The Introduction
Continues
The purpose of
this example is to continue your introduction to the use of the various
facilities in Ezicad_Premium, and
here in the guise of designing a mock subdivision you will learn how to;
¨
Create a New
Job and Add Points into it.
¨
Calculate
points using Bearing and Distance,
Bearing and Multiple Distance, Radiate, Intersection of 2 Bearings and Parallel Offset.
¨
Add Strings, Curved
Strings, and Change existing Strings
¨
List out String definitions and Areas.
Start
Ezicad_Premium from the Programs Menu, or from a Shortcut if you have taken the
trouble to establish one.
In this example,
you will learn how to start a Job from scratch, rather than work on an existing
job as you did in the first example.
Creating a New Job
Pull down the
File menu, and select New.
You wish to start a new Job with an ID of
“Example2", and you should store it in the Tutor folder, so make sure the
folder is set to that location and type in a Filename of
"Example2" to replace the ‘*.cdsdb*’
which appears.
You may fill in
the other descriptive fields if you wish, and a Description such as Tutorial 2
would be appropriate. Once you have completed all the fields you wish to use,
select the Open button.
Once you save the
new job your screen will appear as seen at left, and you will see that the new
job has appeared with a blank screen
At this stage the
screen is still blank as there are no points in the job, but we will soon
rectify that by adding a start point, and then calculating some points from it.
If you wish you
could simply add points into a job by clicking on the screen, but before you
can achieve this you need to be in Add Mode.
Adding Points
If you pull down
the Points Menu, you will see the option for Add Points, and you should select
it.
You will notice
that your cursor now becomes a cross rather than the arrow you had previously.
If you watch the
Status Bar at the bottom of the screen as you move the cursor around you will
see that the coordinates update as the cursor moves around the screen.
We wish to Add in
Point 1 with coordinates of East 200 and North 300.
You could, if you
wanted, move the cursor carefully until those coordinates were displayed, and
then select the point, but it is not very practical to do so. Instead you can
simply position the cursor somewhere near where you want the point to be and
select a point by pressing the Left mouse button.
A dialogue box will appear as seen below,
and you should simply type in values of 200 for East and 300 for North and then
Select OK.
Point 1 will now
be saved with exactly those coordinates.
You now wish to
add another point being Point 2 with coordinates of E 450 and N 500, so repeat
the process and type in the relevant values.
Note that in this
case we have chosen arbitrary coordinate values with relatively low values, but
the process is exactly the same no matter what the coordinate values you wish
to work with.
If the points you
enter do not at first appear on the screen simply use the Zoom Extents function
that you learnt in the first example and they should appear when the screen is
redrawn.
Now that we have
two base points to work with, we will be calculating other points rather than
adding them, so pull down the Points Menu and turn Off Add Points by selecting it.(or
press Escape to revert to a normal cursor)
Calculate using Bearing & Distance
Now pull down the
Cogo Menu and select Bearing & Distance.
A dialogue box
will appear as seen at left below.
You will see that the cursor is flashing
in the field titled “From Point, and here we wish to calculate some points from
point 1.
You may either
type 1 in the field, or if you prefer, you can select the point on the screen
with your cursor (which you might note is now back to an arrow since you have
left the Add Points mode).
Now you need to
enter in a bearing, and here you wish to use a bearing of 15°30’, so type 15.30 in the bearing field
and then press the Tab key to move to the Distance box.
Enter a distance
of 20 metres
You will see that
the program is suggesting that the new point should be number 3, and we are
happy with that, so click on the Apply button and you will see point 3 appear
on the screen.
If you look now
at the dialogue box, you will see that the “From Point” has changed to 3 and
the new point has changed to 4 which is what we intend.
Both bearing and
distance fields have retained the values you used, so if you wish to calculate
another point along the same bearing at a distance of 20 metres on from point 3
you need only select the Apply button.
In this example,
that is exactly what we wish to do, so click on Apply and you will see Point 4
appear on the screen.
This method is
fine if you only have one or two ‘frontages’ you wish to calculate, however in
this example we need to calculate another 5 points along the line, and there is
a more efficient way to achieve this that by clicking apply five times.
If you look below
the “Apply” button you will see a field titled Multiple.
It is designed to
be used where you wish to calculate multiple points along the same bearing,
each the same distance apart which is something which surveyors need to do
regularly when designing subdivision layouts (and Engineers do when laying out
buildings, footings and the like).
