Exploring Label Styles for Slope, Spot, and Contour in Civil 3D

In this video we're going to talk about the labels that we just placed into our drawing and we're going to look at the label styles to see about what additional information can be returned using our slope labels, our spot elevation labels, and our contour labels. So in order to do that what I'm going to go ahead and do is navigate to the settings tab of my tool space window.

So I'm going to go ahead and click on settings and we're going to be working in the surfaces drop down here under the label style section. So what we have here is we have the label styles for any surface entities. We have contour, slope, spot elevation, and watershed.

We haven't done any watersheds so we're going to go ahead and not talk about this in this video. We're going to be talking about contours, slopes, and spot elevations. So I'm going to first drop down the contours and so on any time you're in the settings tabs and you notice these golden triangles next to objects inside of the lists, what that's telling you is that those objects are currently being used or those styles are currently being used in the drawing.

We know that based on the golden triangles being here that the types of labels that are being used in our drawing are existing major labels and existing minor labels. So I'm going to go ahead and right click on existing major labels and I'm going to select edit. When I select edit I get the label style composer window.

So this would be the same thing as if I had clicked on contour, right clicked, and selected new. I would get a label style composer window but I'd be creating a new label style. In our case here we're editing an existing label style.

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So I'm going to go ahead and do edit on my existing major labels and we have the information tab with the name, the description, and who created it. Then we have our general tab for the text style, label visibility, and layer. Now layer is important in this one because as you see here the layer C topomajor is controlling what color our label comes in on this drawing.

So the C topomajor if you look at the layer drop down you're going to notice that the C topomajor layer is green and that's why this label here is green. So the settings inside of here will control the display styles out here once the label's been placed. Now we have the options for behavior, the reference for the text, the forced insertion, plan readability, and readability bias, and then whether or not we flip anchors with text.

So from there we have our layout tab. We have just a surface elevation component here. We can add more components, text lines, blocks, or direction arrows.

So for now I'm not going to add anything because all I want is to have this elevation data here. But moving down in here the content section is what changes based on the different types of label styles you're dealing with. So since we're dealing with contour labels then the contents that I have for contour labels are contained within these ellipses here.

So I'm going to go ahead and click here to see what other information we can add to these contour labels. If I drop down here I can give a name, a description, or a surface elevation. So there's not much information here.

I don't see where it would be beneficial to have a name or a description added into this label. So the surface elevation is the only one that makes sense and we already have that here. Now if you wanted to change some of the modifiers and wanted to have more precision or you wanted it to round differently then by all means you would go ahead and change these items, erase out the text that's here, use the arrow button to force this data over into the text box, and then click OK.

So I'm not going to modify this. So I'm going to go ahead and leave this as is. If you wanted to change your text height this is where you would do it.

If you wanted to change your rotation angle or your attachment method or your X or Y offsets you could force a color, you could go ahead and change your line weights, you could add borders to your text just like we've talked about in any other label style. So this is interesting in the contour labels that we have a drag state tab because when you look at these labels, and we'll go ahead and do this after we cancel out of here and look, but there isn't a drag state for these labels. They're anchored to this line that we have.

So all of this information you kind of don't need it because we can't create a drag state for these labels here. So moving on we have our summary tab of the previous tabs. We're going to go ahead and hit cancel here and I'm going to go ahead and look at this label here.

If I look at this label here and I have a contour label line those pieces of text are anchored to that line. So I don't actually have a drag state for this. Now maybe if I went and exploded this I could create a drag state but then you lose all of the dynamic connections and that kind of stuff and so I don't want to do that explode so it doesn't really matter to me that we're not modifying the drag state on that existing major labels.

So existing minor labels is exactly the same thing it's just the labels that were put on the minor contours. So I'm not going to get into existing minor labels they're exactly identical to the existing major labels just a different color different layer that kind of stuff. Minimizing contours maximizing slope we know that we have a percent and a standard being used in the drawing.

