An InRoads user asked for Mark's help with this question :

Zen, 

I'm new to the InRoads Plan & Profile Generator and am struggling with something. The plan views on the sheets generated by the PPG sometimes have to be re-positioned, especially when the plan portion is on a curve.  But when modifying the anchors on a sheet that was already created, and then doing a Show Sheet on the Sheet Index, the revised sheet views are shifting up or down in an odd way and not producing the results like I want or expect. Do you know what's going on and how to move the plan view after modifying the anchors?

- A student of InRoads  

Here is the Zen Dude's response: 

Dear A,

To cut to the chase, don't use the Show Sheet after modifying the Anchors, use theRegenerate Sheet. The Show Sheet is used when modifying the Clipping Boundary, but when changing the Anchors the sheet needs to be reconstructed with the Regenerate Sheetbutton.

The process is:

1)      Select the sheet from the Sheet Index

2)      Go to the Sheet Views window at the bottom and double-click on either the Plan orProfile list item

3)      Change either the Anchor X  or Anchor Y as needed, and click OK

4)      Then click the Regenerate Sheet button

5)      Click Yes on the message to re-create that sheet with the new anchor settings

And that's about it.

If you want to see the difference between the Show Sheet and Regenerate Sheet after modifying the Anchors, here's what's happening:

I ran the InRoads PPG and created the sheets. The basic configuration and initial run of the PPG defined the Plan and Profile Anchors as shown here:

            X          Y

Plan:    5.0        17.5

Profile: 5.0        5.0

The Sheet Index produced sheets that look like this:

Going into Sheet 2, with the 'standard' Anchor configuration, shows the sheet like this:

Confirming the Y Anchor by a few dimensions (in 'sheet' distances) shows that it created what should have been expected - 5" on the Profile View and 17.5" on the Plan View(Shown dimensioned on the left). On the right are a few dimensions from the edge of the border to the top of the Profile clipping shape (11.75) and to the bottom of the Plan clipping shape (11.716). Just as a side note, the dimension to the top of the Profile clipping shape makes sense because it's 5 + 6.25 (25' at 5 vertical exaggeration at 20 scale) + 0.5 (the 10' top margin at 20 scale on the Profile). And the bottom of the Plan clipping shape is less than 11.75 from the border bottom which is observable since that shape encroaches into the Profile clipping shape.

On this particular sheet the Plan View clipping shape is touching the Profile View clipping shape. In cases like this the Y Plan Anchor currently defined as 17.5 should be able to be increased to say 18.5 to increase the separation between the Plan View and the Profile Viewanother inch. Now, what's going to happen to the sheet layout when the 17.5 is changed to18.5 is that everything else will move 'but' the Plan View. Since the Plan View is tied to the real world coordinates, it can't 'move up' like one might 'intuitively' expect. In reality, theBorder and Profile View have to move down 1" to generate the desire result. Follow?

Before doing the edit on this sheet, let's look at the expected results another way, as if this sheet had a Plan Anchor of 5 and 18.5 when it was first created. The way to really show this would be to develop that sheet from an actual full run of the PPG with these exact specificView Layout settings:

After it is run it results in these sheets on the Sheet Index.

If you do a Show Sheet on this alternate Sheet 2 it will look like this: (Just as expected)

Viewing the dimension to confirm the values and be able to relate this sheet back to the first5 / 17.5 run looks like this. Notice the same 11.75 dimension to the top of the Profile clipping shape on the right, and the 18.5 distance for the Plan Y Anchor as it was defined; perfect, and completely as expected.

Now let's jump back into the original 17.5 / 5 sheet and edit it to 18.5 / 5 and see what happens.

After making the edit above, and doing a Show Sheet, the results look like this: (Which at first glance seems to have done what it was supposed to do, until you take a closer look.)

This is what this edited sheet looks like when it contains the original dimensions on it from the original run. Notice the 17.5" offset from the bottom of the border to the center of the Plan View. That dimension hasn't changed. And notice the top of the actual Profile relative to the Profile clipping shape. This is the oddity that the Show Sheet produces. But that's because the Show Sheet option wasn't designed to accommodate an Anchor shift. What is seems like is happening (and this is really just minor trivia) is the Profile clipping shape is shifting down the 1" as noticed by the dimension change from 11.75 to 10.75, but nothing else is really moving at all.

Using the Regenerate Sheet to re-create the sheet produces this:

The desired results, shifting the Profile View and the Border down 1" as expected.

So there you have it. Use the Generate Sheet when changing the Anchors, and the Show Sheet when modifying the Clipping Boundary.

I know this is probably more than some people need but I hope this helps you have a more complete understanding of adjusting the anchors. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions on anything in this tip or otherwise.

Civilly yours,

- zen