In this example
we need another 5 ‘frontages’ so enter 5 into this field and then click on
Apply.
You will see
points up to point 9 are calculated and stored.
Now we wish to
calculate a point on the back boundary of these blocks of land that we are
attempting to set out.
Position your cursor
in the Bearing field that should still show 15.3.
You wish to enter
a bearing that is at right angles to that bearing, so you can do the ‘quick
sum’ in your head, or, while the cursor is in the bearing field you can press
the “R” key.
You will notice
that the bearing now reads 105.3 indicating that the function of the “R” key is
to add 90° to the bearing already shown i.e., to go square to
the Right (There are no prizes for
guessing what the key “L” might do)
Once the bearing
is showing 105.3, press the Tab key, or select the Distance box with your
mouse.
The depth of
these blocks is to be 35 metres, so type 35 into the Distance box.
Now, we do not
want the Multiple calculations to continue at the moment, so set the multiple
value back to 1 and then click on the Apply button to position Point 10.
We now wish to
calculate the back corners back down to where we started which means we have 7
points to calculate.
First, position
the cursor in the Bearing box and press “R” to show a bearing of 195.3.
Next set the Distance to be 20.
Now enter the
number 7 in the Multiple box.
Now select Apply,
and you will see points 11 through 17 calculated and saved.
Now close down
the Bearing and Distance box, either with the Cancel button, or the X icon.
Now use Zoom
(either press Z, or select the magnifying glass icon), and put a window around
this batch of points you have just calculated to get a screen similar to that
above.
Next we need to
add in some lines or Strings to show the boundaries of the lots we have just
created.
Adding Strings
Pull down the
Strings Menu and select the Add option to see the screen below.
This is where you
add strings into the job, but before you get around to adding, you need to know
about String Folders, and String Layers.
Some Basic
Concepts.
1. Folders
You can choose
what folder the string will live in. You can think of a folder as an arbitrary
group.
The important
thing to understand is that Ezicad_Premium does not insist that your lines or
strings be on the same layer as the points that make them up.
Simply put, we
recognise that your field party picks up and lays out Points rather than lines,
but your drafting staff are more used to working with Lines, and that the
points are of lesser importance to them.
If you are of a
mind to have the lines live on the point layer, then you can achieve that very
simply by setting the string layer name to be the same as the individual point
layer names.
However, the
ability to differentiate between points and lines gives you a considerable
degree of flexibility in what you have displayed or printed at any time.
As an example,
consider you were working on a project such as a subdivision that is to be
built in stages. It is conceivable that you might wish to place all the Points
representing corners of the blocks onto a layer called “Corner” for example.
If all the
strings or lines were placed on the one layer called corners, it would be
difficult to simply look at the blocks in Stage 3.
However, if you
use folders named Stage1, Stage2 and Stage3 for storing the relevant strings,
it now becomes a simple matter to only display the blocks in Stage 3 by turning
that folder ON and all the other folders off.
If you wish to
place the string in an existing folder you can use the pull down option to see
the existing folder names, and select the one that suits your purposes.
If you wish to
create a new folder, simply type the name of the folder into the space
provided.
2. Layers
As well as the
folder, the Layer attribute gives you an additional means of grouping strings
of the same type together and then easily determining how all members of that
layer will be displayed/printed.
As an example of
some uses of this facility, consider a subdivision that contains lots of
different sizes as laid down under zoning guidelines.
Say for example
you had “normal” size lots, “super” lots and other lots to be used as “parks”.
If you assigned
the relevant strings around the boundaries of these lots to layers, you could
then easily have all “Super” lots filled in and coloured red, all “Normal” lots
filled in blue, and the “Park” lots coloured in green.
In addition, you
might choose to put all the centrelines of the roads within the subdivision
into a layer called “CL”. You could then decide that all strings in the layer
CL should be drawn with Chainages plotted along them at the half angle offset
to the sting
3. Why
have both Folders and Layers?
Simply to give
you greater flexibility in how your job is controlled. If we continue the
Staged development analogy from the Folders, the Layer is the overriding
attribute that determines how all strings in a particular layer will be shown.
The Folder can
then be used to determine which strings belonging to a particular layer will be
displayed or printed at any given time.
4. The
String ID
You need to give
each string a name, or a number, or, in Ezicad terminology an ID.
