Joining and Subdividing Land in Second Life

For residents who wish to know more about parceling, here is some helpful information on subdividing and rejoining land.

Subdividing Land
To create two parcels from one parcel:

1. Stand on your parcel. From your View Menu turn on Property Lines. If you use the Firestorm viewer, you would go to your World menu, choose Show More and pick Property Lines from the side menu, or simply use the keyboard shortcut Cntrl+Alt+Shift+P. After a brief pause you should see your land boundary shown in red.

2. Right-click the ground and choose Edit Terrain, or hit ctrl-5. A dialogue box will pop up.

3. Your mouse can now be used to draw a yellow bounding box to select the portion of land you wish to divide into its own parcel (see the image below). Simply left click your mouse at the starting point, and hold the mouse button down while dragging your mouse to select the parcel. If you make a mistake, simply let go of the mouse button, close out the menu and start over again. Do this until you have the area selected that you wish to divide.

4. With the area selected, you can now click Subdivide under Modify Terrain in the Edit Terrain menu.

5. It will prompt you to confirm the split. Once you have agreed – your land will be divided into two separate parcels.

Click on the picture to enlarge it.

Yellow bounding box for subdividing land

Yellow bounding box for subdividing land

Each parcel can have its own settings — such as rename the parcel, set music stream, land options, etc. The separate parcels will accrue traffic independently of each other, which is important if you’re monitoring traffic to a business. Security systems will recognize parcel lines if set to parcel only.

Joining Land
Joining land is a very similar process, once again using the yellow land selection bounding box.

1. Stand on one of the parcels you wish to join to another. From your View Menu turn on Property Lines. If you use the Firestorm viewer, you would go to your World menu, choose Show More and pick Property Lines from the side menu, or simply use the keyboard shortcut Cntrl+Alt+Shift+P. After a brief pause you should see your land boundary shown in red.

2. Check that both parcels of land are adjacent (they must share a border at some point).

3. Check that both parcels are within the same region. You cannot join land across a region boundary.

4. Check that both parcels have the same owner. You cannot, for example, join your group land to your personal land.

5. Next, right-click the ground and choose Edit Terrain or hit Ctrl-5.

6. Now you are ready to create the yellow bounding box. Left click and hold your mouse down, and drag the yellow selection such that it spans the border between the two parcels you want to join (see the image below). You need to have selected a little land from both parcels that are to be joined. You do not need to select all of both parcels, just some from both.

7. With that done, you should now be able to click the Join button under Modify Terrain in the Edit Terrain menu.

8. With both parcels now joined into one, check the About Land window. Firestorm users click World – Parcel Details, or simply right-click the ground and choose “About Land” and make sure that your settings are correct.

Click on the picture to enlarge it.

Select the border between parcels to rejoin, including a little land from each parcel.

Select the border between parcels to rejoin, including a little land from each parcel.

Note: The smallest parcel you can create in Second Life is 16m² (4m x 4m).

I hope you find this information helpful. Have fun!

I remain respectfully yours,
~ Suzanne Piers
ZI Social Media