topic Re: View Frame Group Template in Civil 3D Forum

View Frame Group Template

demus72 — Fri, 08 May 2026 18:47:28 GMT

I set up a template for use with plan production tools to create view frames and sheets. When I maximize the width of my viewports to fit inside our border, the resulting sheet crops the profile view on each side such that the elevation columns on each side don't display.

I know if I grip the edges of my viewports in my template and move them in some distance on both sides, I can reduce the resulting length of the view frame in the view frame group. This works, but then our users would have to grip edit the viewports in the sheets to fully display the elevation column on both sides. We would like to avoid our users having to grip edit the viewports in the sheets, if we can help it. Same goes for the vertical elevation range of the profile view, this to can be controlled with the height of the viewport in the template but requires the user to grip edit the viewport in the sheet to display the station labels at the bottom of the profile view.

In my research and testing, I found that there is a user specified range option when creating sheets but it is greyed out.

I'm assuming because the length of each view is coming from the length of the viewport in the template? There is also a User specified Profile View Height that is greyed out, but might be helpful when creating sheets.

Any tips or tricks regarding this process would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Re: View Frame Group Template

rosie_lucas1 — Tue, 12 May 2026 20:58:36 GMT

Hi @demus72

I wanted to check in and see if you still needed assistance, or if you found a solution to your question already? Let us know if you need further assistance by providing an update or if you have found a solution, please share it with the community so other members who may have the same question could learn from your experience.

All the best,

Rosie| Community Manager

Re: View Frame Group Template

Cadguru42 — Wed, 13 May 2026 13:12:29 GMT

I have never been able to get the plan production profile viewports to actually work correctly. They do exactly what you're describing. The issue is that plan production tool doesn't account for the profile view's grid padding nor axis labels. It goes by where the actual profile stationing starts and places the viewport accordingly. What we ended up doing is mostly using the plan production tool to create the plan view match lines and manually created the profile views in an XREF that the sheets point to. All of the profile viewports have to be manually adjusted to "find" the profile view, but that's mostly a one time issue.

Re: View Frame Group Template

demus72 — Tue, 19 May 2026 16:28:56 GMT

Thanks for the reply Cadguru42. We like using the plan production tools for the time savings, but they never just "work". There always seems to be some manual adjustment that needs to be made after the sheets are created.

I put together a plan and profile template and presented it's functionality to my supervisor, but they don't like the fact that our end users would need to grip edit the viewports in the resulting sheets to "uncover" the elevation columns left and right and station range on the bottom of the profile view. Hoping to discover a solution.

Thanks

Re: View Frame Group Template

kboardrowLG7PS — Thu, 21 May 2026 12:56:50 GMT

I stopped using plan production years ago. I use an old-school process that still works and is solid. Here's what I do...

I draw a rectangle around the area I want. To scale: example, a 12"x6" viewport in paperspece would be a 240'x120' rectangle in model space at 1"=20' scale. Place this rectangle on a no-plot layer. If you have a separate vport layer, this works well.
Set a named view using this rectangle in modelspace. In this case your rectangle will be 240'x120'.
Go into paperspace and create your viewport, in this case 12"x6".
Go into the vport and restore the named view. Your view should pop into place at scale and exactly what you want to see.
Then lock your vport and exit the vport.
Done.

Cons...

It takes a bit longer to set up, but not much.
It is not dynamic in any way.
In my opinion the benefits to this far outweigh the downsides.

Pros...

Once it is set up it is rock solid.
You control what you want to see. If you want elevation columns, you draw your rectangle that includes elevation columns. Because this is static the program will not thwart you.
If somehow you thaw the vport, no worries, just restore the view again and *boom* you're back in business.

I use this process for all sheets, including plan & profiles. Once set it has never failed me on its own (Sometimes *I* fail me, but that's a different story.) I choose to leave the rectangles in modelspace as they give me a reference what I have available to place labels, etc... no text wondering outside the vport and getting clipped off. Hope this helps, and if you try please let me know what you think.