In this video, we're going to take a look at the terrain and site plan,
basics in Chief Architect. How to create a site plan, draw terrain,
slope the terrain, add modifiers like driveways and retaining walls.
Let's go into the program and get started.
As you begin your process for your terrain and site plan,
it's good practice to use the saved plan views built into the program.
These will change your layer sets as well as the different views what's turned
on and turned off. For this terrain basics,
I'm going to switch the view over to the plot plan view,
and then for the toolbar configuration,
we have a terrain configuration that gives you access to all of the terrain
tools. With the terrain toolbar configuration,
I'm going to come over,
and the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to create the terrain
perimeter. As I zoom out and fill the screen,
you can see the rectangular box that was created for the terrain perimeter.
This is a polyline in Chief Architect. You can click on this.
You can easily resize this to any dimension.
You can also use the temporary dimensions that are displayed,
click on the dimension and type in an exact number for your terrain
dimensions. As you shape your lot,
this polyline can be shaped really in any shape that you want.
You can use the tools as I select the edge,
convert that to an arc and shape it as you need to for your terrain.
You can also import terrain from surveyor files or import an image and
trace over the terrain to create the exact lot dimensions.
Both of these techniques are covered in separate videos.
To display the lot dimensions on each boundary segment,
double click to open up the terrain perimeter.
On the line style panel is an option to show both the length and show the
angle. And since I have a north pointer,
the angle information will show the relevant quadrant angle data.
If you want to show the quadrant angle data,
you can always change your display underneath your defaults and in the CAD
area for your general CAD, you can choose how to display the line length,
and in this case, I am using a foot indicator.
There are several that you can choose from.
And the other thing that I'm doing is using the quadrant bearing setting to
display the information for this plot plan.
You can find the north pointer along with the sun angle underneath the line
tool. To have accurate quadrant bearing information,
you will need to have a north pointer with it oriented in the right direction.
To display the setback for this plan, I'll click on the terrain perimeter.
I'm going to use the copy tool in my lower left-hand menu,
move my cursor over the corner.
I'm going to hold the letter C down for concentric. I'm going to click and drag.
And as I'm pulling this in for the setback,
I am going to press the tab key before I release.
I'm going to type in 15 feet in the X and 15 feet in
the Y direction. Notice that the polar is turned off in this case,
and then this will create a concentric copy.
I'll open it up and change the line style as well as turn off the length
and bearing information.
So I'll double click on this and I'm going to come over here and on the line
style, I'm going to turn off the length and the angle.
And one of the things that I like to do is you'll notice that the layer is
actually on a CAD default.
The terrain perimeter that was created is limited to one in the program.
It's always a good practice to put that on the most relevant floor.
And then when I make a copy of the terrain perimeter,
I like to change the layer to call this the lot setback.
So just click on the defined button,
I'm going to make a copy of the layer that it came in on.
And then I'm just going to call this the lot setback,
and then also change the line style to be different,
maybe a dash line. That way it will show up nice and clean for my site plan.
To dimension your structure to the setback,
as well as the lot boundary I'll use the zoom tool.
We'll zoom in on a section,
I'm going to use the dimension tool called the end-to-end dimension tool.
You can click on this, draw in the dimension and draw it into the structure.
You may also want that to go to the roof plane.
I'll press F6 on my keyboard to fill the screen.
And then let's go ahead and take a 3d view and see what this looks like using
the perspective full overview camera. In this view,
you can see the terrain has come in flat. On the right-hand side of the house,
I want to create a slope where the terrain will slope away and allow the pier
style foundation to be supported above the slope on that terrain.
To create this slope,
let me tile my screen by pressing shift F6 on my keyboard.
From the plan view,
I'm going to come over and I'm going to use the tool for the elevation
information. There are points, lines, splines, regions, and breaks.
I tend to gravitate towards either using the line tool or using the elevation
region tool. With the line tool,
I'm going to click and drag a couple of elevation lines through the structure.
Notice as I'm doing this,
I extend past the terrain perimeter and tells the program how to build it.
These three lines that I just drew came in at the same elevation as the
terrain perimeter itself. For the last line that I just drew,
I'm going to double click and open it up.
And I'm going to set the elevation of this at minus 12 feet.
In the plan view, you see all the contours that are created,
and then some of these are in a negative number.
And we also have a few extra contours that are created.
I prefer to use the terrain elevation region.
I'm going to go ahead and click and drag around this area.
You can double click on it, check the elevation of it.
It should come at either an average number or something that is near the
elevation, which is an absolute zero in the case for this particular project.
It's a good practice to avoid overlapping terrain information.
The elevation region overlaps my elevation line.
In this case it's okay because they are at the exact same elevation.
It would be best to remove that elevation line.
