Preparing your Plans

To maximise performance within CivilPro, it's important that you prepare your Plans (Construction Drawings) prior to importing and registering them in CivilPro. This will not only speed up the platform, but also reduce time spent trying to find relevant Plans in CivilPro. 

Key workflow to understand before we get started:

1. Plans (PDFs or images) are imported into CivilPro
2. Each Plan is 'registered' - known points on the sheet / image are selected, and coordinates input for each respective point. This tells CivilPro where that Plan sits in space. 
3. Plan selected as a reference layer - after each sheet / image is 'registered', it can be selected as a reference layer for defining Lots. When we define our Lots, CivilPro will store coordinates for the boundary of that Lot.
4. Display Lot on different Plan - as the Lot has its own coordinates, it can be accurately displayed atop any other sheet / image that's registered

Below is a list of Do's and Do Not's to consider when preparing your Plans:

Do's

• Request a set of drawings (or single long plot) from your Designer optimised for usage in CivilPro. Things to request as below:
  • Geo-referenced PDFs (or images) - these contain geospatial information within the file, and CivilPro will automatically detect and register these drawings on import. Geo-referencing outputs can be enabled in most modelling software platforms.
  • Minimise unnecessary detail - a general arrangement with the critical detail and (if useful) grayed-out ‘existing’ is usually a good starting point for things like earthworks and pavements
  • Larger PDFs with less detail can be the same size as a smaller page size with lots of detail. Preference larger page size with less detail as these take less time to register in CivilPro
  • If PDF / images can't be geo-referenced, ensure that there are 3 known points (coordinates available) annotated on each page - chainage ticks on a Control Line or known feature. These known points will be used to register each PDF / image in CivilPro
  • Use different drawing sets for different purposes as opposed to trying to fit all the detail into a single plan.
    • For example:
      • a simplified GA for earthworks and pavements
      • a line plot of drainage lines and gully pits
      • a detailed higher-zoom plan for structures
  • Use detail that is unlikely to be affected in a meaningful way by plan revisions. Obviously major design changes will result in an update to your plan registrations, but minor changes will usually not matter when marking out where Lots are on the drawings
• Remember, even if you define a Lot / TR on a specific plan, you can always show that same Lot / TR on any other plan as required - as the Lot sits as a layer atop the underlying plan. Therefore, it's best to define Lots on a plan that makes mark-ups easy

• Delete any pages from the plans that are not useful specifically for annotating Lots / TRs etc.

  We appreciate obtaining a tailoured set of drawings from the Designers may not be possible, but general tips in the above should still be considered when preparing Plans. 

   

  Do Not's

• Use highly complex drawings with cluttered linework
• Use unnecessarily large files - try compress + flatten where possible (use 'Microsoft Print to PDF' to flatten)
• Use the Plans functionality as as your Controlled Documents source for all Construction Drawings. This makes it unnecessarily complex to deal with revisions, and it was not designed to be efficiently used for this purpose.
• Assume the drawings have to be a standard print size. A PDF can be literally any size, but be careful of file size increases. It is best to keep plans under 20Mb or they can affect performance in CivilPro
• Assume the PDF plans you are given are all you have. It is often trivial for a Designer or Surveyor to turn off layers in the digital version and print to different page sizes.

Now that you've got your Plans ready for import, let's move on to Importing and Registering Plans