Site Parcels

Learning how new software functions isn’t bad; learning to use new software for production in the ‘real’ world, when time and money count, is a different ballgame.

By now you know Civil 3D has “Sites.” If you don’t want your objects to interact with each other, i.e. if you don’t want alignments to split Parcels, you put them in a different Site. So a Site is really nothing more than a collection of objects that need to interact with each other. The level of interaction depends upon the object – enough said.

By now you’ve dabbled in the creation of Parcels, but what exactly is a Site Parcel, and how can you make it work FOR you?

In Dallas – Fort Worth, TX, each group of adjacent parcels not divided by a roadway are defined as a City Block. Every Subdivision is divided by City Blocks, and City Blocks are further divided by Parcels. Therefore, construction documents may contain several “Lot 1” labels, but each Lot 1 resides in a unique City Block.

A simple way to understand Site Parcels is to think of them as a City Block. The outline of a City Block, and effectively a Site Parcel, can carry a unique style as well as a unique label – the catch is – the label is turned off by default; if you’re uncomfortable with Civil 3D Parcels to begin with, that’ll throw you. What threw me is this: the Site Parcel label is effectively the only label found in Civil 3D that’s turned off (set to ‘none’ ) by default. Go figure.

Define a new Site and expand the Sites collection to reveal “Parcels.” Right click on “Parcels,” and select “Properties” to open the “Site Parcel Properties” dialog. AHA! On the Composition tab, notice the “Site area label style” by default set to “none.” Change the label style to any style you wish, or create a style that creates the City Block label you’re used to seeing in your construction documents.

By the way, this works well if you define every City Block in a unique Site. Therefore, for a simple 2 Block Subdivision, I define the following 4 Sites before I begin:

Subdivision (i.e. Galbraith Acres)
ROW (So alignments won’t magically subdivide my City Blocks or Parcels)
Block 1 (I drop the word “Block” and simply call it “1”)
Block 2

Cheers!

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