Creating Individual Sheets

One of the most important tasks you will perform as a designer is the effective documentation of your design. Regardless of how accurate and well designed your models may be, most of the construction that takes place will be based on paper drawings. As the preparer of these drawings, you are responsible for ensuring that your design documentation contains all of the essential information and that it is displayed in a way that’s suitable for construction. Fortunately, Civil 3D has tools that will automatically extract the information you need and expedite this process.

Although creating individual sheets is more of a basic AutoCAD task, it is a good place to start because it gets you thinking about the process of documenting your design. It also enables you to familiarize yourself with the Civil 3D label properties that make sheet creation easier. For example, Civil 3D will automatically resize labels based on the drawing scale or viewport scale as well as orient labels to a specific view.

To create an Overall Plan sheet, follow these steps:

The Exercise File can be downloaded at the end of the article  

1. Open the drawing named Creating Individual Sheets.dwg located in the Chapter 19 class data folder.
2. If you do not see the Model and Layout1 tabs at the bottom of your screen, right-click the Model icon and select Display Layout And Model Tabs, as shown in Figure 1.

   Figure 1  Displaying layout and model tabs

3. Right-click the Layout1 tab and select From Template. The Select Template From File dialog box opens.
4. Browse to the Chapter 19 class data folder. Click Civil 3D (Imperial) Plan Only.dwt (Civil 3D (Metric) Plan Only.dwt), and then click Open. The Insert Layout(s) dialog box opens.

   Tips:“From Template” means to create a new layout by selecting a template drawing (.dwt).

5. Click ARCH E Plan Only 50 Scale (ISO A0 Plan Only 1 To 750), and then click OK.
6. Click the ARCH E Plan Only 50 Scale (ISO A0 Plan Only 1 To 750) layout tab to make it active. Then double-click it, and change the name to Overall Plan. You can now see the newly created layout that is currently an empty title block.
7. Double-click in the center of the layout to activate the viewport.
8. At the command line, type ZE and press Enter to perform a Zoom – Extents. The drawing objects will now come into view.
9. Pan and zoom within the viewport so that the plan view of the project fills the viewport. Note the size of the lot labels, which appear to be much too large for the current display scale.

   Tips:Make sure to keep the viewport activated for the next few steps.

10. Change the viewport scale to 1" = 50' (1:750) by selecting it from the menu at the bottom of your screen, as shown in Figure 2. The viewport scale changes slightly, and all of the labels resize according to the newly selected scale.

    Figure 2.  Changing the scale of the viewport


11. On the Home tab of the ribbon, click Layer Properties. The Layer Properties Manager window opens.
12. Under Filters, click All. Then right-click one of the layer names in the Name column and click Select All on the context menu, as shown in Figure 3.

    Figure 3.  Selecting all layers in the Layer Properties dialog box

13. Scroll right and click any icon in the VP Freeze column. This will freeze all layers in the current viewport.
14. Under Filters, click Overall Plan. Right-click one of the layer names in the Name column, and then click Select All.
15. Click any icon in the VP Freeze column, and then close the Layer Properties Manager window. This thaws the selected layers in the current viewport. You now have a layout that shows a simplified overall plan for the project Figure 4. This type of plan is usually placed in the front of a plan set to serve as a low-detail, comprehensive view of the project.

    Figure 4  A simplified overall plan for the project

Download Exercise File :

• Creating Individual Sheets - Metric     --- ( 5.23 MB )
• Creating Individual Sheets - Imperial  --- ( 5.36 MB )