Getting Freaky with Label Styles

Boy have things been hectic around these parts! Phew!

I have come up for a brief breath of fresh air from lots of training, Civil 3D Implementation, Southern California CAD Summit & other miscellaneous pre-sales engagements.

Hope this summer finds you well!

Now lets dig into some label styles specific for spot elevations using expressions:
In this section we will learn how to create a separator that separates two fields of information. The two fields will contain a TC elevation and FL elevation where the FL elevation is made up of an expression.

Creating an expression
Right click on the Expressions area for Spot Elevation Label Styles for Surfaces to see the following dialog box shown here to the left.

Creating a Separator and adding an expression
The separator is made up of a line component and added first. When adding the line component the two main properties that are important to specific are the length and angle. You will see the angle is important when it comes to defining the labels to the left and right discussed later on.

If you want the length of the separator to automatically adjust with the length of the text this CAN be accomplished, review the screen capture to the below on how to set this up!

When adding the expression, you can put the TC and FL in two different text components or you can put them in one text component. In this example, we will put them in one text component. After adding the text component, you will need to click on the ellipses button in the text contents area. See the figure below for the text contents area.

Need for Left and Right Labels (Understanding Dragged State Mode)
There are some limitations to the dragged state mode of labels that creates the need for independent label styles for the text to be to the left and right side of the labels. When creating a label style where the text components are to the left of the leader, the angle of the line component will need to be set to 180 since the 0 direction always goes form left to right as expected. See the following figure for a label style with the suffix "-Lt” indicating left and the angle of the separator line at 180 degrees. A logical naming convention should be thought about as well for all the label styles you create.

If there is a need to show a line between the labels you will need to create label styles for the text to be to the left and right side. If you take a look at the figure below on the right, you will see that one of the two components is a Separator…

If you take a look at the Dragged State tab, you will see two options for Dragged State components, As Composed & Stacked Text. By setting this to As Composed, this will maintain the separator component that was previously added. The Stacked Text option will keep the Text as entailed but the line or separator that you added would be removed.


In the next figure below you will see the same label that is designed to show the text to the left of the leader, both are in dragged state, but one has been dragged towards the right. The appearance is not appropriate and this is why a separate style for left and right is needed.