For the terrain perimeter itself,
you may see negative numbers that are being displayed. If you want to display,
turn off the highlight of this,
you can come on to the contour information and then change that information
to un-highlight the negative numbers,
and that will turn off the display of the negative highlight.
Other information inside of the terrain specification for your contours is a
frequency interval, smoothing information, label information.
On the general panel is the ability to control if the terrain is going to be
automatically rebuilt, as you add terrain features,
as well as adjusting the building pad.
You notice that the sub floor has a setting, currently it's automatic.
If you want to turn off the automatic and adjust it, in this case,
this is being built as a slab, you can adjust sub floor height.
There is information about the skirt,
which is the thickness of the terrain and the surface smoothing triangle
count,
and several other settings that you can find out information in our help file.
Underneath the pier foundation if I uncheck the hide terrain from the
intersection of the building that will fill in that terrain information,
and then look a little bit more realistic.
Hi terrain works well in this case because the main floor is on a slab
foundation. If it were a full height, basement,
high terrain would not work well.
Let me maximize the 3d view by double clicking on the title bar.
The other terrain tools, the program includes are terrain modifiers.
There raised regions, lower regions, hills, and valleys.
You can use these to shape and contour your terrain.
The next set of terrain tools includes the terrain feature tools.
There are a number of tools in here. If I use the rectangular feature,
click and drag to create this,
these features will follow the slope of the terrain.
The next tool are garden beds. You'll find a few different ones.
If I just use the polyline garden, bed and click and drag to create.
With these garden beds, you can double click and open them up.
You can assign a plant to fill this. It's called the distributed plant.
You can come down, click on the select option.
You can browse down in the library. You can find a number of plants.
You can also do the search.
If you know the particular plant you're looking for this case,
I'll do a search for rhododendron.
There's an option for the distance in spacing and the grid and
alignment.
You can also set up scaling if you want some variability within your plants.
You'll find a deck tool which we already have in the design.
And then there's also a fence tool with the fencing as you click and drag these
fences out, they will follow the contour of your terrain.
The other tools that we have, are retaining walls.
You'll find both retaining walls and terrain walls.
Let's take a look at the difference. With the straight terrain walls,
I click and drag across this area. The terrain wall works much like the fence.
It sits on top of the terrain and will follow the contour.
Let me delete this and then use the retaining wall and do the same thing.
We'll click and drag across the retaining wall actually holds back to terrain
and you can use this to adjust your terrain using this retaining wall tool.
You'll find road and driveway tools.
As I go back into the floor plan view to create these.
With the road tools I click and drag the road,
that might be the main road outside of the house.
Let me tile my views shift F6 on the keyboard over in the 3d view.
As I rotate around,
you'll notice that you can't see the road off to the side.
The terrain perimeter must extend out past the road to be able to see this.
Let me just slide over a little bit.
And I'm going to grab the edge of the terrain perimeter,
and I'm just going to click and drag this out a ways.
You'll notice that once I get out past the road, you can now see the road.
It's important to see objects in 3d,
that the terrain perimeter must encompass those.
By moving the terrain perimeter out, you may need to draw in a lot boundary.
You can see that process in a separate video.
The additional terrain tools also include driveway tools.
You'll find a straight driveway,
curved driveway or splined driveway and a polyline driveway.
Polyline driveway works much like a parking lot.
It won't necessarily follow the terrain,
but the straight driveway will follow your terrain if I just kind of come in
here, click and drag to the edge of the terrain.
This can then be concentrically resized and adjusted as you need to for your
designs. The roads have sidewalk tools,
as well as dedicated sidewalk tools.
You can click on these and add your automatic sidewalks.
The program will ask you how you want to generate those.
You'll find curbing tools, stepping stone tools,
and several other tools that are available inside of the program.
You can also isolate certain layers using the saved plan views.
If I switch this back to just the site plan, view that I've created,
you can then remove the unnecessary layers using this view and send this out
to your layout sheet for a site plan.
As I show here on the screen gives you a very isolated view.
You can create additional views and layer sets like this landscape plan for
added a detail. As I switched to a landscape plan view, I created separately,
there is a plant chooser tool.
That will allow you to find over 3,500 different plants by common name,
by scientific name, other methods,
including the type subtype needs foliage.
There's also a map that you can use that will display the different zones that
are available. And if I do a search for Oak,
you can see all the variety of Oak that you can choose. Grab the plant.
It will open up the library to that plant.
You can then place this plant and easily position it.
As you place additional plants, you can block them, add them into your library.
I have done that for this particular project.
As I come down into my library and I grab the garden feature and
I come over here and click and place this will place the entire plant grouping
of all the plants that I've assembled, and we go back into the 3d view.
You can see all the plants that were just created from that Architectural block
that I saved into the library.
That wraps up this video on the terrain and site plan basics.
Please see the built-in help system as well as several other terrain and site p
lan videos available in our video system. Thanks for watching.