Now that you have prepared your Plans and Imported Control Lines, it's time to import Plans into CivilPro and register them (assign coordinates of known points on each sheet / image).
Note: If you haven't yet added a Coordinate System (covered in previous Importing Control Lines guide), navigate to QA Setup > Coordinate Systems, then select Load from Default and select the relevant Coordinate System for your project. This is typically noted in the title block of your Construction Drawings, or known by your project Surveyor - just ask them.
IMPORTANT: To speed up the performance of registering / using your Plans within CivilPro, we recommend:
- Opening PDF/s in Chrome / Edge
- Print each PDF set using Microsoft Print to PDF. This flattens the set and makes it more responsive.
- Using printed set/s for upload into CivilPro
This import and registration process involves:
- Importing Plans
- Registering Plans (not required for Georeferenced PDFs)
- Setting sheet perimeter
Importing Plans
Navigate to Spatial, then Plans:
Select New Plan, then populate as below:
- Plan Name - quick reference title for Plan e.g. Drainage Drawing Set
- Reference System - coordinate system of Plan - typically shown in Title Block on drawings, or Notes page
- Plan Description - further context on drawing contents e.g. IFC Issue 19/08/25
- Plan File - select PDF or GeoPDF here
Click Save.
Your Plan should now appear in the Plans Register.
Right-click, Configure Plan to begin registration.
Plans can be registered in three ways:
- selecting points on each sheet and inputting coordinates for each; or
- selecting a point on a Control Line on each sheet, and inputting the chainage at that point (faster); or
- by having the PDFs georeferenced on export from modelling / visualisation software (e.g. Propeller etc.)
Registering Plans using Coordinates
Scroll to the first sheet you wish to use in CivilPro. In the below, we have coordinates for various known points on Control Line MC02 and Control Line MC20.
Click Configure, Add Registration Point(s), then click on the first of the known points - use CTRL + Scroll to zoom in
Important:
- spread the registration points across the sheet as much as possible. This improves accuracy (two clustered points won't yield good results as registration will be much more sensitive to where you click)
After clicking on the first known point (circled below), add in the X (Easting / Latitude) and Y (Northing / Longitude) coordinates. You can typically source these coordinates from the Survey Setout sheet in your Construction Drawings - see inset below.
Click Save.
Repeat for other known point on this sheet - minimum 2 points, and try to spread points across the drawing for better results.
Before you move onto the next sheet, we need to Set Perimeter for this sheet (see section below)
Registering Plans Using Control Lines (preferred)
Note: to follow this process for registration, you must have first Imported Control Lines.
Scroll to the first sheet you wish to use in CivilPro. Click Configure, Add Registration Point(s), then click on the first of the known points on one of your Imported Control Lines (typically at a chainage tick, or at a TC / CT point) - use CTRL + Scroll to zoom in.
Select From Control Line Chainage, then select the Control Line and the chainage at the location selected. Repeat for other known point/s on this sheet - minimum 2 points, and try to spread points across the drawing for better results.
Before you move onto the next sheet, we need to Set Perimeter (see section below)
Importing Georeferenced PDFs
When Construction Drawings are exported from a modelling software, there is typically an option to embed geo-spatial projection information (formats include ISO32000, OGC_BP etc.). This provides CivilPro the spatial information required to position each sheet automatically.
To obtain geo-referenced PDFs, you may need to request this of your Designer / Client. If they are willing, ask that they test by exporting a single sheet and providing to you for upload into CivilPro - to test the export settings they've used are recognised by CivilPro. If successful, they can generate the full set. If there are any issues, contact our Support and we can review settings.
Once you've imported GeoPDFs, no registration is required - just adjust the initial perimeter as described below.
Set Perimeter for Sheet
After Registrations for a sheet are complete, select Set Perimeter
By setting a Perimeter, we define where CivilPro will shown any annotations made, preventing Lots from being shown atop Notes and the Title Block, for example.
Click to add points around the contents of the Plan as below, excluding areas where we don't want Lots to be plotted, and tracing along join lines as shown. Click back on the first point to complete the Perimeter.
- To remove latest point, hit Backspace
- Use vertexes to adjust locations, and click on mid-points to create additional vertexes
- To redo, click 'Select', select the Perimeter, then click 'Delete Selected'
- To save Registration, click 'Save' in the top-right
- Before clicking 'Save and Close', be sure to Register and Set Perimeter for all remaining sheets
Once complete, select Save and Close to finish the Registration process.
After your've registered each sheet you wish to use in CivilPro, and added a perimeter, you are now ready to start Defining Lots on Plans.
Pro tip regarding Control Lines - when we imported our Control Lines, they were like defined in discrete locations. This means around curves in the alignment, the control line will 'cut' the corner - creating chords between known chainage locations. This means Lots will look incorrect when plotted around curves.
To make the Control Line curve around the alignment correctly, we need to add more points to it. And because the Plans are now added into CivilPro, we can use these as a reference!
To make Control Lines curved:
- Navigate to the Control Lines Register
- Right-click a Control Line, View/Edit on Plan and select a plan
- Click on the Control Line to select it, then click Edit
- On the Control Line, you can now add new points by clicking and dragging the white circles. Drag them onto the curved Control Line. Right-click to delete a new point. If you drag a new point onto a known Chainage location, you can right-click Add Chainage. This allows you to input the chainage value at that location. To move the point, you'll need to remove the chainage first.
- Click Done to save the additional points on the Control Line.