Creating view frames - AutoCAD Civil 3D Tutorial

- [Instructor] We have the sheet set file and the template file set up. The next phase is to use them to create our sheets. The first sheets that we're going to create are the plan and profile sheets. The first part of that process is to create view frames. A view frame is used as a view port for the sheet. In other words, the view frame box frames the part of the alignment in the model that will appear in the sheets. Before creating our view frames however, it's best to make sure that your annotation scale is set to the annotation scale of the view ports that you're going to be using. The view ports we set up to be one to 40. So, I come down to my annotation scale, left click on it and make sure that it's set to one to 40. It's best to do this before you create your view frames. Now I'm going to go to the output tab to go to the plan production tools which is on the upper left. The first button is the create view frames, so I'm going to select create view frames and it opens the create view frames box. View frames are used to create boxes that are for view ports along an alignment. So, the first part of the process is to choose the alignment. The alignment that we're using is using Dorland Avenue. You can also specify a range that you want view ports to be created along the alignment. Since this a short alignment, I know there's not going to be that many sheets. I'm going to leave it as automatic. However, if you have an incredibly long alignment you might want to break it up. I'm going to next go to the sheets tab. The first thing I need to do is choose the type of sheet I want to create. Plan and profile, plan only or profile only. I want to create plan and profile sheets. So, I leave that toggled on. The next thing to do is to select the template file. I come down to the ellipse button, left click on it and then in the select layout as sheet template box I need to come to the ellipse button on the right here and I need to choose the template file that I created in the last chapter. So, I select on it and then I browse to my exercise files and I find my template and I'm going to use my template in the chapter two folder because it has more information in it than the template from chapter one. And it shows the options for layouts that I can choose. I only have one layout in that template file, that is floor plan and profile and how the software knows it is because of the view port types. Remember when we created the layout and when we created the view ports we set the view ports to be a specific type. We had one of the view ports be plan type and the other one is profile type. So, even though I have two layouts in this template file, only one of them shows up here because only one of them has plan and profile view ports. The other layout has a section view port. I'm going to select, left click on this and hit OK. The next phase is to select how the view frames are going to be placed along your alignment. The view frames are perpendicular to the alignment. If I set it to rotate north, the view frames are all set to be rotated north and so they are no longer perpendicular to the alignment. And the next thing we can do is we can set the first view frame before the start of the alignment. That's useful because it gives a buffer in your view frames and in your view ports, so I'm going to change it to along alignment and I'm going to leave it to set the first view frame to be 10 feet before the start of the alignment. Now I'm going to go to next. And what am I going to name my view frame group? I'm going to name my view frame group PLAN AND PROFILE. The view frame group name becomes the sheet subset name in your sheet set manager. I will point this out when we create our sheets. Again, the view frame group name becomes the sheet subset name in your sheet set manager. I'm naming this view frame group PLAN AND PROFILE. I am not going to change the view frame layer which is the layer that the view frames will be on. I am however going to change the view frame names. I'm going to do that by choosing the name template. This is the name template box and from here I'm going to call it VIEWFRAME- then I'm going to enter the next counter, insert. And I'm going to make sure that the counter number starts at number one. You can also have it be view frame and then view frame and raw station or start station. These are the other property fields that you can use to name your view frame. I don't think that the name of the view frame is particularly important in the long run because it's not going to be displayed in your sheets. It's really just for you. Okay, and then coming down, my view frame style is set to basic and again, your view frame name style isn't super important because it's not going to be used in your sheets, it's really just for labeling. I do want to show you however, that the view frame is set to a no display layer. And I'm not changing anything in here, I'm just showing you. So, it's on the C-ANNO view frame and if I left click in there it shows me that the C-ANNO view frame layer is set to no plot. This is the plot column, it says no. So, view frames will not plot. I think it's good to know that. Okay. The label style is set to basic. Again, in anything related to view frame isn't particularity important because it won't show up in your sheets, so I go next. The match line is important to understand. Positioning. We are going to snap station value to the nearest 10. You can change it to be 20, 100, however far you want it to be. Because my annotation scale is not that big and my alignment is not that long, I'm going to use a fairly low value of 10. And I'm going to allow additional distancing for repositioning of my match line so I can move my match line. Now I'm going to come down to match line name. I'm going to come into my name template and these are your properties that you can use, match line raw station, next counter, view from group name, various things. I'm going to actually have it be match line with raw station. Then I go OK. Now, here is my match line style. I'm going to leave it as civil match line and we will go into editing and looking at the match line later when we do more editing. Now, down to the labels. You have two set of match line labels, left and right and what that refers to is each sheet has a beginning and end and at the beginning of the sheet that is the left label style and the end of the sheet is the right label style and I'm going to leave them as civil left for left label and civil right for right label and now I'm going to set my label location, I'm going to have it be at start and what does that mean? That refers to the start of the match line and then I'm going to have the right one also be at start. And we can edit all of these things later. In fact, when we edit them in the next video you'll see how these functions work. Now, I'm going to go to the profile view tab. This is what the profile view styles will be. You can always change this later but when the profile views are created, this is the style that will be used to create it but again, you can override it when you actually create the profile views. Right now we are only creating the view frames. We will create the profile views and the band sets associated with them when we actually create the sheets. I'm going to hit the create view frames button to create the view frames and now we have created the view frames. The next thing to do is to tweak them to get them to be precisely what we want.