The string ID can
be any combination of the letters A through Z and the numbers 0 through 9, and
we strongly recommend that you do not include any characters other than these
in string names.
It is possible to
have more than one string with the same ID in a job; though not recommended.
Back into Action
In the Field
entitled Folder, you should see the name “lots”. You should be aware that you can store the string definitions in
any folder you choose, but the default name of lots will be fine for this
example, so ignore the folder field for the moment and concentrate on the
String ID field.
You MUST give
each string you enter an ID which can be either a name, or a number, or a
combination of the two.
Here we are
creating lots, or parcels of land and traditionally these are numbered, so lets
start with and ID of Lot 1. Type “Lot
1” into the field.
At this stage, we
are not too concerned with Layers, so simply leave the default Layer of 0.
Likewise, we do
not yet have a Deposited Plan, so leave that number blank.
Again, we are not
too worried about Pens or Linetypes at this stage, so skip over them and focus on the ‘entry window’.
All that is
required is that you enter each of the point numbers that make up the string.
You may type in
the numbers if you wish, and if you choose to do so you should separate each
two numbers with a comma.
Alternatively,
you can point to the points you require with the cursor.
In this case, the
string with an ID of Lot 1 is made up of numbers 1,3,16,17,1 so you should
enter them into the entry window.
You will note
that the start point (i.e. 1) has been entered again as the end point in this
string and this forms what we term a “closed string”.
If you wish to be
able to determine the area enclosed by a string, you must use a ‘closed
string’.
Once the numbers
are entered or picked from the screen, the string will be drawn on the screen
for you to see, and as you enter each new number the next segment of the string
will be drawn.
The screen should
appear as at right.
If, as it should,
your string appears to represent sensible boundaries of Lot 1 you can select
the Apply button and the string will be stored away.
The cursor will
then switch back into the String ID field waiting for you to enter another
String.
If you now
attempt to add in Lot 2, the dialogue box may be in your way, so simply drag
the dialogue box across to the right hand side of the screen before you enter
in Lot 2 which is made up of Points 3,4,15,16,3.
We leave it to
you to continue adding in the definitions for the strings up to Lot 7.
Now, having done
all this fine work, we suddenly realise that there is a small problem back at Lot
1.
This is actually
a corner lot, and the local council requires that all corner lots have a
splayed (or truncated) corner, which we forgot to include.
So, first we need
to calculate the points that define the splay or truncation, and then we will
need to change the string definition.
Radiate
To calculate the
splay points you should use the Radiate option from the Cogo menu, so pull own
Cogo, and select Radiate. (the more observant among you will see that this is
simply the Bearing & Distance Dialogue Box with the ‘Radiate’ field
selected.
The From Point
should be 1 which you can either point to with the cursor, or type in from the
keyboard.
The first bearing
is 15°30’ for a distance of 3.5 metres to calculate Point
18.
Now you will
notice with radiate that the “From Point” will remain at Point 1 rather than
leaping to the last point calculated as in the Bearing & Distance routine
we used earlier.
Position the
cursor in the Bearing field, and press the “R” key to swing the existing
bearing 90° to the right.
Now select Apply
and you will see Point 19 calculated.
Now close
Radiate.
Change a String.
Next you need to
change the existing definition of the string with the ID of Lot 1.
Pull down the
Strings Menu and select Change. The dialogue box will appear waiting for you to
identify the string you wish to change.
You may pull down
the list of String ID’s if you wish, and select Lot 1 from there.
Alternatively you
may select it by Pointing with your cursor to the string you want.
If you do wish to
point, it is important that you point to a unique part of the string.
For instance,
here if you wish to point to one of the side boundaries, you would point to the
line between points 1 and 17 rather than the line between point 3 and 16
because this line 3-16 is also part of Lot 2, and so by definition is not
unique to Lot 1.
Once you have
identified the string, the numbers 1,3,16,17,1 will appear and you should
position your cursor in this field and alter the numbers to read
19,18,3,16,17,19.
Then press the
Show button to ensure you have specified it correctly, followed by Apply to
save the new definition of Lot 1.
At this stage
your screen should look like the one above right.
Now, the
mysterious Point 2, which has been lurking up in the top right hand corner of
the screen will come into play.
Point 2 is
actually a point on the boundary of an existing road that runs East-West, and
our next step is to determine where that boundary will intersect with the
frontage of the Lots we have defined so far.
To do this we can
use the intersection of two known bearings.