I actually don't know where in the drawing I have a standard label style but I do know that the two that we placed the one right here and the one right here those are both percent label styles. So I'm going to go ahead and dive into percent label style by right clicking and selecting edit. So inside of here if we go to the information tab again name description created by general we have all the same things what the label is behavior plan readability the layer is important we have it on ctopo text that's why it's appearing as this peach color.

So I'm going to go ahead and go to layout from here we have the direction arrow and surface slopes you can go ahead and add additional text lines blocks direction arrows or reference text. We're going to go ahead go to the surface slope component we're going to look at the contents so that we can see what other information we could bring into this label if we wanted to. So I'm going to click on the ellipses here and then I'm going to drop down the properties.

We have the options again for name and description but then we also have surface slope surface slope distance surface slope horizontal distance surface slope depth elevations at the first point and elevations at the second point. If you have a two point then you have the options for your surface slope first point and second point if you and then you have the options for what your slope depth is and your horizontal distance and your slope distance. So that's those are all items for a two point and then the single point is just obviously going to give you this surface slope but because there's no difference between a single point label style and a two point label style you're going to have all of the same properties available to you in either version.

We have these options available to us if you were putting labels into your drawing that you needed to have this information here you could go ahead and pick any of these options fill out your modifiers and then use the arrow to drop it across and have it displayed. So I don't want to change this so I'm going to go ahead and say cancel again we have the same information text height rotation angle attachment x and y offset we have our colors our line weights and our widths we have our border information we have our drag state. Now again I don't believe there is a drag state for these we'll go in and check to be 100% sure but the drag state probably doesn't matter unless you're going to do an explode on this.

So don't worry about the drag state then we have the summary tab so I'm going to go ahead and hit cancel so we can check on that drag state information. So I'm going to go ahead and click this one here and we have the options for moving point being labeled we have the move this point here and we have move this point here so there is no drag state same here if I hover over the script all I have is move point being labeled there is no option for drag state so in the slope labels drag state is not an important tab to be worried about unless you're going to do something like explode and maybe drag state might show up then so I'm going to go ahead and hit escape and I'm going to minimize slope and we're going to take a look at spot elevation. So inside spot elevation again it shows we have standard and elevation done I know that the one that I placed which is over here 261.70 is an elevation label style so I'm going to go ahead and right click and select edit.

I'm going to go and navigate to the information tab we again have name description and who created it we have the general tab which has the text style label visibility and layer we have the behavior we have the orientation reference and force insertion and our plan readability. Now we're moving on to the layout tab we again have our components we have the ability to add text line blocks and reference text and we can go to the contents which changes based on like we've said before which label style you're in so we are now in a spot elevation label style so we have new data that's available to us so I'm going to go ahead and click on the ellipses get the text component editor window up and I'm going to drop down the properties to see what other additional information we have available for spot elevations. So inside the spot elevations we have a name and description we also have elevation which is what we've been returning here because we're in an elevation only label style and then we have also northern easting for surface we have grid northern and easting for any grid coordinates and then we have latitude and longitude if you have that set up in the drawing.

So these points that we're going to be placing have not only elevation values but they also have location values so these points can be used to give you location as well as elevation if

you wanted to have that so for us we want elevation only so we're going to go ahead and leave this as is I'm going to hit cancel so moving on from there we have our text height our rotation angle our attachment our offsets just like we had in all the other labels that we've ever seen so far in civil 3D we have our border information then we have our drag state and as you saw in the previous video when we first placed this point I showed the different grip edits for this type of label this does have a drag state so all of the drag state information here does matter if you want to go ahead and set up a drag state for your point style so we're going to go ahead and leave these as is but just know that you have your arrow header and your and your leader and your border visibility and all this stuff in this location for the drag state of the label if you were to create a drag state for that label then we have the summary tab all of the information in the previous tabs are summarized here and you can change those values by expanding any of these options here and then going in and clicking and changing any variables there so I'm going to go ahead and hit cancel and we're going to take a look at this point again just to confirm that we do have a drag state if you hover over the square grip you can move label and moving label would in fact create a drag state so what we're going to go ahead and do is I'm going to minimize spot elevation I'm going to minimize label styles and minimize surface I'm going to dive back to the prospector tab so that we're ready for the next video and I'll see you there