Municipal Computer Applications Assignment 7

Advanced Computer Applications

Subdivision Assignment
Given:
A series of data and drawing files as the project Base Plans of existing site conditions. This
will be the first time in C3D you will have a “project” type assignment. The assignment base
plans folder is called Assignment7_Subdivision Project, and is available from the C3D File
Library folder on LEARN.

Overview:

In this assignment you will be developing a lot and lot grading plan for a small municipal
subdivision. You will also be working in a typical C3D environment consistent with actual
use of C3D in a collaborative office environment. As will be explained, a Project Team
typically would be involved in design and management of a similar municipal project.

You will be using more features of C3D; ones that permit collaboration with the project team
(if there was one), using some of the C3D knowledge you have gained in previous
assignments, and a few new C3D feature creation tools. You will also create layouts of your
work for plotting, a file suitable for upload to electronic survey equipment for staking your
design in the field, and prepare an e-transmittal of your finished product.

Procedure:

Part 1: Base Plans, MLI, and X-Ref’s

1. Download and save the entire “Assignment7_Subdivision Project” project folder to the “My
Documents” folder on your computer.

2. Find and open the Cadastral drawing first: Silver Ave MLI Cadastral 2018.04.25.sb.dwg.
Note the drawing contents.

The Cadastral is essentially a legal property drawing. In this case, the drawing objects were
obtained from the Manitoba Land Initiative (MLI) website. Much useful information can be
obtained from this resource; it would be beneficial for you to spend a few extra hours
exploring the various types of available information MLI offers.

In this case, the Cadastral features an area of Winnipeg. In particular, you are interested in
the small area immediately north of Silver Avenue near Winchester Street. Your proposed
project site borders the east bank of Truro Creek; currently, there are “community” gardens
at this location.

Open the layer dialogue window, and thaw any frozen layers. You will now note that a b/w

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ortho image is X-referenced into the drawing. Unless your drawing cannot find the X-
referenced file, that is.

If the X-ref links are “broken”, it is relatively easy to correct this by re-directing the drawing
references to the locations of the files on your computer. This emphasizes the importance of
file and folder rules and organization in the team project environment, and why drawings
should generally not be moved or renamed. Do not delete, move, rotate, or scale the X-ref
drawings or images in the drawings – only re-establish any broken links.

The details of this “Ortho” aerial image will be discussed in class. Note that, for numerous
reasons, it will be standard practice to use X-ref’s in a Team Project Environment. This too
will be discussed in class. Zoom out and note the proximity of the Winnipeg Airport.

The Silver Avenue Subdivision project is to develop some of this land into a residential
subdivision, complete with road access, greenspace public reserves, and proper storm water
surface drainage (lot grading).

Save and close Silver Ave MLI Cadastral 2018.04.25.sb.dwg.

3. Now open the blonskis_BasePlan_2018.05.16.dwg. It is in the Base Plan folder. Note that
this drawing attempts to X-ref the Cadastral drawing as well as a color satellite image
obtained from Google Earth. Again, you may have to re-establish the correct file location
links. This color image is NOT “Ortho”.

Look closely at the image; the garden area is clearly visible, along with the creek, walking
path / trail, streets, etc. The cadastral lines and information is set by drawing order to show
with the image “below”.

Save and close blonskis_BasePlan_2018.05.16.dwg.

4. Open blonskis_SurveyPlan_2018.05.16.dwg. Fix any broken drawing X-references. Note that

this drawing X-ref’s the base plan, so all the base plan’s attached X-ref’s also come in with
it.

This drawing has most of the existing site condition work done for you. It contains some
custom layers, settings and styles, and an extensive series of surveyed point information; and
an acceptable existing ground surface model as a basis for your design. But you might not
see all of that yet.

Therefore, the elaborate steps necessary to add, organize, and correct another type of broken
data link in your survey drawing will be demonstrated in class. This is the use of a Survey
Database. You must create your own lecture notes for this part of this course.

