can drop down and select any object style that you want for your parcel.
I'm going to go ahead and leave it as property. You can create a new parcel object style. We'll go over that in a future video, but for now, know that when you create a parcel, you're going to be prompted to give it a style, and if you don't have a style that you want, you can create a new one, but we'll go over that in another video.
From there, we have the layers that our parcel is going to be placed on, so the parcel layer and the parcel segment layer. So, the segments of a parcel are the different pieces and parts of that parcel, and then the parcel itself is the closed boundary of the parcel that we've just created. So, if you don't like the layers that were selected, then you can click on the icon to the right, and that will allow you to change the layers that you're currently selected on.
So, moving on from there, we have our styles section, so our area label styles, our line segment label styles, our curve segment label styles. So, to initiate being able to choose what line and curve segment label styles we want to use, you have to check the box for automatically add segment labels, and then you have the options for selecting your line and curve segment label styles. For our purposes now, we're not going to add in these line and curve segment label styles, so I'm going to uncheck this box, and then all we'll have is an area label style.
In a future video, we'll go over creating these label styles just like we did for our points label styles, but we're going to do it for parcel label styles. But for now, I'm going to select one that's already here. I'm going to go ahead and go with parcel name, and then moving on to the next option we have is whether or not we want to erase the existing entity.
So, what Civil 3D does, if this box is checked, is the object that you've selected to create your parcel from, it will delete that object out of Civil 3D because it doesn't want to have objects on top of each other. Now, if you unselect it, it will leave the polyline in there, and it
It will also create a parcel in the same location. So, I generally want to leave things as simple as possible, so I like to remove redundant objects inside Civil 3D.
So, most often, I will leave the erase existing entities box checked. So, I'm going to go ahead and leave it checked now. I'm going to click OK, and what you'll notice is Civil 3D has now created a parcel, and it has added a label to the center of that parcel.
So, moving on from here, I'll meet you in the next video, and we'll talk about the manual creation methods.
