Isolating sections of a land development

[daniel.bombliss]

Hey guys,

This is my first post and for a quick bit of what I'm doing any why I've joined, I'm new to AutoCAD and need to pick it up quick for my job. I work at a small engineering firm that is well aware that I have minimal AutoCAD experience. My background is in Rhino3d and AutoCAD has never been something I needed to learn until now. My obstacle is the new vocabulary and interface. It controls relatively differently, but all and all it translates well. With the new position, I've been appointed to juggle learning AutoCAD from scratch (videos, tutorials, books), along with still getting some of the small requests completed. Therefore I'll have some questions "outside of the curriculum", if you will, while I'm picking up the new software.

Anyhow for my question:

I've been given a residential subdivision plot. It has all already been drawn in 2d, including all of the information and the grading, ect. All I need to be able to do, is isolate individual house plots, including all of the lines for the grading and what not. I have the drawing of the entire subdivision if many house plots. For example, what I imagine doing in my head, is highlighting plot "11" (for example) and cutting it out of the entire drawing. I need to individualize each house foot print, with all included grading information, and get them to scale, for individual print outs.

It's a very easy task, and something I could manage in just a few seconds on Rhino. AutoCAD doesn't really use the same "selecting" and "trimming" type of functions, and I'm at a loss for ideas of which commands could do it for me. Basically, I'd like to just take a rectangle, and extract everything inside of that rectangle into it's own drawing.

Any quick ways to achieve that?

Thanks,
Dan

[Opie]

I would recommend starting a new drawing in which you add an XREF of your subdivision layout. In this new drawing, create a layout with a viewport that shows the desired lot to an appropriate scale. In the layout itself, you would place most of your notes and title block. If the subdivision layout contains Civil 3D objects, you may need to label them within the model tab or modelspace portion of the drawing.

[Iceberg]

Like Opie said, your best bet is to create a sheet drawings that has the title block and a viewport showing the specific lot that you need to create the plan for. Add all of your labeling to the drawing in this folder. Unless Civil3D entities where created this should be a relatively easy task using basic AutoCAD functions.

What I typically do is create a master drawing for my building footprints and grading and update these drawings and xref them into my drawing that I have setup with my title block. The reason I do this, is because I can not tell you how many times an engineer has graded the lots individually and not checked the grading to the lot next to it to see how that has been updated from the original. I have seen to many plot plans where the grading from house to house do not matchup along the property lines.

[daniel.bombliss]

I believe I've got it all ironed out. I apologize that my question is is probably more simple that what you guys have imagined, otherwise I may not be understanding your suggestions very well. I will be the first to admit, I have an incredible amount to learn. I have almost zero experience with AutoCAD, and I'm trying to get over the learning curve of the new commands.

I did some research on the XREFs, and from what I had seen, I don't understand the suggestion. The other part that may make more sense, is the fact that I'm not actually making the drawing. My job at this point, as it is understood that majority of my time is learning this program from scratch, is to just make simple changes, and fulfill easy requests.

For this request in particular, the drawing and layout for this subdivision is already completed. All of the information is there, and drawn out. The drawing has 30-40 house lots comprised within the division. All I've been asked to do, is isolate the individual lots, so that they can be addressed and printed as individuals. From what I had gathered from my research, what I'm looking to accomplish is simply a "maptrim" command. I've created a boundary around each lot, and trimmed out everything outside of it. I was at a loss for ideas, when the trim command only let me select a single line at a time. This problem essentially came down to lack of vocabulary for AutoCAD.

If one of you could give me input as to whether or not it seems that my route was the easiest, I would greatly appreciate it. If XREFs would be beneficial to accomplishing this same idea, I will continue to research how to apply them for this application.

-Dan

[daniel.bombliss]

After rereading your responses, I am beginning to understand the XREF suggestions better. I think I understand how to apply that to what I'm trying to do.

Thanks,
Dan

[Iceberg]

Using the xref you clip the lot using a viewport.

There is a nice selection feature that is included in CAD that makes trimming multiple entities quite easy, it is called FENCE. This work with many CAD commands.
So you can select your rectangle as your boundary to trim from, Type in "F" or Fence at the command line. This allows you to draw a temporary line which will trim out all cad entities that cross it.

[daniel.bombliss]

Iceberg, you are a life saver. This was my first go at playing with the viewport and doing a titleblock, ect. I had just gone through all of this, playing with the different aspects to test run the start to finish from drawing to printing aspect of things. Therefore, I just learned the scaling, centering, ect in the viewport.

I would have not thought of centering/scaling in the view port prior to printing if you hadn't mentioned it. That is 100% all I'm trying to achieve. The part I play in this job, is to print out the individual papers for each lot so that the engineer can hand sketch changes. I then take those changes and input them to autocad for the final.

This is exactly why I wanted to ask questions oppose to finding it all out myself. I figured out the long way to get what I wanted, you just made it click.

Thank you!
-Dan