Once the points are visible in the drawing, note that each type of point data is organized into
separate point groups on “V-NODE-XXXX” NCS style layers. There is something else
different here than what you have used before – to illustrate, try selecting a point in the

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drawing and editing the elevation using the point editor panorama or the ACAD properties
dialogue window. Notice that the ability to make any edits to the point parameters (location,
description, elevation) is disabled unless you select “Edit Survey Point” (Don’t do that,
however). This is due to the point being a “Survey Point”; not a standard C3D cogo point.
There are also a few points (monuments and IB’s) that are “Control” type survey points.

Survey points are similar to an X-ref drawing, in that they are stored in a separate location
from the drawing in a Survey Database. Again, this is typical for a project team environment,
and also serves to “protect” the survey data. This too will be discussed in class in more detail,
including a brief discussion and demonstrations of the system’s capabilities.

The survey points have also been carefully organized into an eg surface point group used to
define the eg DTM / TIN for this project. By using both ACAD and C3D tools, it was
relatively easy (and somewhat tedious) to manually create the series of line work in the
drawing. Relevant line work is used as surface definition (Breaklines, with NCS format “V-
LINE-XXXX” naming and layers, and an Outer Boundary). It was also necessary to “lock
down” the points included in the eg point group.

The DTM required many edits to correct and refine the surface within the key project area.
These edits compensated the accuracy shortfall of the of surveyed data, and the breakline and
boundary definitions. This was done using the C3D surface edit tools.

Now the X-ref and Survey Database links are correct, you can select the DTM surface model
and examine it in Object Viewer to get an idea of the existing site topography. As-is, the
surface remains flawed with several obvious errors resulting from insufficient survey data
and points that are obviously erroneous (which ones?).

Envision how you will slice up and grade the area, bounded by the magenta polyline on the
survey drawing, into residential lots, PR, and a ROW connecting to Silver Avenue in two
locations. You will also be bounded by the top of the east bank of Truro Creek and the
existing path to the south.

Save and close blonskis_SurveyPlan_2018.05.16.dwg.

Part 2: Create Contour and Parcel Drawings

Your drawing task is to create a C3D site and parcel plan of the development area and use
C3D commands and utilities to create a lot plan (site and parcels).

It is recognized C3D best practice to have a separate drawing file (when possible) for every
key element of a project. This is why there are separate base and survey plans. This practice
continues into the design process.

The team project environment concept must also be maintained. You will continue using X-
ref’s and the survey database, but also learn to use another C3D information sharing utility;

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Data Shortcuts. This will be demonstrated in class and is described in brief notes here and
expanded in a previous year’s course notes excerpt that is available on LEARN.

5. You will create two new C3D working drawings using the standard metric NCS template:

A. <lastname><firstinitial>_EG Contours.dwg , and

B. <lastname><firstinitial>_Lot Layout and Grading Plan.dwg

Save both in new folders “EG Contour Plan” under the Base Plans folder, and “Lot and
Grading Design” under the Design folder – respectively.

6. Both of these drawing will reference the survey drawing. Essentially, the first will only be
used to create a paper space layout of the eg surface contours for plotting.

X-ref the survey plan into your new drawing, layer 0 as usual. Now try to find the points and
eg surface in the prospector. Of course, neither points or surface are there.

You really don’t need to have the points imported into this drawing anyway (although easily
done), as you only need to show appropriate contours for tendering. But in order to change
the surface style to one that shows contours, you will find something troublesome about the
limitations of X-refs when working with C3D that you did not encounter with ACAD.

Namely, most C3D features are captive to their “source” drawing. So a DTM, for example,
can only be defined and therefore exist as an editable entity in one drawing. The X-ref can
only show the surface exactly as it exists in the source drawing, and it is virtually impossible
to use most C3D surface tools and routines, and - importantly here - change the styles on that
surface.

For this reason, to create a new drawing to show contours of the eg surface, the X-ref of the
survey drawing is inadequate; the surface definition is not included with the X-ref. The
surface could be copied from drawing to drawing, but it is not wise to copy the eg surface
and paste it in to the new drawings. The solution here is using C3D “Data Shortcuts”, which
allow C3D features and data to be “shared” with other drawings in a project.

