Contemplating Templates

[MMccall.83699]

As I devise my approach to template creation and project assembly I began to wonder how the rest of the Civil 3D community is doing this. The majority of the projects I need to create are residential site developments raging from 2 to 300 lots and commercial site plans. I've broken the projects into 13 distinct drawing types and a template for each.

Cover Sheet
Exist. Conditions Plan
Layout Plan(s)
Grading Plan(s)
Utility Plan(s)
Landscape & Lighting Plan(s)
Construction Details(s)
Profiles & X-Sections(s)
Soil Erosion Plan(s)
Soil Erosion Details
Pre-Dev. Drainage Areas Map
Post-Dev. Drainage Areas Map
Final Plat(s)

I have a system of approximately 400 possible layers. No one layer exists in more than one drawing. If that info is needed in another drawing it is done through an XRef. Some of the above drawings XRef one drawing and serve as XRef to another drawing further down the design process. The required Xrefs are in the templates so any color, linetype, or freeze/thaw adjustments are already done. Other drawings, like details, are stand alone drawings. Smaller projects may combine some of the above plans into one while larger ones will have several layouts within the same drawing depicting different areas of the site.

My plan is to remove the burden of drawing structure from the design process, segment the drawings set to allow multiple user access, segment the number of layers in any one drawing, limit the amount of loss if a file should go bad, and create a logical approach project plan development. The project approach and sheet set manager should allow me to accomplish this. .... now I just need to figure out how.

Any input from my fellow users?

[MMccall.83699]

I was hoping to get a little feed back on how the rest of Civil CAD community is incorporating Civil 3D into their project drawing structure. Civil 3D brings in some new elements that need to be addressed.

Maybe an approach based design rather than drawing type would work better???? with one file providing all the existing site information and another provides all the design information. The information could then be xreffed into one or several other files for creating all the required drawings.


How to you structure your project drawings?

[mfowler]

My projects are mainly subdivisions ranging from 2 to hundreds of lots, condominiums and commercial developments, same as you. Every sheet in my drawing set is contained in a single cad file, using tabs as follows:

Cover Sheet
Existing Conditions
Site Geometry Plan
Landscaping Plan
Grading & Drainage Plan (sometimes broken up)
Utility Plan
Profiles & Sections
Lift Station Details & Specs
Water & Sanitary Details
Miscellaneous Details
2 or 3 pages of Specs

Plus the odd Dredge & Fill permit drawings, Preliminary Plat, etc.

Layers are standardized and developed my myself, but are very user friendly. I just use prefixes like ex- (for existing), pr- (for proposed) and then call it what is on it.

It works really well for me. But I hear what your saying as we will soon be transitioning to Civil 3D and I will be massaging my approach as well.

Hope this helps.

[MHultgren]

We do pretty much the same type of work, from single lots to master plans. We have a different approach to our file system though, to enable more than one or two designers to work on the project. What we do is create our "Base" files for each type of plan. IE gr-base.dwg is our grading base file, ss-base is the Sanitary Sewer, sd-base is storm drain and so on. These files have no text in them as all of our text is placed in Paperspace due to local requirements concerning overstrikes (lines through text) and wipeouts are not allowed because they take the final plans and plot them with all pens set to black and a pen width of .01 in., when they do this, the wipeouts are just black blobs. Anyway, I digress. As I said, all of our linework is in our base files. Profiles are the only base files that are allowed to have text in them, as soon as we can figure out a way to generate the linework in one file and add the annotation in another, we will probably do it. These base files are xreffed into our sheets, (no we don't use the sheet sets ). Our existing CAD Mgr. has a set way of doing things, and doesn't want to change. I have script files set up to bring in the XREFs in order, set the layer colors and settings (Frozen-Thawed), and set the current layer to TEXT (our standard annotation layer). We only have three basic borders and the information that changes is held in a file in the project as attributes that are set to default to project specific info. The base TB-INFO.dwg is copied into the project folder at project setup and defaults for the project are set by the cad tech. Project Name, Number, Designer, Drafter, etc.. so all the Tech has to do is edit the sheet number, total sheets and sheet title. This takes a high level of conformance to CAD Standards, but it sure works sweet. While the designers are working on the design, the CAD tech is putting together all of the sheets. They are one layout per dwg, (I know, but that's the way the Cad Mgr. does it). When we finally go to Mylar, the XREFs are all Bind-Inserted, a script is run to set layers again, and then we use Dotsoft's Invisible Layer Delete routine to delete all frozen and Off layers, then clip the linework behind the text, purge the drawing and burn to disc.

[MMccall.83699]

I want to thank both of you for replying. This is exactly the kind feed back I was hoping for. I hope a few more users will be kind enough to take a minute or two and share how they're using the civil products.

With so many features there appears to be many way to accomplish the same thing, each with its own advantages and pit falls.

I'm leery about the single drawing file solution. I'm currently a single user here in my drafting department of one so multi user functionality is not an immediate need but something I do want to incorporate as it will allow for future expansion. I also wonder about performance issues from the one big file implementation.


Civil 3Ds styles adds a whole new twist on things. Items that used to be a collection multiple items that needed their layers, colors and linetypes managed are now managed as one item with a style, or several styles, that dictates how the features of that item are displayed. I can then use that same item in another drawing via an xref or data shortcut and display it totally different by applying a different style that is appropriate for how that item is being utilized in that particular drawing. (or even within the same drawing?!?!) The display of the items also adapt themselves to the scale being used. The possibilities are mind boggling.

[MHultgren]

The biggest things about Styles is making sure that you have them defined at the correct "Level". Define a Parent style and it will affect the Child styles, but not Vica Versa.

[stephen.cowling]

I've finished my first small subdivision design entirely within Civil 3D, entirely by myself. I'm not the only drafter here but I am the only one using Civil 3D and the only one doing any kind of vertical design.
I've always used all sheets in one file, using various xref arrangements for existing site info, and services layout.

This one I kept entirely in one file. The main reason for this was that Civil 3D stores its data in the file, and bringing alignments etc into other drawings means duplicating data. Obviously there's a workaround in 2006, but we don't have that on yet.
The big disadvantage is layers - our basic survey template has 155 layers, and when you add design in, things get interesting. I remember when 20 layers freaked me out though, so I'm confident that I'll develop a system that works. I kept all annotation text in modelspace to avoid extra layers.
Having different linetypes/weights for different sheets is out, so there is some duplication of objects like services. Previously I used a single xref that I brought in twice under different names.

How do you find the data shortcuts? It still means the data is ultimately linked to a drawing file (or more than one - eek) rather than an external set of files like land desktop. To me, that seems like a drawback, but I could be wrong.

I had the opportunity to spend six months in a larger firm churning out subdivisions, and used their system of one file per sheet. With *all* modelspace objects xref'd in.
Hated it!
Mostly because making changes took a lot of mucking around opening and closing stuff. Sheets sets work and help quite a lot, but take a fair bit of setting up.

I loved the self-scaling stuff, hated the parcels. That list should be very much longer and fleshier, but I'm afraid I just don't have time.

[Civil Samurai]

Just thought I'd add in my $0.02 to the discussion.

We currently use templates for every City/County that we deal with. These templates are just paperspace titleblocks depending on where the project is located. The templates have been cleaned up and only utilize specific titleblock layers for all text and borders. Recently we've been using the Design Center to access a template drawing that has all our layer names, linetypes, dimension and text styles. Using the DC, we can just highlight and add in only the specific items we need for a specific project. For example, we have text and dim setups for a range of drawing scales. If the project is 10 scale, then that's all we add into our new project drawing. Likewise for the text styles and linetypes. With layers, I personally just add them all in (about 90 right now) and once the design is complete or before it goes out I just run the purge command and it gets rid of anything we didn't use. I haven't noticed any performance drawbacks to this method so we continue to do it this way.

Civil3D just came in the mail so I'm in the process figuring out what the heck they did to Autocad. We'll get there eventually with a little help from all of you.

Take care,

Mike Pollock
CAD Manager
Rothman Engineering Inc.

[MHultgren]

Mike,

Just remember, when you use 3D you'll always be "STYLIN" and you'll have it licked.

[mfowler]

I've used 3D briefly and the styles sure do seem complicated. Makes me feel less in control of the entities in the drawing. For someone as nitpicky as I am about my drawings, that's going to take some getting used to.