Being Civil

Tips: Section View label display and Plot to PDF missing symbols

I got few minutes and just wanted to share a couple of useful tips with you. The tip number 1 is showing why centerline band labels shows wrong data that looks like it’s using metric units while the rest of the drawing is in feet. Situation looks like in the figure. Grid shows range between 90–110 feet while band label shows 33.15:

 

Alignment Label Customization

One of the great things about starting a drawing with one of the default templates is that it comes with a large assortment of Labels that you can use for your Civil Objects.  But what fun is life without a little customization?

I had a user ask about making some changes to his Alignment Labels.  What he wanted was the following:

• Keep the beginning and end stations, and have them go to 2 decimal places
• Remove all other Major Labels
• Keep the Minor ticks

Rotating individual Labels

Not that settings such as Orientation Reference or Rotation Angle in Label Style Composer don't do their job but there are situations such as the one my customer experienced yesterday. Customer asked if it’s possible to rotate individual (alignment) labels 180 degrees. Changes in style are applied to all objects so the short answer was - "No." Besides the (unpopular) "explode label" and set it on new layer and rotate, there is another way to work around it.

If we create new style to be a copy of the existing style in use and edit Readability Bias to 180 degrees, then apply that new style to the selected labels we'll have what we need - 180 degrees rotated alignment labels. So, here are the steps:

How to add custom Frame Values to your Structures

A little while ago, we had a Reseller that was looking to change the Frame value for her Structures.  They were using this Frame data in their Labels and wanted to be able to add specific data in here.  Hmmm.  This was a good one.  With some help from Jason, we found out how to edit this data, as needed. 

Adding a comma to your Distance or Parcel Labels

When labeling your Line segments, wouldn’t it be nice to add a comma to the value at the thousands place?  How about in your Parcel Labels, that display areas?  Well, some of you think so, because you have asked for it.  With a little bit of work, and by utilizing Expressions we can turn this:

into this:

Color-specific Cut/Fill Surface Labels

Hello everyone my name is Seth Hall, and just like Almas I will be sharing with you from time to time as a guest here on Being Civil. Special thanks to Brian for allowing me to participate.

Being a Support Specialist we occasionally receive questions that end in “is this possible in Civil 3D?” Now these can get your brain going a little bit, especially if you personally have never attempted what they are asking. In this case I was asked if you were able to label a Surface with cuts and fills and have each appear as a different color. This of course is entirely possible in Civil 3D by creating a new Spot Elevation Label Style.

Creating a Label to show spot coordinates

I had a recent request asking if there was a way to add a Label to a plan, showing only the Northing and Easting for a property corner.  This is a fairly common requirement of Planning Departments for final plan sets.  If you look through the "Add Labels" dialog box, you wont see any mention of this, so I was surprised I hadn't had seen this request before. 

This is actually quite easy to do in Civil 3D by simply adding a Point at your desired spot and assigning a Point Label Style to display only the coordinates.

ClearType... it's anything but clear.

Have you ever been editing a Civil 3D Style in your Text Component Editor and had a hard time making out what the text said?  Don't worry.  It's not old age and it's not the 14 hours you spent in front of the computer yesterday.  Its Windows ClearType, and it doesn’t play nicely within the Editor.  Here are a couple of screenshots that show you the difference.

Luckily, this is a quick fix for this:

• Right-click on your desktop and select "Properties"
• On the Appearance Tab, select "Effects..."
• Here, change the smoothing method from ClearType to Standard, or uncheck the smoothing all together

In Windows Vista, you get the same result with a few extra steps:

• Right-click on your desktop and select "Personalize"
• Select Window Color and Appearance, then select "Open classic appearance properties..."
• In this new dialog box, select "Effects..."
• Change the smoothing, as mentioned above

Have a great weekend!