checkout project skeleton --empty 2ond level project directories
$ svn co --username=user --depth=immediates http://myrepo.net/svn/dev/
--depth immediates Include the immediate target of the operation and any of its immediate file or directory children. The directory children will themselves be empty.
add a directory
$ svn add mydir
$ svn ci -m "importing mydir"
For more complicated sparse checkouts lookup
co --depth files ,
up --set-depth infinity dir1 dir2 ,
up --set-depth emty dir3 dir4
svn immediates