Copyright: (C) 1996-1997 Visio Corporation
Citation: (C) 1996-1997 Visio Corporation


Site Plan Template

  In this topic

The Site Plan Template includes shapes used for documenting a parking lot for a property manager. Use the shapes to indicate islands and landscaping, driveways, street junctions, on-street and off-street parking, and traffic management.

For information about how a particular shape behaves, right-click the shape, then choose Shape Help from the shortcut menu.

Before you draw your site plan:

•	Determine the overall dimensions of the site's boundaries.

•	Determine the size and locations of the objects you want to include in the space you're planning.

Laying the foundation of the drawing

By default, the Site Plan Template opens with a scaled drawing page in landscape (wide) orientation. You can change these settings at any time.

To change the page settings and drawing scale:

1.	Choose File > Page Setup.

2.	On the Page Size tab and Drawing Scale tab, choose the settings you want for the drawing page size, the printed page size, and the drawing scale, then click OK.

To change the measurement units, click the Page Properties tab and choose the unit you want to use from the Measurement Units list, then click OK.

See also:

Rotating and resizing pages

Setting page orientation and scale

Drawing to scale

When you're choosing a drawing scale for a site plan, keep the following things in mind:

•	In Visio Technical, drawing units are sizes in the real world. Page units are sizes on the printed page. The ratio of page units to drawing units is the drawing scale.

•	The smaller the drawing scale, the larger the area you can represent. A scale such as 1/8 inch = 1 foot allows you to draw an entire site on one page. A scale such as 1 inch = 1 foot allows you to focus on one parking space.

•	When you drop shapes on a scaled drawing page, they adjust automatically to the scale you've set.

See also:

Setting page orientation and scale

Creating a site plan

The first step in creating a site plan is to use guides for the alignment and precise placement of curbs, driveways, and parking stalls/spaces.

To assemble the framework and position curbs, driveways, and parking strips and stalls/spaces:

1.	Drag guides from the horizontal and vertical rulers and position them on the page so that they represent the site perimeter, stall alignment, and road configuration in the drawing. Don't worry about correct dimensions at this point.

TIP  After you set up the guides that make up the framework, you may want to turn off the drawing page grid and use only the rulers and guides to position and glue shapes. To turn off the drawing page grid, choose View > Grid.

2.	Position curbs and driveways first. Use lines to connect the curbs and driveways.

3.	Position parking strips and stalls. Manually size the strip by dragging its control handles to get a rough idea of the area.

4.	Position parking islands with parking stalls and strips.

5.	Use shapes from the General - Annotations and General - Dimensioning, Architectural stencils to annotate other parts of the drawing and show dimensions.

6.	Position vehicles, parking accessories, and landscape shapes around the parking strips and stalls, gluing the endpoints to guides.

7.	To reposition parking stalls, drag the guide to which they're glued. To keep a shape's alignment while moving it, press Shift+Ctrl.

See also:

About positioning shapes precisely

Using layers with site plans

A layer is a named category of shapes. When you create a site plan, Visio Technical places the shapes on layers. For example, the parking strip shapes are placed on the Civil Site Work layer; landscape irrigation shapes are placed on a Irrigation System layer; vehicle shapes are placed on the Vehicles layer; and so on.

When shapes are assigned to separate layers, you can treat the layers of shapes separately. For example, you can hide or lock all layers except the one you want to work on or you can print shapes based on their layer assignments. To modify layer settings in a drawing, you use the View > Layer Properties command.

To view only one layer in a drawing:

1.	Choose View > Layer Properties.

2.	In the Layer Properties dialog box, under Visible, uncheck all the layers except the one you want to view, then click OK.

See also:

About layers

Measuring area and perimeter

You can use the Measure tool to calculate the total perimeter and area of any closed shape drawn with the drawing tools, such as a shape that outlines the floor area of a floor plan. To run the Measure tool, choose Tools > Macro > Visio Extras > Measure.

TIP  To measure the perimeter and area of a drawing constructed with shapes that contain height and width, first trace the boundary with the pencil tool, then run the Measure tool on the simple boundary shape.

See also:

Using the Measure Tool

Working with shape properties

A custom property is a field in which you can store information. To associate additional data with your site planning shapes, you can run the Custom Properties Editor to add properties.

To run the Custom Properties Editor:

•	Choose Tools > Macro > Custom Properties Editor.

See also:

Adding, editing, and deleting custom-property fields

Generating reports from properties

If you've associated custom-property data with your site planning shapes, you can run the Property Reporting Wizard to generate inventory or numerical reports based on the data.

To run the Property Reporting Wizard:

•	Choose Tools > Property Report.

See also:

Creating reports from custom data

Linking shapes to other drawing pages, other files, or World Wide Web locations

You can add navigational links to any shape in your diagram, so that users of the diagram can right-click the shape to jump to separate drawing pages, separate files, or documents on an intranet or the Web. For example, you can link a Desk shape to the manufacturer's Web site for ordering and other product information.

To add links to shapes:

•	Choose Insert > Hyperlink.

See also:

About using hyperlinks

Placing Visio drawings on the World Wide Web

You can easily convert a Visio drawing to a format Web browsers can read. Then you can distribute the drawing on an intranet or the Web.

See also:

Exporting shapes and drawings in .jpg or .gif format

Saving drawings as HTML pages


Creating the site plan

Drawing to scale

Generating reports from properties

Laying the foundation of the drawing

Linking shapes to other drawing pages, other files, or World Wide Web locations

Measuring area and perimeter

Placing Visio drawings on the World Wide Web

Using layers with site plans

Working with shape properties