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Key Plans and key maps
Key Plans reads a set of drawings you already have and builds one index or cover layout covering all of them, plus key map coordination across the project. It does not author tiles or create drawings; that is Project Control. On a Project Control project the index is created for you, so this is the manual route.
What Key Plans is, and when to use it
Key Plans is the multi-drawing coordinator. It reads a set of drawings you already have and produces two things: a single index or cover layout covering all of them, and key map coordination across the whole project.
It does not author tiles and it does not create drawings. That is Project Control, which is a separate thing.
When to use it. On a Project Control project the index and cover key plan is created for you automatically, so none of this is needed.
Key Plans is the manual route, and it is the right one in two cases. The first is that you would rather not use Project Control. The second is that the sheets genuinely do not need coordinating: a project spread far enough that its sectors do not adjoin and share no edges, so no match lines run between them.
Where the sheets do meet, Project Control is the better tool. That is the test worth applying, because it is one you can answer by looking at your own project: do the sectors touch?
Setting up a control drawing
A Key Plans control drawing is created from the subset drawings it will coordinate.
Step 1. Open the palette from the ribbon: press Setline, then SheetAgent for Civil 3D. On the Welcome tab press Key Plans, and the palette switches to show only the Key Plans tab.
Step 2. Press New Control Drawing and select your subset .dwg files. The control drawing is saved into the subset folder with the project file beside it. Keep the two together when moving folders. Accept the prompts if you want background XREFs set up and a subset's title block reused.
Step 3. Press Scan Subsets to read the tile data from every subset file. The scan opens them read-only and takes no file locks, so they can stay open elsewhere.
Step 4. If you skipped the title block prompt, press Set TB now, then Set VP Size to define the viewport area on the title block layout.
Step 5. Press Build Overview. The unified overview layout is generated from all the subset tiles, with ghost tiles placed in model space.
When the subset drawings change later, press Update Overview. It re-scans the subsets and refreshes the ghost tiles and key map tiles. The tab status reports the project name, subset count, tile count and last scan time.
If Build Overview stays greyed out or fails, check the tab status labels for Title Block, VP Size and last scan, run Scan Subsets again, then retry.
What Scan Subsets does
Scan Subsets reads the sheet tile data out of every subset .dwg registered to the control drawing.
The scan is read-only and takes no file locks, so the subset drawings can stay open elsewhere while it runs.
Results are saved in the project file next to the control drawing, with a last-scanned time for each subset. Keep the two files together when moving folders.
Scanning also refreshes the ghost tiles shown in the control drawing. To refresh the overview layout as well, press Update Overview, which re-scans and updates in one step.
Subsets are also re-scanned automatically whenever the control drawing opens.
When the overview is out of date
Health on the control drawing reports a subset modified entry, naming the file, when the overview is drawing on older tile data. It means a subset was saved after the last scan.
Step 1. On the Key Plans tab, press Scan Subsets.
Step 2. Press Update Overview to rebuild the overview layout, the ghost tiles and the key map tiles. Update Overview re-scans the subsets itself, so it can also be run on its own.
Step 3. In a layout drawing linked to this key plan, open Health. A Resync Keyplan button appears when that layout's key map is out of date. Press it to rebuild that layout's key map tiles.
If you are in a layout drawing and the key plan itself is stale, Health offers Open Keyplan Drawing, which opens the control drawing so Scan Subsets can be run there.
Control drawings scan their subsets automatically when opened, so the overview usually stays current without being asked.
Setting up a key map
Step 1. Press Set Key Map Area on the Single VP tab, in the Support VP section, and draw the rectangle on the _TEMPLATE_TB layout where the key map should sit on each sheet. A Key Map Source dialog asks where the tiles come from: Current Drawing for a normal project, or Key Plan to point at a control drawing.
Step 2. Press Key Map Hatch, in the Add-ons section, to set the pattern that highlights the current tile. Each key map keeps its own hatch control.
Step 3. Press Key Map Label to add the KEY MAP title and scale labels beneath the key map viewport. Key Map North Arrow is optional: choose a north arrow block per key map and it is cloned to every sheet.
Key map viewports are then created on every sheet at Build and maintained at Update, with the current sheet's tile highlighted.
On sheets that already exist, press Update Sheets to apply the key map settings. To control which layers show inside key map viewports, press Apply Layers Keymaps: set the layer freeze and thaw state on one key map viewport and it is copied to all the others.
Running Set Key Map Area again asks whether to replace or add. Add gives a second, independent key map.
Key maps in a Project Control project
Key maps in a project work as they do anywhere else, with one choice and no per-discipline picking.
Step 1. In the control drawing press Set Key Map Area and define the area on the title block layout.
Step 2. Choose what it shows: Zones, where each discipline drawing highlights its own zone automatically, or Key Plan, showing the whole project layout.
That choice applies to every discipline, including disciplines added later.
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