Apply parcel styles - AutoCAD Civil 3D Tutorial

- [Voiceover] Parcel styles are used to control the appearance and graphical properties of parcels. This helps to differentiate types of parcels so that it's clear what each type is intended for. Let's see how this works. In our example project, we're going to say that there are four different types of parcels. We've got the parcel type that we're already using which if I right click and go to Parcel Properties, we'll see that this is using a style called Single Family so this style will be used to represent our Single Family lots. A purple outline that is solid. There are no dashes in the lines. It's a continuous line type. Well, what about some of the other parcel types we have? We have right of ways represented by the cul-de-sac outlines and the road parallels. We also have adjoiner lots which are existing property boundaries that are not being developed or changed in any way and we're going to call out a third type of lot down here that we're going to call Green Space so this is an area where we might put a park or a detention basin. Just a general kind of common area or a general parcel that's not being used by one of the residents of our community. It's just being used for some other purpose. So all in all, four different lot types. Single Family lots, Adjoiners, Right of Ways and then this Green Space lot. How do we differentiate those? Well, I've kind of already given you a clue by looking at the parcel properties of one of our Single Family lots. All we have to do is change the style of a lot and it will take on a different appearance. So let's start with our right of way. The first thing I need to do is select the right of way lot and the easiest way to do that is to find its label that labels its interior. Now, that can be a little tough with a lot that is this irregularly shaped but if we search the drawing, we can find it here in the center of this cul-de-sac. So go ahead and click the label to select the parcel and from here I can right click and go to Parcel Properties or I can go to the AutoCAD Properties command and what I want to change is this Object Style property. Now, be mindful of which tab you're on because it's easy to mistakenly change this style which is a label style that we'll get to later. We want to be on this first tab which is Information and we want to change this Single Family to a style I prepared for you called ROW or Right of Way and you'll see that this style has a dramatically different appearance. It's got a yellow outline and it's also got this hatch associated with it. As I zoom in, you can see the dots. They're kind of sparse when you're zoomed in closely which is actually kind of handy when you're working on the roads and such within these right of ways but as you're zoomed out, it's very clear to see where they are. So that's one example of a style. Now, these styles can vary wildly from one company or one organization to the next. It's all about what you like to see in your drawings, what your company drafting standards are or possibly what your clients' drafting standards are and that's one of the beautiful things about Civil 3D is that you can customize these styles to be whatever layers you want, what line types you want, hatch patterns, maybe no hatch at all but these are completely customizable. It's not like every right of way has to be exactly this appearance in every Civil 3D drawing. You can really make it whatever you want. So let's do one of these adjoiner lots. Same deal. I'm going to pick one of the lots and this time I'll do all three at once so I'm going to pick all three lots and I can't do Parcel Properties on three lots. If you notice, it kind of deselected them. What I can do, AutoCAD Properties so I'll click, actually, what I'm going to do I'm going to show you another trick so I'll click two of them. I'll right click and pick Properties and now I can go into the Style Choice and change this to Adjoiner. Alright, so now I've got my two adjoiner lots. You can see they're kind of a brown outline and then let's just say I missed this one, well, another little trick you can use is the Match Properties command so I can use Match Properties. This is just good old Match Properties from AutoCAD. Launch the tool. Pick one parcel. Pick another parcel and just like you can do with lines, arcs and circles, you can do it with parcels as well. So now we've got our Single Family lots. We've got our right of ways and finally we'll do this green space lot and for this one I'll just select, right click, go to Parcel Properties and I'll choose the Green Space style and you can see this one has a green hatch pattern. Right now we're not carving out our clubhouse and parking area. Maybe that's something we can do later but we're just calling out this whole entire five acre lot as a green space area. So as you can see, parcel styles make easy work of differentiating parcel types. Keep watching and you'll see how you can control the display order of parcel styles to fine tune how your parcels are represented.