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Importing and Registering Plans
Control Lines (as shown on Construction Drawings) provide a critical link between the drawings and the real world. CivilPro leverages the known coordinates of various locations on these Control Lines to accurately position the drawings in space.
In this guide, we'll:
Prepare Control Lines for import
Control Line coordinates are typically provided within Construction Drawing sets (look for 'Geometric Setout Details' sheet or similar), with coordinates provided at intersection points along the Control Lines (e.g. transition points, intersection points, start/ finish etc.) - see example below:
Control Line coordinates may also be available from your Designer or Surveyors - either in the format above, or as coordinates at each chainage increment along the Control Line (even better).
Once you've located the Control Line coordinates, we need to get that information formatted for import. There are two ways this can be achieved:
- Converting the PDF table to an Excel spreadsheet (typically requires cleaning up formatting in Excel); or
- Using the OCR functionality within ChatGPT / Gemini to extract the data (preferred). To do this:
- screenshot a Control Line table,
- paste into your preferred ChatGPT / Gemini; then
- add the prompt, 'Convert this table into CSV format'. Leave this window open for now.
Create Control Line in CivilPro
Prior to creating a Control Line, we need to first add the local coordinate system into the project. This will then be selectable when we import Control Line coordinates shortly.
Navigate to QA Setup > Coordinate Systems, then select Load from Default and select the relevant Coordinate System for your project, Save. Project Coordinate System (e.g. GDA2020, Zone 55) is typically noted in the title block of your Construction Drawings, or known by your project Surveyors - just ask them.
Learn more about the purpose of Local Coordinate Systems here, and how transformations occur between various coordinate systems.
Once Coordinate System is added, navigate to the Control Lines register (QA Setup > Control Lines) and select New Control Line. Input the Control Line name and a description.
With the newly created Control Line selected, right-click and select Import Coordinates.
Note: If you've already Imported and Registered Plans, you can instead define your control line by selecting View/Edit on Plan from the right-click menu, then use Define Control Line in the Plan Markup view. However, if following these guides in order, we haven't yet registered our Plans.
In the Import Coordinates menu
Coordinate Type:
- Project Coordinates - allows you to select the local coordinate reference system then import local coordinates
- GPS (WGS84) - allows you to import WGS84 coordinates only (lattitude and longitude)
If you've chosen Project Coordinates, select the Import Reference System from the dropdown. If your project local coordinate system is not visible in the dropdown, add it in the Coordinate System Register.
Click Save.
Two ways we can now import the coordinates:
- Import from Clipboard
- If you followed Step 1, navigate back to the raw data and copy it to the clipboard (Select All, CTRL + C or select the Copy icon in the LLM). Be sure to copy the Chainage, Northing and Easting columns, then select Import from Clipboard
- If you have coordinates in Excel, select all the data, then select Import from Clipboard
- Import from CSV File
- Find relevant CSV file containing Control Line coordinates, and Open
Data will now be shown, and headings automatically assigned if each column is labelled correctly. If this doesn't happen automatically, right-click the heading above each column and assign the correct heading for that column.
Click Import.
You should now see the Control Line in the register, with the Has Geometry checkbox ticked - indicating the Control Line has coordinates associated with it.
To view the Control Line, and make sure it's in the right ballpark, right-click View/Edit on Map (as we don't yet have any Plans added to CivilPro).
If your Control Line 'cuts' the corner of a curve (as above), this is because we've only got known coordinates in discrete locations. Don't worry, we'll get to this after we import out Plans (see the bottom of the article), as we'll then use the Plan as a reference for adding more points to our Control Line - smoothing out the curves.
Repeat this process for all Control Lines you wish to use to define Lots from in the project.
Once complete, we can move on to Importing and Registering Plans