Data Types Supported by Data Shortcuts

Data Shortcuts can link the following types of C3D data objects from source drawings to
consumer drawing files:

A. Surfaces
B. Alignments – and any Profiles created with the parent alignments
C. Pipe Networks (open channel flow networks – example Land Drainage / Storm Water
Sewers)
D. Pressure Networks (closed pressure pipe networks – example – Water Mains)
E. View Frame Groups

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Important - it is notable / unfortunate that some key C3D design objects and elements
are NOT included in the above list, most noteably C3D Sites, Parcels, Grading, and
Feature Lines – this will be apparent later on, but can be accommodated other ways…

Using Data Shortcuts

This section describes the general concept (and workflow) for using Data Shortcuts:

The Concept

Essentially, the concept / workflow is this:

Create the Data Shortcuts – this defines what can be linked / shared from a source object’s drawing
(parent drawing):

A. Open the source drawing that contains the data objects to be shared (an EG surface
model, for example). Data Shortcuts can only be created from the Source Object’s
Drawing.
B. Create and set the project folder and path to the drawing data shortcuts folder. This
essentially dictates where C3D will store and search for:
a. source data files,
b. shortcuts, and
c. reference associations between the drawings within the project.
C. Create Data Shortcuts by specifying what C3D object data from the source drawing
will be stored and available to other consumer drawings using the project Data
Shortcuts.

Create the Data Reference – this specifies what gets linked / shared into other drawings

D. Open or create consumer drawing(s) that need to reference / use the source objects.
For example, a road design drawing that needs to reference the EG surface model
from the survey plan drawing to create profile views.
E. Associate the consumer drawing to the project to make the project’s shared data
available to the current drawing.
F. Create a Data Shortcut Reference to import the source object’s data into the current
consumer drawing. In the case of referencing an EG surface, that surface data can
now be accessed inside of the road design drawing without importing a copy of the
EG surface.

Important: a merely copied version of the EG would not update if the actual EG surface is
revised for any reason.

Think of Data Shortcuts (and References) as similar to “X-Ref” – just like inserting a base
plan drawing into the survey drawing – you can see it, but it isn’t really there…and it isn’t
even remotely “yours” (read only in the consumer drawings), but it will update automatically
when changed in the source drawing (in most cases)…

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Link both new drawings to the Survey Plan eg surface using data shortcuts.

For the contour drawing, it is only necessary to change the surface style to one already
available in the survey drawing, then add labels to the major contours.

To copy a style or setting from one drawing to another, both drawings must be open in the
same C3D window, and Master View must be selected in the Toolspace Settings dialoge
window. Make the destination drawing the current one, then go to the style or setting to be
copied in the Toolspace window, click and drag the item into the drawing pane of the current
drawing to copy it.
Part 3: Define the Site and Create the Parcels

Now you will open your Lot Grading Plan drawing and proceed to design and layout the plan
of the subdivision.

Typically, a criteria and guidelines for land division and development is established by local
government, the developer, and the province. These influencing factors exist beyond the
scope of this course.

Generally, the goal is to yield the maximum number of lots possible while adhering to the
various criteria, such as the minimum lot size and frontage, often to meet requirements for
concerns like limiting the ground water contamination potential of on-site sanitary sewer
(septic) systems.

In the case of this subdivision, the criteria is primarily concerned with maximizing the
number of acceptable sized and shaped lots while setting aside a minimum area as PR (as
greenspace) and ensuring adequate and safe roadway access to the new lots. An esthetically
pleasing layout increases the value of the lots.

7. Design criteria:

Your maximum area of development is outlined in magenta in the survey plan, but the limit
of your development also must leave a min. 3 m wide buffer along the creek and not
encroach on the path, leaving a min. 1 m buffer strip.

Create one roadway ROW, to be generally crescent shaped, with two access points
(intersections) with Silver Ave. at 90 deg to the existing ROW. These new access
intersections can only be built opposite to existing street intersections on Silver Ave. The
new ROW is 18 m in width. The proposed roadway (the new ROW) must have min. 15 m CL
radius curves. You are not designing the roadway for this assignment.

Not specified by the municipal, developer, or environmental concerns, but a part of this
assignment, you must imagine driving on your proposed ROW – and think - will it be safe in
all weather conditions (site lines, curvatures, stopping distances, braking / accelerating on
curves)? Don’t create a whimsical, unsafe, and impractical design that wouldn’t / couldn’t be

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constructed.

