HOW to STOP PHANTOM PARCELs

[Anonymous]

IF you look at the pic I attached...I have several "interior" lots..... IF I CORRECTLY create an alignment it AUTOMATICALLY creates a parcel.....I refer to this as a phantom parcel......How do I prevent this???....
I know I can stop short 2 tenths, hand draft and account for in the design, but this causes alot of extra work!!!!! I can't always assume that others involved in drafting and design will account for this......it causes alot of surplus drafting, turning labels off, etc......why isn't it accurate or allowed?....

[Anonymous]

Jiveman:

Do you need the alignment for doing your parcels? If not, make a different
site for alignments or anything other than parcels. I got into a big trap
with sewers running all over the place and crossing parcels until Dan
Philbrick straightened me out.

Bill

wrote in message news:4987127@discussion.autodesk.com...
IF you look at the pic I attached...I have several "interior" lots..... IF I
CORRECTLY create an alignment it AUTOMATICALLY creates a parcel.....I refer
to this as a phantom parcel......How do I prevent this???....
I know I can stop short 2 tenths, hand draft and account for in the design,
but this causes alot of extra work!!!!! I can't always assume that others
involved in drafting and design will account for this......it causes alot of
surplus drafting, turning labels off, etc......why isn't it accurate or
allowed?....

[apweng]

I agree with you. For transportation design you don't want these parcels created and have to worry about assigning "no display" styles when alignments form closed areas.

Albeit not ideal, the only way I'm aware of is to create alignments in different sites. You can move alignments to other sites once they've been created.

Andrew

[Anonymous]

I now do have many separate alignments, separated them so they wouldn't make a parcel....Will having so many different alignments effect the grading procedures? I did try the method of making the visibility of the phantom parcels false....caused corruption later on......Question still is: HOW do you prevent the creation of phantom parcel so alignments are and remain accurate?

[apweng]

The answer is that you can't - unless you put them into different sites as earlier stated. I've created corridors that use different logical assignments to reference different alignments in different sites.

[kevincurrey]

You can't, period, end of story. Well, almost. If you put EACH ALIGNMENT in a different site, it won't create parcels, but you can't just put all of the alignments in a different For me, it's much easier just to freeze the parcel layer, or if I need to have some parcels in my drawing, put the offending parcels on a junk layer.

[kevincurrey]

Oops! I hit the post button before I could fix that. Second sentence should read: ... can't put all of the alignments into a different site, since that would still form a closed boundary that would create a parcel.

[Anonymous]

I do not see an image, but I understand your question. Let me try to
explain what is going on. In Civil 3D, there is a live topology model which
is dynamically updated when you make edits to objects. The Alignments and
Parcel Segment lines are two of the Civil 3D objects which participate in
the topology. When you create a Site, that is really a collection of
objects which will be in the same Topology. Objects which are in different
Sites do not interact with each other. You can illustrate this by creating
a simple closed parcel in Site 1, and then create an Alignment in Site 2,
which splits the parcel. You will see that the parcel is not impacted.
If you create the Alignment in Site 1, you will see that the parcel is
split. Now if you make geometric edits to the alignment, the parcels will
reflect those changes.

In your case, it sounds like you only have Alignments in your drawing.
Since Alignments are managed as part of a Site, if 2 alignments are in the
same Site, and they form a closed area, a "parcel" will be created. To
prevent "parcel" from being formed, you can put the alignments in different
Sites. To do this, create a new Site on the Alignment Creation dialog and
use that for the new alignment. If you are creating Alignments which are
duplicate (or near duplicate), I would recommend putting them in different
Sites.

As an alternative, you can allow the parcels to be formed and hide them from
display. I think Kevin's suggestion is the best approach for that. If you
put the Aecc_Parcel on a layer, you can freeze that layer.

I did find a defect with the default layer when the parcel is formed by
alignments. If you go to the drawing settings (rt. click on the drawing ->
Edit Drawing Settings....) you will an Object Layer Tab - this is used to
set the layer for newly created objects. I did find that this layer is not
being applied if the parcel is formed by closed alignments. We will get
that resolved. Another way to "hide" those parcels is to set the parcel
label visibility to false. If you have no other parcels in your drawing,
one easy way to do this is to go to the Parcel node in the Settings Manager,
rt. click, Edit Label Style Defaults..... In the next dialog, expand the
Labels category and set the visibility to false.

Daniel Philbrick
Civil 3D Development, Autodesk, Inc.



wrote in message news:4987127@discussion.autodesk.com...
IF you look at the pic I attached...I have several "interior" lots..... IF I
CORRECTLY create an alignment it AUTOMATICALLY creates a parcel.....I refer
to this as a phantom parcel......How do I prevent this???....
I know I can stop short 2 tenths, hand draft and account for in the design,
but this causes alot of extra work!!!!! I can't always assume that others
involved in drafting and design will account for this......it causes alot of
surplus drafting, turning labels off, etc......why isn't it accurate or
allowed?....

[Anonymous]

Just another approach, instead of trying to deal with the layers, we created
a Parcel Label style called NONE with no elements. It's relatively easy to
setup all of your alignment created parcel styles to use that label,
especially if you have them all on one site and just apply the style through
mass selection in Prospector.

For the record, I'm not a big fan of the Alignment created Parcels bit
myself, but it is workable, if ugly. When ROW reacts to Alignment changes,
it will really be necessary, so we might as well get used to it.

