Win Better Work from Your Plan and Profile Sheets (7:18 min)

The quality of your plan, profile and section sheets are more important than a business card when it comes to winning more work. Learn how to make your plan and profile sheets communicate the professional image you want and in a fraction of the time!

To accomplish this, we’ll be using plan and production tools to do the following:

• Configuring viewports: Learn how to prepare an existing drawing template for use with the plan production tools.
• Creating view frames: Use the “Create View Frames” wizard to quickly create view frames along an alignment.
• Creating plan and profile sheets: Create plan and profile sheets from the view frames you created.
• Creating section sheets: Automatically create sheets from section views.

Here’s how:

In Civil 3D, the first thing we’re going to look at are our template files. Select “Open” at the top of your screen and open your plan and profile DWT template document.

Once that is open, we can see how it is set up. You most likely have all of your title blocks and viewports set up. All we need to do is select the viewport, go to “Properties” on the right, and select “Plan” for the top “Viewport Type” and “Profile” as the bottom “Viewport Type”.

Now we need to create view frames for our file. In this example, we’re going to use the main road highlighted in the image.

In the “Output” tab, select “Create View Frames” from the “Plan Production” panel.

In the “Create View Frames” window that appears, choose the alignment and select “Automatic” for the “Station Range”. Hit “Next”.

In the “Sheets” tab of the same window, select “Plan and Profile” and set the scale to “ARCH D Plan and Profile 20 Scale” under “Sheet Settings”.

Still in the “Sheets” tab, under “View Frame Placement”, select “Along alignment” and check the box for “Set the first view frame before the start of the alignment by:” and set it to “50.00’”. Select “Next”.

In the “View Frame Group” tab, change the “Label location” to “Top center”. Hit “Next”.

In the “Match Lines” tab, change the “Snap station value down to the nearest” to “25”. Select “Next”.

In the “Profile Views” tab, select your “Profile View Style” and “Band Set” and select “Create View Frames”.

This will create five sheets that this is going to create a plan and profile for. You can grip and rotate the sheets as necessary.

 Now, select “Create Sheets” from the “Output” tab.

In the window that pops up, select “All layouts in the current drawing” under “Layout Creation”. Hit “Next”.

In the “Sheet Set” tab, you can select the sheet set you need for the project or create a new one. In this example, we’re going to leave default settings and click “Next”.

In the “Profile Views” tab, select “Align profile and plan view at the start”. Click “Create Sheets”.

This will give us five new layout tabs and have our plan and profile sheets created. Set the profile view origin to the side of the main profile.

By selecting the layout and sheet tabs on the bottom of the screen, you will be able to see the plan and profile sheets for your project.

Now we see how simple it is to create plan and profile sheets by starting with a template and creating view frame groups. Good luck!