Intersect Two Bearings.
Pull Down the
Cogo Menu and select the option titled Intersect Bearing & Distance, and
then select the item titled 2 Bearing Intersection.
A dialogue box
will appear as seen in the screen below.
Now you need to
fill in the relevant values, and Tab between the fields as you complete each
one
Point 1 is in
fact 1, and the bearing is 15°30.
Point 2 in this
case is 2, and the bearing from there is 270°.
20 is fine for
the New Point.
If you wish to
see what will result from these figures without actually creating the point you
can press the Show button.
As you can see
the program will draw two lines to indicate the bearings you have entered, and
to indicate where the new point will appear.
As long as this
looks OK you can press the Apply button and point 20 will be stored at the
intersection of the two boundaries.
At this point it
is wise to be on the safe side and do a quick check to find out how much we
have left between Point 9 and Point 20 before we go off blindly creating more
blocks.
Join
Press the ‘J’ key to instigate a Join.
Enter the points 9 and 20 respectively and calculate as seen in the screen at
right.
As well as noting
the distance, it is very important that you get in the habit of checking that
the bearing is also correct, and here it should be at 15°30’.
Keep in mind as
you are calculating that it is relatively easy to hit a wrong key, and for
example if you had inadvertently keyed 15.50 for the bearing when you created
point 20, you wouldn’t see the difference visually.
If you develop
the habit of checking often, you won’t find yourself in a mess later on trying
to unravel where you actually made the error.
While in this
mode it would be worthwhile to check the join between 20 and 2 which should
give a bearing of 90 and a distance of 194.535.
Enough of the
checking and back on with the calculations.
Now with a
distance of 67.5 metres left to the corner, it should be reasonably clear that
you can either get 3 full blocks and a ‘funny little bit’, or two blocks with
the possibility of something decent left on the corner.
Before we go much
further, we need to see where we can get a full depth block off both the street
running North-South and the street running East West, and we can determine this
by using an offset of 35 parallel to both streets.
Parallel Offset Calculation
Pull down the
Cogo menu, select the item entitled Offset Calcs, and then select the Parallel
Offset option.
A dialogue box
will appear as seen in the screen below, and the values are as follows.
First Point 9
First bearing 15.3
First Offset 35
Second point 20
Second Brg 90
Second Offset 35
Enter in these
values, using Tab or the mouse to move between the fields, and then select the
Apply button you will find Point 21 calculated.
Back in Check
mode again, you should press ‘J’ to do a join between 21 and 10, and you should
get a bearing of 195°30, and a distance of 40.934.
If that is
correct we shall proceed, and at this stage we have decided (whether rightly or
wrongly) to leave a local park on the corner of these streets, so to determine
the two side boundary points of the park, you need to use the Intersection of
Two Bearings twice;
- to get 22,
intersect a bearing of 0 through 21 with a bearing of 90 through 20
- to get 23,
intersect a bearing of 15°30 through 9 with a bearing of 285°30 through 21
Now, since this
is going to be a park, it might be decorative if we construct a curved boundary
at the corner.
Calculating a Curve
Pull Down the
Cogo Menu and select Curves followed by IP & Radius.
Note that if it
overlaps your points you can Drag the Dialog box over to the right hand side of
the screen so it is out of the way.
Your IP Point is
20.
The incoming
Bearing is 15°30 and the Outgoing Bearing is 90°
Once you have
entered the two bearings the Deflection Angle will be calculated.
Note: For the
moment please don’t be alarmed if occasionally an angle or bearing displays as
89.5960 instead of the 90 it is meant to be - it is still calculating
correctly, but there is something strange in how things are displayed - we will
track it down and eradicate it, but until we do it does not affect the accuracy
of the calculations.
If you now position your cursor in the
Radius field and enter a radius of 25, then press the Tab key, you will see all
the other fields filled in with the relevant values.
You may, if you
wish, alter any of the other values and the radius will change accordingly.
Basically, once
you have fixed the deflection angle, you can fix one other parameter, and the
curve will then be calculated for you.
So, for example
in this case if we wanted to have a tangent length of 12 metres, we would end
up with a radius of 15.781
Here we will set
a radius of 15 metres and accept the tangent of 11.406 that results.
If you wish, you
can select the Show button to get a preview of how the curve will fit, and then
select the Apply button to store away the two tangent points and the centre
point of the curve.
