Parcel Segment or Labels/Tables/Tags

[Anonymous]

After several conversations with various customers and Autodesk Support I have determined that the Lot Line feature needs enhancement. This primary issue of concern is the inefficiency of Renumber Tags command. Under various circumstances a user desires to renumber/reorganize his or her tags to modify the display of present Labels and Tables. Currently in C3D 2007, one must renumber tags atleast twice to get commonly desired results, which requires manual selection of each lot line label each time the renumber command is issued. When a customer is working with large sets of parcels and lot lines this task becomes more time consuming and painful.

Specifically, several customers of mine and I would like to see some sort of Tabular Editor for changing Tag numbers and possibly other parcel or lot line data included in upcoming releases to increase efficiency when designing a subdivision and exploring design options therein. Also, it would incredibly useful to have Lot Line entities included under the Site collections in the Prospector Tab similarly to how parcel entities are listed there, so one could zoom to lot line and eliminate manual searching for a particular line of interest.

I will setup a theoretical situation in which the current feature is now used and could possibly be modified to save additional time and allowing more freedom for exploring design options. This situation will take some introduction so please bear with me as this post will get somewhat lengthy.

Okay, say a developer/designer is working on a typical subdivision project of considerable size with 30 or more parcels currently defined. A user will typically implement a Label Style to display both the Distance and Bearing of each parcel segment or lot line and create a table from those labels to report the Legal Description to the local municipality and finalize the proposed design. All is well if the user creates the parcels in a uniform manner that allows C3D to tag the Parcel Segments in the desired order. But in reality this is seldom the case when actually designing, because the segments are tagged in the order they were created or labeled. So in many cases the user will have to reorder the Segments. Fortunately there is a feature for this( Parcels Menu -> Tables -> Renumber Tags). From the help menu, the following is the posted concept from the C3D 2007 help menu:

"By default, label tags are numbered sequentially according to
the order in which they are created, but you can renumber
them to remove gaps in a sequence, or to change the starting
number or increment value."

So one implements this command to renumber his parcel segment tags. In the corresponding dialog box the next tag number is set to 1 and the increment number to 1. The user attempts to renumber the parcel segments starting with the segment he or she desires to be number 1 and so forth. THIS IS WHERE TEH PROBLEM COMES IN. The feature doesn't allow Tag #1 to be reassigned if it is already defined in the database of the dwg. So the next parcel segment tag gets pushed to the end of the list, making it N+1 where N was the previous number of parcel segments labeled and tagged. At this point the user has to make a decision on how to get the desired results without wasting tons of time. He or She will likely have to renumber the tags for each and every parcel segment thus moving the tag set to range from N+1 to N+N, or X to X+N where the X is some number greater then N (eg. X = 1000). Thus the user made N clicks that accomplished nothing but allowing N more clicks to be made there after when the renumber tags command is selected once again to finally get the desired results of Tag reordering. Before the designer actually makes those 2*N clicks FRUSTRATION is most likely invoked and a call to the associated tech person (me) is made. Where I have no better or more efficient procedure to advise, and little defense can be made other then " I am logging this Issue into the C3D Wish list for Upcoming releases, and hopefully the feature will be enhanced."

Thank you for listening to my rant about this issue (I'm sorry it had to be so long). I personally believe enhancements to the existing toolset for the Parcel Segment Tagging would be greatly appreciated by many users and a great addition to the product.

Please take this into account for the upcoming releases of Civil 3D.

Thank You,

Matthew Wright
Pacificad Inc.
mwright@pacificad.com