Lots can only front on to and be accessed from your new ROW and feature side lines
perpendicular to the ROW. Side lot lines are single straight lines. Rear lot lines must all be
continuous straight segements. Min. frontage width is 12 m at a 10 m offset from ROW. Min.
lot depth is 25 m. Min. lot area 350 sq m. Min. house setback from ROW is 10 m.

A min. 10% (but max. 15%) of your total development area must be designated PR
(greenspace). No individual PR parcel can be less than 200 sq. m.

Similar to your Parcels assignment, you may use any method you like to create a site and
parcels to satisfy the above criteria.

Parcel hierarchy is, in order of visibility, ROW – PR – RES. All the parcels have to be
numbered and labeled to show the type, number, and area in m2. The ROW parcel is to have
number 999. The PR parcels must be numbered in order of area, largest to smallest,
beginning with PR 501. All residential lots have to be sequentially numbered by blocks,
starting at Block 1 Lot 1, and all residential lots must be dimensionally labeled with the same
label style and format as for assignment 5.

Part 4: Lot Grading

In this section, we will create a development grading plan. This type of plan is often simply
called the “lot grading plan”. The goal is to provide the development with positive storm
drainage while minimizing earth movement.

Lot grading plans must have every grade break, high points, low points, and principal slopes
labelled, and all necessary grade points have to be adequately dimensioned (where not shown
elsewhere on the tender and construction drawings) to stake them in the field. Linear
drainage paths (ditch flow paths and swales) must be shown as lines on the drawing with
slopes labelled.

Before applying labels, the grading surface has to be designed. The criteria for this
subdivision is as follows:

1. No fill will be imported, but a total subdivision earthworks (the ROW is not part of
the lot grading design or earthwork volume calculations) maximum surplus (waste) of
20 000 cu. m. is permissible.
2. Only “split lot” grading is to be used.
3. Basement excavations will be assumed net volume equal to 10 m x 8 m x 2 m.
4. Assume a typical house perching grading volume of 30 cu. m. per house.
5. Topsoil stripping thickness is 0.200 m. Topsoil placement for final landscaping is
0.100 m.
6. Lot elevations along the development’s outer boundary must remain at pre-existing
levels.
7. Lots cannot drain (principally) onto adjacent private lots. Lots within the project

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boundary may drain onto PR’s within the boundary.

8. Developed areas cannot drain onto adjoining “private” properties outside the project
boundary at all; the only exceptions are to streets (ROWs), and to existing drainage
channels (Truro Creek).
9. Min. drainage slope is 2% everywhere (except within the ROW). Max. is 8%.
10. V – bottom drainage swales may be incorporated into the design with design side
slopes of 6:1 and lateral (flow line) slopes of 0.3 – 5.0 %. Swales up to 3 m width are
to be designed wherever necessary and are part of the lot grading plan and earth
movement calculations within the boundary of the subdivision’s lots and PR’s.
11. Part of a grading plan is to set main floor elevations of each “house” (parcel). A
simple label at the center of a rectangular polyline symbolically representing the size
of the typical house is sufficient. For this subdivision, the main floor elevations must
be 0.8 - 0.9 m above the highest point of the lot grading plan under the footprint of
the representative rectangular polyline of the typical house. The footprint must
straddle the high point or peak grade break line of each lot. Provide house elevations
for any one block of your subdivision (only).

I can suggest a starting point in determining elevations of the lots, simply “drape” the ROW
profile and use a design “profile” generally 0.5 m below eg to determine the elevations of the
design ROW limit. An example will be shown in class. Create your grading plan outward
from the ROW limits and existing ground along the subdivision boundary using Feature
Lines and Feature Line Creation tools. Grade all swales and ditch bottom feature lines with
grading tools set to daylight to appropriate surfaces.

Part 5: Page Layouts

Using some of the knowledge from your AutoCAD training and experience combined with
new information, you are to produce printable layouts to show:

1. The existing topographical contour drawing

2. The lot layout
3. The lot grading plan

You will use a page setup and title block from the following source:

C:\Users\sblonski\AppData\Local\Autodesk\C3D 2020\enu\Template\Plan Production\Civil

3D (Metric) Plan only.dwt.

