At my office, we use AutoCAD Civil3D 2015. It is great and I can do everything I need to do with it. One of the things I don't like, however, is using the Parcel entities for running my map closures.
It works to get me a closure report that I can submit with my maps for checking, but it isn't very customizable. So I'm wondering what everyone else is using out there. Does anyone have suggestions for other ways to run my closure calculation in CAD?
Actually I've been thinking about this off/on for a couple of years. I think the best approach would be to collect the GeneralSegmentLabels, then walk through the parcel segments looking for the closest label to the segment midpoint. If the label bearing/distance or curve data matches (within a tolerance) then use the label information to traverse that segment. Of course short segments may be in line/curve tables and need to be looked up.
That seems like the truest form of MapCheck to me, to run a traverse through the label data and calculate the closure just like someone with a printout might. Of course properly automated it would only take a fraction of a second per parcel.
There is a routine in Sincpac that does the job.
In practice the labels often get exploded to blocks and mtext for various reasons, so you would want your code to evaluate those entities as well, when chosen.
In toolspace right click on the parcel and select export analysis. Make sure you select mapcheck analysis rather than inverse.
I use Excel which I realize may be difficult for a lot of subdivision lots.
Current I am using the Civil3D parcels and getting a closure report. I was just hoping that someone might have something that is more customizable.
For example, the default Map Check Analysis report that it spits out has all kinds of data, especially for curves. But in some cases, I like to minimize the data shown so that it makes a more "compact" report. As it stands, a line segment alone will take up several lines of text in the report.
North: 10428.8231' East: 12805.4550'
Segment #1 : Line
Course: S1°03'09"E Length: 70.01'
North: 10358.8249' East: 12806.7410'
Segment #2 : Curve
Length: 2.10' Radius: 275.00'
Delta: 0°26'16" Tangent: 1.05'
Chord: 2.10' Course: S89°09'59"W
Course In: S0°36'53"E Course Out: N1°03'09"W
RP North: 10083.8407' East: 12809.6914'
End North: 10358.7944' East: 12804.6412'
This is the standard output I get.
I'd like to be able to have the option of getting something like this:
1:Line
S1°03'09"E 70.01'
2:Curve
Length: 2.10'
Radius: 275.00'
Delta: 0°26'16"
In: S0°36'53"E
Out: N1°03'09"W
But from what I've seen, I can't customize the report that much. In a much older version of AutoCAD (LDT 2007) the company I worked for had a plug-in software that would take the polylines in CAD that defined the various lots and bounded areas and run closures for them (just like C3D does) but it allowed me to define different report styles. So I had a "precise closure report" that would give me my distances out to the thousandth and angles to the tenth of a second; a "map check report" that would give the courses exactly as shown on my map; and even a "legal description report" that would put my closures into a format that could be inserted into a document so I only had to type in my calls and references and didn't have to worry about typographical errors in copying the courses correctly. When working on a subdivision, this saved LOTS of time.