About Design Layout

Draw design features using the same drawing techniques you use in AutoCAD. There are four ways to add features to your design:

• On the ribbon, select items from the Electric Underground, Electric Overhead, and Annotation panels on the Home tab, and the Gas Distribution panel on the Gas tab.
• Select recently used and commonly used items from the Feature Library in the Design Explorer. You can organize the Feature Library to suit your workflow needs and add commonly used features. For more information, see About the Feature Library.
• Using the Model Viewer in the Design Explorer, draw new features of a selected feature class or convert existing geometry to design features of the selected feature class. For more information, see About the Model Viewer.
• For advanced users—Use the command line to insert point features, line features, and guys or add features to and remove features from existing segments, ducts, and poles. You can also use the command line to change attribute values, connection, and containment for selected features. For more information, see About AutoCAD Utility Design Commands and Command Reference.
Note: As you create features, be sure to maintain connectivity to avoid validation issues. The Connected To icon helps identify features for connection. For more information, see About Connection.

You can add ducts, conductors, and gas pipes to existing segments as needed. For more information, see To Add Ducts, Conductors, and Gas Pipes to an Existing Segment.

You can use standard AutoCAD editing commands on design features. The following AutoCAD commands are supported: OFFSET, UNDO, REDO, CUTCLIP, COPYCLIP, PASTECLIP, MOVE, COPY, EXTEND, STRETCH, TRIM, All Express Tool Commands, FILLET, ERASE, ROTATE, PEDIT, MIRROR, LENGTHEN, BREAK, CHAMFER, EXPLODE, XPLODE, SCALE, ALIGN.

If you offset Utility Design lines using the AutoCAD OFFSET command, the resulting lines are AutoCAD polylines. To create lines that are Utility Design features, use the Utility Design AUDOFFSETLINE command. For more information, see To Create Offset Lines.

As you draw, the features become part of the underlying industry model. The industry model detects any aspects of the drawing that do not conform with standards and lists these in the Validation Results palette. Where possible, the Validation Results palette provides an option to resolve the issue. For more information on design validation, see About Design Validation.

Analysis operations can be run in auto-resolve mode. In auto-resolve mode, when an issue is detected, the analysis tool automatically addresses the issue. For more information, see About Design Validation.

You can customize the operation of analysis tools by adding, removing, or modifying rules. For more information, see About Rule Points.

You can digitize features under custom UCS and PLAN view. First use the UCS command to define a custom UCS, and then use the PLAN command to set the view to custom UCS. Then the digitized lines and points with rotation will be set with the custom UCS.

The following commands support active UCS and PLAN view for digitizing features:

• AUDPOINTFEATURE
• AUDLINEFEATURE
• AUDTRANSITIONADD
• AUDREPLACE
• AUDCALLOUT
• AUDDETAIL
• AUDONELINE
• Material Editor/Insert material table
• AUDPROFILE
• AUDLOCATIONSET