Creating a Composite Sheet File

This section will illustrate how to create a composite sheetfile containing a plan and long section view. We will create the composite sheetfile by modifying the standard Dual Carriageway long section sheetfile.

Save the sheetfile to a new name by pressing the [SAVE AS] button and entering a new name, say “Dual Carriageway Combo.sht”. The newly created file can now be modified.

Add a Plan Plotting Region

The plan region will consume the top 288 mm of an A0 sheet. We therefore need to confine the Long Section region to the remaining part of the sheet. Do this by selecting the [LONG SECTION] [REGION] and changing the TOP setting to 5000.

Select [LONG SECTION] [LAYOUT] and change the [SECTION AREA HEIGHT] to 2500 in order to limit the long section’s drawing area to 250 mm.

To add a Plan region, select [PLAN] [REGION] and change the region settings as follows:

The region will be shown by a dotted horizontal line in the preview as shown below:

The Long Section will occupy the bottom 500 mm of the A0 sheet, while the Plan will occupy the remaining 288 mm of the sheet.

In order to tie the Long Section and plan up with each other, we need to position the plan view above the long section drawing area bearing in mind possible variation due to horizontal curves. Select [PLAN] [REGION] and change the [LEFT] setting to 900.

Press the [SAVE AS] button to save the sheet file.

Define a Drawing as a Titleblock

An AllyCAD drawing can be included as part of a sheet file. This function can be used to include a titleblock containing company logos ext. There are however a few pre-requisites for such drawings:
 

The drawing settings of any drawing that has to be included in a sheet file has to be changed to the above settings. This will assure that the drawing will be loaded into the sheetfile at the correct size and scale.

Before including the titleblock drawing, we need to delete the current titleblock from the sheetfile that is specified using Global Text and Lines. Select [GLOBAL] [TEXT] and delete all the entries. Also delete the entries in the [GLOBAL] [LINES] page.

Enter the following in order to define a frame around the plan view.

Specify the drawing that has to be included by selecting [GLOBAL] [DRAWINGS]. Specify the sheet file position for the center of the drawing using the [X-Origin] and [Y-Origin] columns. Right click on the [DRAWING PATH] column and select the desired drawing file name.

In the same way we can specify a drawing to be used as the north sign in the second row. By changing the [ROTATION] entry for the north sign to “Yes”, we allow the program to orientate the drawing in a northerly direction.

Save the Sheetfile.

Plotting Multiple Combination plots

Civil Designer has a function that will automatically position plan plots along a horizontal alignment. When using a combination plot, the plan and long sections on each sheet will be synchronized automatically. Each generated drawing will then be written to a separate file.

Select Plot › Generate from the main menu to display the Plot Setup dialog.

Press the File Open button and select the newly created “Dual Carriageway Combo.sht”. Press OK to display the Long Section Setup dialog.

Specify the start and stop chainages as well as the horizontal and vertical scales. Check the [AUTO SCROLL TO NEXT PAGE] option to enable the program to plot on multiple sheets. Indicate where the program will find the relative data using the spreadsheet. Press OK to display the Long Section Editor.

This dialog contains the actual values that will be plotted. Check the values and press OK to display the Plan Setup dialog.

Press the [AUTO DEFINE] button to automatically define multiple plan plots along the horizontal alignment. You will be prompted to enter the chainage range and amount of overlap between sheets. The defined plots will then be entered into the spreadsheet. Use the [MOVE], or [DELETE] buttons to graphically move, or delete individual sheets.

Press OK to generate the plots. After the first plot has been generated a File Save dialog will appear. Supply a file name if you need to save the plots, or press cancel to plot without saving. Multiple plots will be saved in consecutive files.

Modify a Cross Section Sheet File

In this section we will modify the standard Cross Section sheet file to define a runway cross section that consists out of three crossfall changes. We need to modify the standard sheet file to produce the following cross sections.

Select Plot › Sheet File Editor from the main menu, to open the Sheet File Editor dialog. Open the “Cross Section.sht” file and save it as a different file name, say: “Runway Cross Section.sht”.

Change to the [CROSS SECTION][ANNOTATION] tab.

Analysis of the current annotations

Every row in the spreadsheet represents a data entry on the cross section.

Specify the type of data that has to be included in the first column. These values can be changed by right clicking on a cell and selecting the desired item from the popup menu.

The second column is an indication of where the program will find the data that you are looking for. Specify the Layer number in this column.

The third and fourth column must be used to specify at what offset you would like the program to extract the data from.

Finally specify the position where the data must be written in the fifth and sixth columns.

By looking at the [Y-ORIGIN] column one can see that all the data will be written in three rows. These rows are 10, 30 and 50 mm below the datum respectively. The {O} entry in the [X-ORIGIN] column indicates that each data item will be drawn at the offset position where it is extracted.

By looking at the [LIN] and the [TEXT] columns it is clear that the first line on the cross section will contain the final road elevations, the second line contains the ground elevations and the third contains the offsets.

Modify the annotations

The following have to be reflected in the [ANNOTATION] column:

Final Road Line from Layer 2

Ground Line from Layer 1

Offsets

Modify the [ANNOTATION] spreadsheet as follows:

Press the [SAVE AS] button to save the changes then select [PLOT] [GENERATE] and use the newly created sheet file to plot the cross sections.