If you can't find an answer to your question, submit an e-mail
question to our
Plans Online Help Desk or
call the toll free number at (888) 900-7322.
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How can I get copies of
plan drawings that are no longer available on the internet? |
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There are some options to obtain copies.
- Purchase copies from one of the plans
companies that provide copies for resale. Some of them maintain
inventories of jobs older than 5 months. The companies who archive
post-letting jobs are noted with an X in the right column of the plans
company list.
- Submit an Open Records
Request
for a copy of the plan to the TxDOT District where the project is located.
You may also contact the
district office by e-mail,
phone, fax or in person to request a copy of the plans. You will need to
provide detailed information to the district, i.e., name, business, address,
etc. Also, provide the project number, CSJ, or other information that will
help the district locate the plans.
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When are letting plans made
available on Plans Online? |
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The release day is 21 days prior to the first day of letting
and all plans should be posted on Plans Online by the release date if they have
been received.
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When are proposals posted
on Plans Online? |
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Proposals should be posted on the project release date,
which is 21 days prior to the first day of letting.
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Where do I find plans for a
proposed highway that may be built near my home or business? |
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Plans Online only posts project plans that are
available for bidding. To find information about projects in the planning
stages, there are several options:
- To find information about projects that are under
study, visit the
Transportation
Studies page. Here you'll find information about
various highway project studies listed by TxDOT
district.
- You can also contact the local
TxDOT district
where the project is planned.
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Is a CD or other program
needed to run and view Plans Online? |
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No program is needed. Alchemy Web license agreements have been purchased by
TxDOT enabling the general public to view the plans without any special
software. You will however need to download a quick utility that will
automatically open the first time you open a database to view plans, but after
the initial download, you will not need any special software or program to enter
the plans online area. Please make sure that you have your pop-up blockers
turned off or the plans will not be able to be viewed in the databases.
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Why can't I open the
proposals in Plans Online? |
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Check your version of Adobe Acrobat Reader. The current
Plans Online software is not upgraded to work with Adobe 7.0. If you are using
Acrobat Reader 7.0, you may encounter an error, especially if double-clicking on
the PDF.Instead, you can view plans if you right-click on the PDF, rather
than double-click. Select "Launch Application," which opens the PDF successfully
via Reader 7.0.
Plans Online is working with the vendor to get a "fix" for the Acrobat Reader
7.0 upgrade and hope to have it in place soon.
Other options to view the proposals are:
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Why can't I see recently
posted jobs on the FTP site? |
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If a job is on the FTP site and you cannot view it on your
monitor, there are two things you can try if you are using
Internet Explorer (if using another browser, use its "Help"
feature to search for how to delete your history and/or
cache).First, you may need to refresh your screen. You
can do this by pressing the "F5" key or clicking on the
"refresh" icon in your tool bar. If that does not work you
may need to clear the history, or temporary, files off your
computer. You can do this by:
- Selecting "Tools" from the tool menu
- Select "Internet Options"
- Select "Delete Files..."
- Select "OK" to delete all files in the Temporary Internet Files
- Select "OK" to close Internet Options
- Close and re-start Internet Explorer
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Is there any way to print
all of the sheets of any given job (entire plan set) without having to
select one page at a time to print? |
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Yes, you can download the entire set of drawings for any of the jobs
currently posted on Plans Online (5-month rolling window of current jobs). In
order to download a plan set, select Plans Online - FTP Download (Print) on the
Plans Online Information page
and follow these steps:
- Review the License Agreement - If you accept the license agreement,
click on the "I Agree" button at the bottom of the page.
- On the next page, the "Click Here" button will take you to the FTP
directory.
- Select the category you are looking for (i.e., State-let
Construction, Local-let Maintenance).
- Select the letting month.
- Select the appropriate folder that contains the data you are
searching for, such as plans, proposals, addenda, etc.
- Select the county/CSJ number for the job you wish to download and
double-click it.
- Select RUN.
- Select BROWSE from the dialog box that pops up, to save the file to
a location of your choice or desktop. Click OK, then UNZIP, and OK to
exit after it completes.
- Go to the area (or desktop) where you saved the folder and this
folder will be named the County/CSJ and contain all the .tif images of
the plans.
- Finally, set your printer options and print any or all of the
individual images.
- You can also save the project to a CD or other area for future
reference.
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Why can't I print the
Informational Proposals directly from the Plans Online viewing database
- I get an error message stating, Adobe "Could not start print job"? |
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The documents are in Adobe PDF file format and they open in
Adobe Acrobat Reader to view, but they cannot be printed
directly from the viewing database. TxDOT has contacted the
Alchemy software manufacturer, regarding this issue and they
are working on resolving the problem. In the mean time,
there is a
work-around
that can be used to enable printing of PDF documents from
Plans Online.
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Why does it take so long
to download a plan set? |
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- Plan sheets are scanned in and saved as image files, so a
downloadable file for an entire plan set can often be quite large.
- Downloading a large plan set takes time depending on the Internet
Service Provider, especially if your provider is a dial-up service. DSL or
cable internet greatly speeds downloading time. If you do not have DSL or
cable internet, you might find somewhere that does, i.e., public library,
and download and save the plans to DVDs/CDs or print the pages you need.
- Make sure you are downloading from our
Plans Online - FTP Download (Print) area rather than trying to download
one page at a time through the viewing databases.
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Are there any other
options to obtain the plans I need besides downloading the complete
file? |
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- If you only need a couple of plan sheets, you can download only the
pages you need, one at a time, from the
viewing database.
- Purchase the pages you need or the entire plan set from a
Plans Company on our list.
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