Starting with a house plan (modeled facing south in this example), go to the site plan and select Property Line on the Massing & Site tab. If you have distances and bearings available, select that option, otherwise a sketch will work. If you used the sketch option, select the property line after it's finished and click Edit Table on the Contextual tab. This will convert your sketch into a table of distances and bearings. In this example, our site faces north-west.
After your property line is done, make sure the view Orientation is set to True North in the properties pane. Using the Rotate True North command (found on the Manage tab under the Position drop-down) can be confusing if you think of it as rotating true north. Rather, think of it as rotating which direction your project faces in relation to true north. With the view orientation set to true north, north will always be at the top of the view.
Draw a ref plane in the direction you want the house to face. In this example, the ref plane is drawn perpendicular to the front property line. Now start the Rotate True North command. Move the axis of rotation onto the ref plane and pick the direction the house is currently facing.
Now pick the direction the house will be facing.
With true north now rotated, rotate the north arrow by placing the center of rotation along its center line, picking the north point on the arrow, and then straight up. (The rotate command will snap to quadrants, even if it gives you an irrational angle of rotation.)
Now change the view orientation back to Project North.
Create another property line using the sketch option, and offset lines from the first property line to get your site setbacks (make sure you have lock turned off, as it can cause problems moving the property lines). Visibility graphics of this second property line can be manipulated by applying a filter or overriding graphics by element. I prefer using a filter since the filter can be set up in the template; then you just need apply the filter rule to the setback line.
With property line and setback line created, select them and move them into position around the house.
If the site plan fits on the sheet in its current orientation, you're done. But let's say you have a very deep lot that won't fit on the sheet like this:
One way to address this is by changing Rotation on Sheet in the view's properties. However, this method doesn't rotate annotations to keep them readable, and it's limited to 90 degrees either clockwise or counter-clockwise . Here's another way of doing it: Turn the Crop Region to Visible, select it, and rotate it the opposite direction you want the view rotated on the sheet. Think of it as a nut and bolt; if the nut is rotating counter-clockwise, the bolts relative rotation to the nut is clockwise. For example, rotating the site counter-clockwise so the front of the house is on the right side requires rotating the crop region clockwise.