All three are to be plotted using ISO A1 (594 x 841 mm Landscape) Plan Only 1 to 500. This
is a page setup using an ACAD title block with editable attributes. A single viewport is also
provided, although you must establish what it displays and the viewport orientation and scale
yourself.

Often the best procedure to create multiple layouts of the same area of the model is to create
the first plan layout view and set viewport scale, common layer state, and title block

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attributes. Once the first layout is essentially complete and satisfactory, it can be copied as
new layouts, then edited to suit different purposes.

Part 6: Exporting Design

Part of the process is sharing the information contained in your CAD environment with other
people, computers, software, and equipment and machinery. The standard “people” medium
is the printed drawing.

There are many ways of transmitting electronic data as well.

One of the key advantages of CAD is the ability to share vast amounts of information in
exacting detail. Most often, a “compatable” file format is required to transfer the data.

As you have already experienced, point information is often transferred and stored in ASCII
point files. These are often simple text (.txt) delimitted file formats that are very basic,
produce small file size, and are nearly universal in the industry.

For this assignment, you will export your Lot Grading Plan as a finish grade ASCII points
file of all the grade breaks in your lot grading plan. Name the file the same as the points
group. Basically, it will contain a point at every elevation on your layout plan.

DTM data is also routinely transferred between mediums such as design software and GPS
survey or machine control systems. As Autodesk C3D software is the industry “standard”,
one format that has been widely adopted is “LandXML” format; applicable for just about
every type of data common to civil engineering geometric information. Land XML files can
contain points, surfaces, alignments, profiles, corridors, parcels, etc. Basically, any data
produceable in C3D can be saved in Land XML format, and possibly all in one file, if so
desired.

For this part of the assignment, you will create a Land XML file containing only the DTM of
the subgrade elavations of your lot gragding design. Name your file the same as your design
surface.

The last step in sharing data is to send all the project data as an electronic transmittal via
portable storage (USB flash drive, etc.) or via the internet (e-mail). This transfere might be
awkward given the C3D working environment – namely, spread storage of the data in survey
databases, data shortcuts, X-refs, images, spreadsheets (MS Excel), etc.

While no one method or utility can prepare and assemble a single file, folder, or object
ensuring everything pertanent to your project is included in a transmittal package, ACAD can
produce what is called an “e-transmittal” whereby ACAD attempts to find and group all the
sources of information used in a particular drawing, and create a .zip folder of the
information for transfer. One nicety is that the end user should be able to unzip the package
directly to their computer, and all folder and file structure, links, paths, and dependencies
should be correct and work properly, provided the e-transmit process created the entire

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package. E-transmit does nothing for referenced C3D specific items, however. Thses have to
be added by the user.

The export information files, including the e-tranmit .zip package, must be saved in the “To
Others” folder, with a sub folder named <lastname_first initial>_Project
Transmittal_<yyyy.mm.dd>.

Summary
Project rules / submission:

1. Team project environment maintained.

2. Use of X-refs, Survey Database, and Data Shortcuts.
3. NCS layer formatting generally followed.
4. Use of high level C3D tools and commands including but not limited to:
a. Contour labels
b. Parcel creation tools
c. Grading tools and objects
d. Feature line tools
e. Surface volumes and volume reports
5. e-transmittal and file export to ASCII and Land.xml formats.

Including what you were initially provided, you should have the following in your finished
project folder:

1. Two new drawings in appropriate folders.

2. All necessary elements created in model space, and 3 Layout plans and page setup
using ISO A1 size plotting and full title block, etc.
3. An eg plan with 0.2 / 1.0 contours c/w major labels
4. A lot layout plan with numbered and labelled parcels and all dimensions of residential
parcels
5. A lot grading plan with slopes and labels and total earth calculations table
6. A grading surface, created and saved in the EG contours dwg
7. Export files of the finished lot grading ponts and surface DTM to ASCII .csv and
Land.XML formats respectivly.
8. An e-transmittal package containing all relative data that would constitute tender
drawings for the project drawings you created (in other words – I should have
everything I need to have your complete and fully functional assignment drawings on
my computer).

Hand In:
Hand in your completed project folder to the LEARN Dropbox. There are no
hard-copy components to this assignment.

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