Once the points
have been stored, select the Cancel button to close down the curve calculator.
Adding a Curved String
Now that we have
calculated all the points for the park, it is time to define its boundary as a
string.
Pull down the
Strings Menu and Select Add. (If necessary, you can drag the dialog box to the
right to clear the area you are interested in.
Use the Folder
“Lots” and use an ID of ‘Park’.
Enter a Layer of
Park.
You have learnt
earlier in this exercise how to define Strings, so the only difference here is
that the string has a curve in it.
To define a
curve, you enter a tangent point, the centre point preceded by a + or a - sign
depending on whether the curve is;
Right handed or clockwise about the centre (
+ ), or,
left handed or anti-clockwise about the centre ( - ).
It is also
recommended that you do not start defining a string on a curve tangent point.
So here the
points you need are 23, 24,+25, 26, 22,21,23.
Note you can pick
all points except the centre point with the cursor if you wish, but we recommend
you type in the centre point complete with its sign.
At the end of
this process you might use the Show button to check what you have, and it
should look similar to the screen at right.
Use Apply to save
it.
We are now left
with the decision of what to do with the area between Lot 7 and the corner
park, and it seems a reasonable spot for a small commercial development so we
might leave this area as one large block.
Use the
techniques you have learnt to Add in a String called Shops with a Class of “Retail” defined by points 9,23,21,10,9.
Listing Strings and Areas.
It is often
necessary to have a list of the various strings you have defined, and since the
strings here define boundaries of parcels of land, it is also useful to have a
record of the areas of each of the parcels.
To do this we
first need to select the strings we are interested in, and then list them, so
pull down the Strings Menu and highlight the Select Option.
You will see that
there are a number of methods of selecting the strings you require, and for
this exercise we will show you how to use the Range facility to select.
If you pick
Select a Range, you will see that each of the folders in the job is listed. If
you wish to simply select all of the strings in a particular folder you can
‘tick’ the box adjacent to the name of the folder.
If you wish to
see what strings are in a particular folder, you can select the “plus” box to
the left of the folder name, and this will expand the display to show a view of
all the strings in that folder.
Once you have
selected the strings you require, pick OK.
Next pull down
the Strings menu again, and now pick Listings.
You will then be
asked which type of listing you require, and a Full Listing is normal for
presentation, so check that button.
Next you will see
the Wordpad program open a window; or eqivalent word processing program which
recognises the Rich Text Format, and the listing will be presented.
You can use the
Wordpad facilities to change fonts etc if you wish, and once you are happy with
the format you should Save the document.
Id you wish to
use the report within a CAD package you may have to save the report to a text
format.
The format of the
listing can be seen from the sample below.
JOB NAME: C:\CDS\in2
Date:
12/06/1997
POINT BEARING DISTANCE
EASTING NORTHING
_________________________________________________________________________
Folder: lots
String ID: Lot 2
3 15~29'59" 20.000 205.345
319.273
4 105~29'59"
35.000 210.690 338.545
15 195~29'59" 20.000 244.417
329.192
16 285~29'59" 35.000 239.072
309.919
3 205.345 319.273
PERIMETER
110.001 m.
AREA is
700.000 m. sq
Folder: lots
String ID: Lot 3
4 15~29'59" 20.000 210.690
338.545
5 105~29'59" 35.000 216.034
357.818
14 195~29'59" 20.000 249.762
348.464
15 285~29'59" 35.000 244.417
329.192
4
210.690 338.545
PERIMETER
110.000 m.
AREA is 700.000
m. sq
Folder: lots
String ID: Lot 1
18 15~29'59" 16.500 200.935
303.373
3 105~29'59" 35.000 205.345
319.273
16 195~29'59" 20.000 239.072 309.919
17 285~29'59" 31.500 233.727
290.647
19 330~29'59" 4.950 203.373
299.065
18
200.935 303.373
PERIMETER
107.950 m.
AREA is
693.882 m. sq
Folder: lots
String ID: Park
23 15~30'00" 15.209 248.352
474.353
24 105~30'04" 15.000 252.417
489.009
+ 25 0~00'00" 15.000 266.871
485.000
26 89~59'59" 15.209 266.871
500.000
22 180~00'00" 35.000 282.080
500.000
21 285~29'59" 35.000 282.080
465.000
23 248.352 474.353
PERIMETER
119.921 m.
AREA is
906.699 m. sq