--
James Wedding, P.E.
Technology Manager &
Associate
Jones & Boyd, Inc.
Dallas, TX
XP/2 on P4-3.4/1G
LDT 2006 & C3D2006/SP1

[Anonymous]

Also, my suggestions are based on the current functionality. For the
future, we are taking a look at providing a property on the alignment to
make this behavior user controllable.

If you specific input, send an email.

Thanks,

Dan
"James Wedding" wrote in message
news:4987407@discussion.autodesk.com...
Just another approach, instead of trying to deal with the layers, we created
a Parcel Label style called NONE with no elements. It's relatively easy to
setup all of your alignment created parcel styles to use that label,
especially if you have them all on one site and just apply the style through
mass selection in Prospector.

For the record, I'm not a big fan of the Alignment created Parcels bit
myself, but it is workable, if ugly. When ROW reacts to Alignment changes,
it will really be necessary, so we might as well get used to it.

--
James Wedding, P.E.
Technology Manager &
Associate
Jones & Boyd, Inc.
Dallas, TX
XP/2 on P4-3.4/1G
LDT 2006 & C3D2006/SP1

[Anonymous]

James, I tried the NONE method you are refering to....had continous errors until they were alleviated....the visibilty false method and layers off simply did not correct the errors until ALL parcels formed on my alignments were gone.... (and of course the next series of errors on another task)...

W/ ROW you were refering to, can you aloborate....

I was also wondering if all alignments should be in same site for the end product mass grade? excuse my ignorance but I can't get past all the errors to delve into the grading yet.....

[Anonymous]

It sounds like you've just got a bad install, or bad memory, or bad
something. We're not seeing anywhere NEAR the number of errors you're
documenting. I don't recall, so forgive me for being redundant, but have you
done a clean install on a clean machine? It shouldn't be required, but
something is rotten in the state of Denmark as it were.

We put roads in a separate site from lots etc. I didn't like the
cross-pollination between Alignment Parcels and my lot Parcels.

And to elaborate on the ROW issue, there's already a Create ROW command, but
it basically offsets the alignment into adjoining parcels. Not a bad idea,
but unfortunately in 2006, this is the end of the interaction. Moving the CL
alignment does NOT update those lines created by the Offset command. Since
the ROW is generally based on the CL, this lack of connection makes the ROW
function somewhat silly, IMHO.

Hope this helps!

--
James Wedding, P.E.
Technology Manager &
Associate
Jones & Boyd, Inc.
Dallas, TX
XP/2 on P4-3.4/1G
LDT 2006 & C3D2006/SP1

[kevincurrey]

Here, here! I hope such a feature is forthcoming. It would speed up the design process about a million times for us.

[BEknit]

I just completed my first project with C3D 2006 (at least the road and piping design part of it)
I laid out the lot lines and lots initially using C3D's parcel functionality. It was a time saver. Unfortunately as my project progressed this functionality degraded. I didn't have time to investigate why. Now I understand.

I do a lot of drainage design involving pipes that do not follow a road alignment and traverse large parcels created for drainage purposes. This automatic parcel creation functionality has made the parcel features of c3d unworkable for me because I always create profiles (and the corresponding alignments) through all my pipe runs - including the ones running outside of the roadway. I would very much prefer not to have to create separate sites as a work around.
In fact I would prefer the default behavior of alignment creation be to not effect parcels at all.
Just my 2 cents

[Anonymous]

But you WILL want them to. When the ROW becomes part of the alignment
object, it will be crucial that it creates a parcel.

It's really not a big deal to create a multiple sites for road, sewer, etc.
I'm honestly perplexed why this of all things is turning into a show
stopper.

--
James Wedding, P.E.
Technology Manager &
Associate
Jones & Boyd, Inc.
Dallas, TX
XP/2 on P4-3.4/1G
LDT 2006 & C3D2006/SP1

[mmccall]

I'm not sure if adding ROW info to an alignment is the way to handle it or if a new ROW object (like we need another one) tied to the alignment in a similar fashion that corridors are is a better way.

A ROW 'style' would be a nice feature to add. The style could incude things like ROW width (obviously), cul-de-sac dimensions & type/offset, curb/pavement widths, medians?, etc. The style should also include something to designate if this style of ROW should react with other items within the same site.

Along these same lines I would like parcel styles to include a setting for controlling their interaction with other site items as well.

Creating new 'sites' just to separate tiems seems backwards. A site should collect items together. Maybe a check box next to a site's sub items could be used to control their interaction 0r maybe the sub items should be their own categories and a site is built from category items like a corridor .... hmmm.

[Anonymous]

Subparcels....I think I've heard that before. See, Dan?



--
James Wedding, P.E.
Technology Manager &
Associate
Jones & Boyd, Inc.
Dallas, TX
XP/2 on P4-3.4/1G
LDT 2006 & C3D2006/SP1

[viaj]

BOTTOM LINE:

the automatic parcel creation when working with alignments CREATED ERRORS GALORE...not one but several....I agree w/ previous posts, this isn't something users should have to try and avoid as a workaround, it is backwards.....my scenarios needed A SITE (ONE) not several.... it's been put on our buck, and is defeating the purpose for effiency and production....

[Anonymous]

I am certainly comfortable with just sticking to changing sites.

Bill

[BEknit]

As long as I'm able to include driveway alignments, assemblies and profiles along with my roadway alignments, profiles and assemblies together to create a corridor that accurately represents my paved surfaces without having the driveway profiles subdivide the lots in my subdivision.
I'll experiment to see how I can do this by using multiple sites.

Thanks for the advice.