Discover the detailed process of using the Traverse Editor in Civil 3D to draft a polyline for a parcel boundary. Learn how to initiate the command, navigate the Traverse Editor window, choose occupied points, and draw lines and arcs for your parcel.
Key Insights
- The Traverse Editor command in Civil 3D is used to draft polylines for a parcel boundary. The command can be initiated by typing "Traverse Editor" into the command line or navigating to the ribbon bar, dropping down the Traverse menu, and selecting Traverse Editor.
- The Traverse Editor window provides various options for creating a new Traverse, opening an existing one, or building a Traverse based on points already in the drawing. It also allows for saving your Traverse, drawing order for your Traverse, and choosing between working with lines and arcs or just lines.
- When creating a parcel boundary, Civil 3D auto fills occupied points, allows for drawing lines and arcs between specified points, and shows the orientation of the drawn line. The software also provides the ability to specify radius, angle, or length when creating arcs. These features make the Traverse Editor a powerful tool in parcel creation and manipulation.
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In this video, we're going to use the Traverse Editor to draft a polyline for our first parcel boundary. To initiate the Traverse Editor command, we can type in Traverse Editor into our command line, or we can navigate up to the ribbon bar, drop down the Traverse drop-down menu, and select Traverse Editor.
Once you've done that, the Traverse Editor window will open. Inside the Traverse Editor window, you have the options for creating a new Traverse, opening an existing Traverse, creating a Traverse from an existing entity in the drawing, saving your Traverse, saving your Traverse with 'Save As', loading the balance tool, setting the draw order for your Traverse, whether you'll be drawing points and lines, points only, or lines only, zoom extents, and then whether you'll be working with lines and arcs or just lines. For our case here, we're going to be building our Traverse based off points that are already in the drawing, so I do not want Civil 3D to insert additional points, so I'm going to go ahead and select lines only.
Next, I'm going to initiate my Traverse by choosing which point I'm going to occupy first. I'm going to click into occupied point, I'm going to select the icon to the right, and then I'm going to pick a point on the screen. I'm going to go ahead and hold down shift and right click and choose node, and then I am going to select the node over here in the bottom right corner.
What Civil 3D will now autofill in is 0.455 as my occupied point, and I can move on to my next entity. From here, we're going to be drawing a line from this point to this point, so I'm going to go ahead and go with a line command. I'm going to click into angle for my line component.
I'm going to select the icon to the right, and then I'm going to input my point by shift right click node, and then selecting this node here. So what Civil 3D is going to do is it will execute a set of commands where it will draw in this polyline, and it will show you the label of what the orientation of that line is. So it is a line with a bearing of west, and it is 370 feet long.
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From here, we will move on to our next entity, which will be a chord arc between these two points here. So I'm going to go ahead and select my third entity from the dropdown menu. I'm going to select chord arc.
I'm going to select angle and pick from on screen. I'm going to initiate a point node command by shift right click, selecting node, picking on the node that I want to move to. Then I will have to specify a radius, angle, or length.
I know I want to work with a 15-foot radius, so I'm going to type in 15 and hit ENTER. Civil 3D will then execute the command to create that arc. I'm going to continue on with another line from this point to this point, so I'm going ahead and selecting angle.
I'm going to select the entity from the screen. I'm going to input it by doing a shift right click node and clicking on the node. Then I'm going to select my fifth entity, which will be an arc.
I'm going to drop down, select chord arc, select angle, pick point on screen, and I'm going to shift right click, select node, select the node that is the next point in my boundary. Then I will type in a radius of 15 and hit ENTER. Civil 3D will draw on my arc.
I'll move on to my next line. I'll select the angle for the entity. I'll select shift right click node, picking on the node that I want to move to.
Then I'll drop down on my seventh entity. I will select another chord arc. I will move to my angle.
I will select the entity on screen, shift right click node, picking the node that I want to move to, typing in a radius of 15, and hitting ENTER. Moving on to my eighth entity of line, selecting angle, picking the point on screen, shift right click, selecting node, picking the node I would like to move to. Civil 3D will then proceed to create that next line.
I'll pick my last entity, which will be a chord arc. I will select my angle. I will shift right click, select node, picking the node that I want to snap to.
Then I will click on radius, type in 15, hit ENTER. Civil 3D will have drawn in my arc, and I will now have a closed boundary based on points that are on my screen. Now the Traverse Editor is a much stronger tool when you have a boundary that you have the traverse information for, and you can walk through and create an object inside Civil 3D by simply inputting points, locations, using northings and eastings, or lines and chords and arcs so that you can type in the angles, the distances, radiuses, departure angles, or lengths, and Civil 3D will then build that item into the build space inside of the window here, and then it will be drafted in for you to manipulate and use in future videos.
So for the end of this, we're going to close this out. We're going to save changes. We are going to save to our working folder, and we will call this Parcel 1. Select Save, and you will notice that the labels displayed earlier are now gone.
Those were only for the Traverse Editor command. In a future video, when we turn this boundary into an actual Civil 3D parcel, we can then label it later.
