You can create a complete planimetric survey for a parking lot from your drone data in the Virtual Surveyor app. We'll cover the tools that are available in Virtual Surveyor and show you how to quickly draw, move, rotate, and duplicate your line drawings on dataset features that are required for parking lot surveys. There are a number of unique ways to speed up your geometric drawing, and we'll show you everything Virtual Surveyor has to offer so you can work more productively.


Overview


Draw a Parking Lot Workflow

Before you start drawing, you'll want to turn off the elevation model and just work off the orthomosaic since planimetric drawings don't require an elevation. This will help flatten your lines and make sure they are all on a two dimensional plain, which is important when you export the drawn geometries. Then switch to 2D viewing mode to help navigate and make the parking lot easier to draw.

Turn off Elevation Terrain and switch to 2D mode to start your Planimetric drawing.


Parking Lines

Here, we show you how to draw and duplicate parking lines.


Tools used:


  1. Draw parking lines: Begin drawing parking lines using the Polyline tool.
    Start drawing parking lines.
  2. Duplicate lines. Use the Move/Copy tool to duplicate your lines to speed up the process. You can duplicate as many drawn geometries as necessary. Move/Copy can be found using right-click in the Viewport, or after selecting multiple drawn geometries and finding the tool in the HOME tab.
    Duplicate parking lines using the Area Select tool to highlight multiple geometries along with the Move/Copy tool.
  3. Optional: Fix parking line alignment. Fix the parking line alignment by selecting the line and accessing the Move/Copy tool. Then click on the arrowed cross to move your geometries into place. If many of the duplicated lines are misaligned, it may be better to draw them individually.
    Fix parking line alignment using the Move/Copy tool. Select the line and use the arrowed cross to move your geometry into its proper alignment.
  4. Draw the parking centerline. You can quickly draw the centerline for double parking spaces using the Polyline tool. It can be just as quick to draw them as it is to duplicate them.
    Draw the parking lot centerlines.
  5. Use geometry snapping for precise alignment: Create a baseline at the edge of the parking lot to create the possibility of geometry snapping for parking lines when drawing or duplicating them.
    Use geometry snapping for alignment precision and faster duplication.


Parking Islands

With parking islands, you can start by drawing symmetrical islands and quickly duplicate them across the entire parking lot. For this example, rather than just using the boundary tool to continually draw lines around the island, we can use a more advanced method by combining the Polyline, Arc, and To Boundary tools together to draw the islands and peninsulas faster and with less edits.


Tools used:


  1. Symmetrical parking island: Draw a parking island using the Arc and to Boundary tools then use Move/Copy to duplicate it to another identically shaped island. This may seem an unorthodox way to draw these islands, but it is much faster and easier to just draw two arcs and combine them as one piece of data rather than four individual line drawings for one island. To see what we mean, you simply draw an arc at each end of the island, then highlight them both, right click, and select To Boundary from the mini toolbar to have the entire island created as a single drawing. Then simply use Move/Copy to duplicate it as many times as necessary.
    Draw and duplicate symmetrical parking islands.
  2. Asymmetrical parking island: Use Polyline, Arc, and To Boundary tools to draw an asymmetrical parking island. Draw the ends of the island, then highlight both ends and combine them using To Boundary from the mini toolbar.
    Draw asymmetrical parking islands.
  3. Copy and Rotate Island: You can use copy and rotate to duplicate an island that is the same shape but at a different angle. You can change the location of the 'move' anchor to change where the geometry pivots while rotating to make it easier to center or to help with alignment.
    Copy and rotate drawn islands to avoid having to redraw a shape that is at a different angle.


Parking Peninsulas

Just like with the parking islands, you can quickly draw the geometry of a parking peninsula by combining the Polyline, Arc, and To Boundary tools. If you have identical shapes, you can save time by duplicating peninsulas to each another with the Move/Copy tool.

  1. Draw and duplicate peninsulas: Draw the first peninsula using the combination of the Polyline, Arc, and To Boundary tools, then use Move/Copy to duplicate the drawn geometry to another identical peninsula.
    Draw and duplicate parking peninsulas using a combination of the Polyline, Arc, and to Boundary tools. Then use Move/Copy to duplicate the drawn geometry to another peninsula.
  2. Combine tools to quickly duplicate and resize geometries: When a peninsula is the same or similar shape, but more narrow or wider than the one you duplicated, you can combine Move/Copy with Edit Vertex to adapt for length or width differences between the peninsula shapes. After copying the peninsula over, select and right-click the copied peninsula geometry, and choose the Edit Vertex tool from the mini toolbar menu. Then select and move the vertices of the peninsula geometry to the position that matches the terrain feature.
    Duplicate and resize parking peninsulas using a combination of tools.


ADA - Handicap

For handicap symbology, you can use a combination of tools to quickly and accurately draw the parking symbols on the parking lot. You can also draw ADA parking lines in a similar manner to parking lines, except you can use more of the geometry snapping feature to increase speed and efficiency.


Tools used:

  • Arc
  • Polyline
  • Circle - Edge First
  • Rectangle - Diagonal First
  • Edit Vertex


  1. Draw and Duplicate ADA Symbols: Combine all the drawing tools to draw ADA Handicap symbols. You can use the Polyline and Arc tools to draw most of the symbol, then use the Circle and Rectangle tools to draw the head and the square outline respectively. Once you've drawn the handicap geometries, you can use Move/Copy to duplicate the symbol across the parking lot and rotate them into place where necessary.
    Draw handicap or ADA symbols using the full combination of drawing tools and Move/Copy.
  2. Draw ADA Parking Lines: Combine the Rectangle, Polyline, and Edit Vertex tools to quickly draw and then Move/Copy to duplicate the ADA parking lines if there are symmetrical lines available. Use the geometry snapping feature to quickly and accurately align the drawn geometries as you draw.
    Draw and duplicate ADA Parking Lines.


Organize Drawn Geometries

You can quickly rename and renumber all your drawn geometries, and organize them by type, using the Layers panel.
Organize your drawn geometries in the Layers panel.


Tips and Tricks

If you didn't turn off the elevation model and started drawing on the 3D model (even when using the 2D mode), you'll get some elevation issues with line vertices being placed on objects on the terrain. 

  • To fix this, disable the elevation model. Highlight all drawn lines (or highlight them in smaller sections) and click the To Terrain button found in the Tools tab. This will place all line vertices at the same 2D elevation so your planimetric survey file is properly formatted in Civil3D.
    Use the To Terrain tool to quickly fix any line drawings that were created in 3D to the 2D plane so they are properly formatted in Civil3D.