who uses view frames for small projects-

[Yellow600]

Hello,

Just a general question to ask.  I work on alot of small one to three sheet plan/profiles with additional drainage sheets etc.  I was told by someone today that I'm doing it all wrong.  I should be using viewframes and creating separte sheets for everything.  I feel like this is complicating my work now.  I'm the only one touching these drawings and working with them, my profiles are built and stuff is added in my base drawing.  I see benefits for a medium/ large scale project, but these are small drainage issues that we deal with.  It's creating a headache for me.  Right now i just have layout tabs set up and have viewports created so i can easily zoom to whatever i need and if i need to rotate a view i just use the ucs command. He also said no one uses annotative text either... which I obviously do.  Just trying to verify my method. 

Thanks,

Jon

civil3d2014

[Joe-Bouza]

These "best practices" can be useful, and  I doubt "your are doing it all wrong"

Not to go too far off topic but I fancy myself a HO model railroader, and all the books and mukitymuks say you should never exceed 2% on your model railroad. But the largest manufacturer of HO train supplies provides pre-formed grade kits for 1%, 2%, 3% and 4%.

Now if you should never exceed 2% on you model railroad why would the largest mfg bother to make 3 & 4?

the point is;  the plan production tools offers you the ability to add all layouts to the current drawing - so what do you think they had in mind?  Flexibility for the users.

You can do everything in one file. do I recommend doing that, no, but its your drawing and it might work for you.

[Yellow600]

Well right now i have my survey that i get xref'd in and then i use a data shortcut for my surface that i built. Im a realitivly new user and the guy who tells me this is a very new Civil user who came from microstation. I feel like there are many ways to accomplish the same thing and now he is just going to confuse me.

[Lisa_Pohlmeyer]

For our roadway designs we use 11x17 sheets at 50 scale.  For any project that would create 10 sheets or less, we do the roadway design part of the project in one file, including the sheets that are cut from the Plan Production tools. Our drainage studies for the project are done in their own model, and then xreffed into the roadway plan with only the drainage area boundaries and information next to the roadway showing and only if necessary.

We use annotative text extensively when we're labelling something that's outside the Civil 3D labels, in modelspace.  If labelling is done in plan view, street name, etc. then that's annotative as well because there's no need to mix the styles.

This process has worked well for many years. Yes, there's many ways to accomplish a task, you just have to find the most efficient for yours.  The reason we limit our layouts is because of the amount of time it takes to regen when switching layouts.  There seems to be a breakover point for us at 10 sheets, your mileage may differ.  In the case where the project exceeds 10 sheets, I'll put the first 10 in one drawing, the next 10 in another, etc.  Sheet set manager then comes into play when opening specific sheets to work on.  All the design data comes in automagically and there's minimal labeling in paperspace to be done.

HTH