In this video,
I'll go through the steps to trace a parcel map image to create a terrain
perimeter that can be used for a site plan.
I will rotate the image so I can draw the house at a 90 degree angle.
For this example,
I have an image from the local county assessor's database.
I cropped the image down for the video to make it easier to see and focus on
this specific lot. I have a new blank plan open.
I am already on the plot plan saved plan view.
That way everything will come in on specific layers,
make it easy to isolate for my construction drawings.
I am also using the terrain toolbar configuration that changes my toolbar
for the terrain-based tools. To import the image,
you can either drag and drop it from a file folder, or in the file menu,
you can come down to import an image. Browse out to the folder.
I'm going to select the image that I want to import.
And then one of the first things I'm going to do before I rotate this image and
trace over it.
The line on the left is actually pointing to north according to
the database image information that I had. Using the line tool,
I'm going to come down and I'm going to draw a north pointer that would be
parallel to the edge of this plot line. Then,
I'm going to shift select to grab both the image and the north pointer.
You'll see a rotation handle, and I can rotate that. In fact,
if I hold down my control key on a PC and the command key on a Mac,
you can get very close to this. Let me release the mouse there.
I'm going to press undo and I'm going to actually do this in a very precise
manner because I want the north pointer to be exactly straight up and down.
Undo and then what I'm going to do in this case,
I'm going to double-click on the north pointer and you can see that the angle in
here is 28.5 degrees.
And if I were to subtract that from 90 degrees,
it would roughly be 61.42 degrees that I would need to rotate
both of these objects. That way it will be straight up and down.
Let me press the cancel key.
I'm going to make sure that I shift select both the image and the north pointer.
I'm going to come down to the transform replicate,
choose the rotate option. I'll put in
61.42 and rotate those. This makes it easier to trace.
Eventually when I draw the house,
I want to make sure that I draw my walls straight up and down.
It's a lot easier than drawing these off angle. On the image,
you can see a number of dimensions for each of the segments of the lot.
I'm going to use a point to point resize for this photo or this
image, and then I'm going to trace over it. I'm going to click on the photo.
In my lower edit menu is the tool that is a point to point resize.
I'm going to come up and click on one corner, move up,
and I'm going to click on another corner.
The point to point resize will come up and ask for a dimension.
And then I'm going to come over and put in 155.69
so that I can then scale the image up.
Let me zoom out a little bit and now I can easily trace over this image.
With the image scaled,
I'm going to use the line tool and I'm just going to trace over this image in a
clockwise fashion. I'm going to come up to the line tool.
I'm going to come down and just approximately I'm going to draw this line.
You can see the image is off just slightly. If you're dragging this line up,
as I'm still dragging,
you can press the tab key and enter in specific coordinates.
Sometimes this is easier and a little bit more precise.
So I'm going to enter in 155.69
for that segment. I'm still in line drawing mode. I'll come up,
pick over the snap. Again, I'm clicking and dragging off to the side.
As I'm doing this, simultaneously, I'm going to press the tab key.
This opens up the enter coordinates. So I'll put in the upper value 118.65.
And then kind of the same process. I'm still in line drawing mode. Click down,
uh, hold my control key down so I can kind of stay on the same angle,
release the control key, command key on a Mac, press the tab key.
And in this case, I'll go ahead and enter in 154.37.
And then the final line, we'll pick up the snap, pull over here,
pick up the snap. And then with the line segment selected,
first of all, see that I have an enclosed gray shaded area.
That means that I connected all four corners and formed a polyline.
The bottom edge, which is where I clicked, has a red selection handle.
That is the active edge.
I'm going to come down into my lower edit menu and there is a change line
to arc. So I'll go ahead and pull that in.
And then I will use the move handle here and pull it up so
that it's very close to the edge of the lot line image.
It's clearly more accurate to import terrain from a DWG file.
I'm going to slide the image over off to the right.
So I'll just zoom out a little bit. I'm going to click on the image.
I'm going to pull it off to the right-hand side so that we can see the terrain
that we've created or the shape of the terrain we've created.
One of the things that I like to do,
many times I'll leave the image exactly in place and then put it on a layer so I
can toggle it on and off if I need to turn it back on and just check my
dimensions. The way I assign this to a layer, with the image selected,
I'm going to double-click on it. Over on the line style,
you'll see that it came in on a layer called CAD plot line.
I'm going to click the define button and then I'm going to come down,
make a copy of this,
and all I'm going to do is call it CAD plot line image.
And then if I want to turn that layer off, you can easily come in here,
toggle it on and off if you want to display it at some point.
To display the dimensions for the line segments,
I'm going to double-click on the polyline object.
On the line style panel is the option to show the length
and show the angle. The numbers are now displaying, but they're very small.
I'm going to come over and open up the active layer display options.
I'm going to change the text style so that it's a little bit larger.
I'm just going to click the define button.
I have a custom text style that I created.
I'm just going to make this a little bit larger for the purpose of the video.
Now I'm just going to come in here and let's just increase that to be
three feet. That way it's a little bit larger.
And as we kind of zoom in a little bit,
the angle line or the curved line at the bottom shows a length of
150. As I zoom in on the other side,
you can see that my length is slightly off of that and I need to make an
adjustment. I'm going to click on the segment.
And you may notice in my view compared to your view if your following
along, I have an E which stands for end, and I have an S for start.
This helps you understand where the start and end segments are.
You can find this underneath your preference settings and underneath your
CAD, some way down,
it has a show start and stop indicators.
Sometimes it's helpful to have this turned on.
That way you can make adjustments and know which end to lock.
With the segment selected, again, I have a red selection handle on the bottom.
Double-click to open it up. On the selected arc,
I want to make sure that I'm going to lock the chord and then I can come down
underneath the arc length and I can be very specific and enter in
150 feet. At this point,
I've created the 2D plot line traced from the image,
and I can easily draw my house in here and position it.
If you want to convert this to a terrain perimeter and be able to see it in
3D, in the lower edit menu while the object is selected,
is the convert polyline tool.
The option underneath terrain is to convert this to a terrain
perimeter. As it opens up the terrain specification,
there's nothing specific that I need to make a change in here.
It's already setup to be automatic. Close it,
and nothing really changes with the exception, if you take a 3D view,
you can now see the actual terrain in your 3D view.
That wraps up this video on tracing a terrain lot image. To learn more,
see the built-in help system, as well as our other terrain videos.
Thanks for watching!