In this video, I'll cover the process to create a site plan.
I'll use this image as the guide and walk through the steps to create a site or
plot plan. If your site plan does not require 3d,
you can use the terrain tools or the CAD tools to create the detail for your
site plan.
You can trace the terrain photo or import a surveyor file.
Both of these topics are covered in separate videos.
Let's begin this site plan by switching the saved plan view on the sample
plan to the plot plan view. As I switch to this view,
you might notice the floor indicator has changed to the foundation
or floor zero. You can see this setting in the saved plan view panel.
For this project,
I am going to place all of the terrain and site plan data on the foundation
level since the project is a walkout basement.
While the program is limited to a single terrain perimeter,
you can place this information for your site plan on any floor.
I suggest you place it on the most relevant floor for your design needs.
Let me also change the toolbar configuration to the terrain tools.
Then I will create the terrain perimeter.
A terrain perimeter does not necessarily need to be the lot boundary.
In fact, if you need to show adjacent lots or roads,
these items will need to reside on the terrain parameter.
Often I create a large terrain perimeter to accommodate items like
sidewalks and roads, and then use the CAD tool to draw the lot boundary.
Let's take a look. With the terrain perimeter,
if I want to draw a road for the 3d views,
and I come up into the menu and I click and drag to create the road and then go
up and take a 3d overview.
In the 3d view at the front of the house, you don't see the road.
If I zoom out a bit and I click on the terrain perimeter and I make
it much larger, you can now see the road. Once again,
the terrain perimeter needs to be large enough for any objects,
whether it's roads or sidewalks or adjacent lots for those objects to show up in
your 3d view.
Back over in the 2d view to create the lot boundary I'll use my
CAD tools, maybe bring in an image of the lot and trace over it.
Briefly, I'm just going to use the CAD box tool.
I'm going to come in here to click and drag to create block boundary.
This lot boundary can be shaped. You might click on this,
use the break tool in the lower edit menu and come in and make a few
modifications. You can also use a short cut on the keyboard,
and then you can reshape and resize this depending on what you're trying to do.
Maybe I might take this segment and curve it for the cul-de-sac and you just
pull this back and make any adjustments for your design. Typically,
I will take this CAD object. This came in,
if you look in your bottom status menu,
this came in on a layer called the CAD plot plan.
You might open this up and name it on the lot boundary. A lot of times,
if I double-click to open this on the selected line style for this,
you can see the layer. You can either drop this down or click the define button.
Many times I might put this on a layer and I'll just make a copy of this and
I'll just call it the lot boundary.
And then most of the time,
I like to show the length and the angle for the boundary,
and since I have a north pointer in the design,
you'll be able to see the quadrant angle information,
as well as the length of each of the boundaries.
If you're importing that from a DWG file or tracing it,
you can make sure that those are exact. For the setback,
also some of the terrain slope information,
usually what I'm going to do for the setback as we begin with that is go up into
my preferences.
And I'm going to come down into the edit information and specifically on the
behavior panel, I'm going to set the jump amount setbacks,
typically going to be maybe 10 feet in this area.
I'm going to set that jump amount to be 10 feet.
I'm going to grab a copy of the terrain perimeter,
use the copy tool and to force this into concentric mode,
as I move my cursor over the corner,
I'm going to hold the letter C down on my keyboard,
and then I'm going to left click and drag.
You can see that concentrically jump in.
I do need to do a little bit of cleanup up in this area.
So just kind of slide this back and then for the
setback, let me just double click, open up the object.
I'm going to go ahead and turn off the length and the angle information,
use the defined button,
and before I make a copy of this and call it the setback,
I am going to change the color because I don't like to use this necessarily,
this default color.
I'm going to click on this and I'm just going to use a dark black color,
and then I'm going to make a copy of that and for this,
I'm just going to call it the lot setback and then change the
line style so that it shows up just slightly different using a dash line
style.
And then I can show the setback information on the plan.
And then a couple of terrain regions.
I want to show a little bit of added information that you can use
to generate the 3d view.
And then I want to create a specific site plan that's information for
some of the terrain contours or terrain added information that I like to
exclude from the site plan. And I want to show you how I actually perform that,
so you get a nice clean view for your construction documents,
but the terrain modifiers can be used to generate your 3d views.
Now for the terrain information,
typically the elevation tools that I use will be the,
either the elevation line or the elevation region.
And most of the time I use the elevation region. It's just easier to manage;
zoom out just a little bit.
I always like to make sure that these are outside of the terrain perimeter when
I create them that way,
there is no confusion from the program where that terrain data starts.
So outside of the terrain parameter,
I'm just going to click and drag roughly to create the initial terrain elevation
region.
I have a couple of CAD points in here to help me to shape this for the purpose
of the video, I'm going to select the terrain region.
Use the number three on my keyboard.
I'm just going to put a couple of breaks in here so that I can easily resize
this. Let's drag it down and snap on to the points that I already have in here.
Now this terrain elevation region would have come in at the same absolute height
as the terrain, which is set at zero.
And then for the next terrain region that I'm going to draw let's come down
a little bit lower and draw this. It's important that you don't overlap them.
As I draw this out, you can see that the two terrain regions actually overlap.
I'm going to double click and open this one up and I'm going to set the
elevation.
There's a slope in this terrain of minus 12 feet.
And then I'm just going to shape this one, as well as come in here,
then I'll press number three on the keyboard.
I'm just going to put a couple of breaks in this line, in this area,
right in here. And then again,
just pull this over and then I'll pull this segment over as well.
Once I'm finished with these terrain modifiers,
let's go up and open up the 3d view.
You can see the terrain is now sloping around the house.
And then back over into the plot plan view,
you can see the terrain contours now show up.
The 3d view cause the terrain to rebuild,
and then you see the terrain contours appear.
One of the things that I like to do when I'm going to finalize my site plan is
just simply double-click on the terrain and there is an option on your
contours to hide the highlighted negative numbers, difficult to see,
but they're in red. When you turn that toggle off,
then you can remove that red display. At this point,
I have a good looking terrain in 3d,
but I need to send us out to my layout sheet.
I don't want to see any of the terrain modifiers or terrain perimeter.
I might've also added landscaping.
You can see in this view that I have opened here,
I've added landscaping in here.
So pretty soon a lot of this information creates noise for the site plan.
So typically what I like to do is open up the active layer
display options,
and I will actually make a copy of the plot plan set and call it the
site plan, turn off those layers that I don't want to see,
and then I will also save this as a view that can be recalled,
and I can use that as my site plan. Typically,
I'll also save that my template plan,
so all future plans have the benefit of having this.
So the steps that typically I do, I will create a copy of this set.
I call it the site plan. In my case, I'm going to call it site plan two,
since I already have one called site plan.
And then at this point you can turn on and off layers.
The easiest way to do that is to select objects.
You'll see them highlight over in the act of display.
You can then turn off those layers. You can come back in,
you may also want to turn off the contours.
So let's do a quick search for contours, turn those off.
And pretty soon it gets cleaned up.
I also have a couple of CAD points in here and I will turn those off and then
finally turn off the terrain perimeter.
And now this is a pretty clean looking view to save
this as a plan view,
come up into your tool bar and say,
save active view as, and I'm just going to call it site plan. And again,
I'm going to call it site plan two since I already have one called site plan,
and now I have a specific saved plan view that I can easily get to from the
dropdown for over in your project browser,
you can open up these plan views just by simply coming over here and double
clicking on them to open them up.
That wraps up this video on creating site plans. To learn more,
please see the built-in help file as well as our other videos.
Thanks for watching.