Topic: Something Is Missing From My Desktop . . .

[Dinosaur]

. . . and I realized today what it is.  The last time my hard disk took a kamikaze dive we were in deadline crisis mode so just the most basic stuff was installed with all the rest to be done later as time permitted.  Today, as I was finishing up a 36 acre, 80 lot subdivision final plat, I realized what had been missing.  I had completed this task exclusively in Civil 3D without once  firing up my old standby r13 and EaglePoint combo for plat annotations.  To be sure, I cheated shamelessly, forsaking the parcel functionality for bpoly's and general annotation objects, but this plat is all 2007 without a hint of the old dtext labels and blocks of single characters, arrayed along an arc and frozen into a block.  This is the first time in eleven plus years that little caliper icon has not had a prominent place on my desktop and I know now that it never will return.  The baton has now been passed.

[Maverick®]

  The baton has now been passed.

Good thing too.  It was starting to smell funny.

[Arizona]

Isn't change wonderful?

[Dinosaur]

No, no . . . that was the dog . . . ALWAYS the dog!

[Dinosaur]

Isn't change wonderful?

Only when it is for the better, and this is the first time I could say not only were the results were better, but they were easier to achieve than with my old standby - to the point I didn't even think about my previous methods until after the fact.

[sinc]

To be sure, I cheated shamelessly, forsaking the parcel functionality for bpoly's and general annotation objects, but this plat is all 2007 without a hint of the old dtext labels and blocks of single characters, arrayed along an arc and frozen into a block.  This is the first time in eleven plus years that little caliper icon has not had a prominent place on my desktop and I know now that it never will return.  The baton has now been passed.

Congrats!  Now try to do it all using the Parcels and Parcel Labels...   

I've been figuring out all the quirks and tribulations involved, and getting better with them, but plats like my current one (a 6-page subdivision plat) are still a royal pain.  I've been thinking that we may need to go back to Land Desktop + Map for plats, because Parcels and Parcel Labels are so bad in Civil-3D.  I think it's been taking us roughly 30% longer to do the plats in Civil-3D than in LDD/Map, which defeats the whole point of spending a bunch of time and money on the new software...

Our design surveys are going relatively quickly - faster and easier than in LDD (up until we hit the point we have to send the survey to someone using LDD 2002 or Eaglepoint  ).  And corridors are so much better than Land Desktop cross-section templates that there's no comparison.  But Parcels have been a great disappointment.

[Dinosaur]

Thanks sinc.  As it stands now, I doubt we will ever start using the parcels.  The guy who writes the checks here is down to two main duties - house stakeouts and laying out subdivisions via the old school method complete with client perched over his shoulder.  He comes away with a complete layout optimized for the site.  How am I going to justify spending a lot more time reproducing these efforts?  We are within 10 days of being the same age so he won't retire before I do and he isn't giving either chore up.  Even if he did I would be left fighting multiple sites and stubborn labels just to say I was using parcels.
We have moved along with Civil 3D slowly, using what worked best for what we needed.  We are now using everything except parcels and survey (which is even less likely to be adopted than parcels).  The only other design software in the office is Hydroflow to make up for the missing hydrology functions and doing an excellent job of it I might add.

[Mark]

I'm just glad I don't have to draw sub's!

I haven't used LDT in a long time now and didn't even install it this go round. I don't use parcels cause I really don't need them most of the time. I was playing with the new and improved labels last week, it's looks like I can make use of them now.

[Dinosaur]

Here is a screen shot of the most congested area of the plat.  The geometry is so complicated, I am not sure it would even be possible to annotate via parcels.  These are all general line and curve labels using only three defined styles each for interior lines and curves and two each for the boundary courses.

[sinc]

Here's a section of the one I'm working on right now.

This is almost entirely done with Parcel labels, except for the roadway centerline, which is done with General Line/Curve labels.  I also use General Notes with Reference Text for some of the parcel areas, since Parcel Area Labels have this obnoxious tendency to constantly reset themselves to their original location.

This kind of illustrates that plats are largely possible with Civil-3D Parcels, but the amount of effort required makes it a questionable task to perform in Civil-3D.  If it's faster and easier to do in Land Desktop, then why should anyone spend all that time and effort and aggravation learning and then fighting Civil-3D?

And it's not just the design of Parcels which is insufficient - the design of the Parcel Labels is pretty bad.  The number of styles required to accomplish this using Parcel Labels is ridiculous.  For a while, it seemed the aggravation might have something to do with our lack of experience with Civil-3D, and it seemed that once we had done enough and had enough styles setup, we would start getting faster.  But the design of Parcel Labels slows the process of labeling these plats down to a crawl, not to mention there are so many Styles that they become completely unmanageable.

[dgreble]

Great job Dino!  Looks great!

[jpostlewait]

Hey sinc.
Where are the setback lines and U/E easements?
Just have to hate the ahole that invented the cul-de-sac.

[Dinosaur]

Thanks Damian, I thought you might recognize someone's whacked out intersection technique.  It looks like sinc has to deal with more curve call outs than I do here.  We still get a pass on providing anything beyond the length on our curve segments and get to do typical radii for the intersections.  I never mastered getting the back lots to label correctly on both sides.  Sinc has that working apparently.  I found the same problem doing mine with the bpoly command, but I was able to eliminate it by the order I selected the lots - as long as the adjacent polyline was turned off it did not create a false PI on the lot boundary I was creating.

The drawing I posted is a 3 sheet effort with all the verbiage and a 100 scale full view on the cover.  I had to hold my nose and do the other sheets at 60 scale so now I have 20, 50, 60 and 100 scale maps working from this drawing.

[Jeff_M]

Holy Cats! You both have so much room to work with!

In the subdivision I'm working on now, I could fit about 2-3 lots into each one of those. All curves must be annotated with Radius, Delta & Length; except when there are multiple lots, then the overall RDL is shown with only the D & L shown for each internal arc.

I have not yet had to create the plat for this project, but I'll post it once I do.

[Dinosaur]

Hey sinc.
Where are the setback lines and U/E easements?

He is up in the mountains - they may have to grow their own utilities. 

Just have to hate the ahole that invented the cul-de-sac.

Especially those goofy ones in Leawood that they force us to make a 10' diameter island in the middle.  :realmad: