Explore the efficient ways of labeling contours in Civil 3D, utilizing certain functions like the annotation drop-down, surface labels, contour single, contour multiple, and multiple at interval. This article provides a step by step guide on how to apply these labels in your drawings effectively.
Key Insights
- The labeling process begins by navigating to the annotation drop-down in the menu bar, selecting surfaces labels, and then contour labels. Here, there is an option for spot elevations on the grid which can be used to drop a bunch of spot elevations in a grid into Civil 3D.
- Labeling contours involves three main methods: contour single, contour multiple, and multiple interval. The contour single method involves selecting a contour line, while the contour multiple method asks you to draw a line that intersects some contours, placing a label every time the line intersects a contour. The multiple interval method places labels along the contours at specified intervals.
- The three methods of labeling contours effectively create the same labels, but offer different ways to apply these labels in your drawing. These methods aim to increase efficiencies depending on how you want the labels to be applied.
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In this video, we're going to talk about labeling contours. So the way that we're going to do that is the same way that we did the spot and slope elevation labels.
We're going to go ahead and go up to the annotation drop down in our menu bar. We're going to go to our surfaces labels, and then we're going to go to our contour labels. We do have an option for spot elevations on grid.
We're not going to do this in this class, but just know that if you wanted to drop a bunch of spot elevations in a grid into Civil 3D, you could do it using this command here. So inside of that command, you would pick a point for the origin point of your grid. You would set up your rotation for that grid.
Then you would set up your X and Y spacing for that grid, and then set up your outer limits for the grid. And then Civil 3D would place points on a grid on your drawing on a surface. So moving on from there, we're going to do a contour single first, and then we'll do contour multiple and then multiple interval, and then we'll talk about the differences.
We're going ahead and click on contour single. What Civil 3D is going to ask me to do is pick my surface first. I'm going to hit ENTER, select full development, click okay.
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From here, it's asking me to select a contour line. So I'm going to navigate to this contour line right here. I'm going to pick, and it places a label on that contour line.
So pretty simple and straightforward. Next, I'm going to go to annotation drop down, surface labels. I'm going to go to contour multiple.
Civil 3D is going to ask me to specify my surface. I'm going to hit ENTER and select full development again, click okay. And I'm going to be asked to specify the first point.
So what Civil 3D is going to do is it's going to ask me to draw a line, and I'm going to draw a line and it needs to intersect some contours. And then every time that line intersects a contour, it's going to place a label inside Civil 3D on that contour. So I'm going to go ahead and pick somewhere over here.
I'm going to pick anywhere on this slope. And so I picked my first point, and then Civil 3D is asking me to specify my next point. So I'm going to go ahead and click down here.
And so I could continue to click around. So I could click to here, and then I could click down to here. And then the way that you get out of this command is you hit ENTER.
So once you're out of this command, what you'll notice is there is this orange line for me, and these are controlled in your display settings. But I have this line here, and it has vertices that I can move that line to shift these labels around on my contours. And then I have the individual contours themselves.
So I can select this contour and slide it this way. I can select this line here, slide it this way. I can select this line here, slide it this way.
If I wanted to continue going upwards, I could adjust this upwards and downwards as I need it to be. So moving on from here, what we're going to go ahead and do is we are going to add an annotation surface labels for multiple at interval. So what Civil 3D is going to ask me to do is specify my surface again.
So I'm going to go ahead and hit ENTER, select full development, click OK. And from here, Civil 3D is going to ask me, just like I did in the multiple contours label, it's asking me to pick a first point. So for me on this one, I'm going to go ahead and do that on the first two contours up here.
So I'm going to pick a point up here, and then I'm going to pick a point down here. So what Civil 3D is now asking me is it's saying, what is the interval along contour and how often do you want these labels to be placed? So because my first contour isn't very long, and I want a couple of labels to show up in here for our example, I'm going to go And so Civil 3D is going to now place labels along the contours on the two contours that I crossed every 30 feet. Now, the interesting thing about this is that the labels that were created, the first two that are here, that on that line that I created behave identical to this type of label here.
Now, these labels here behave like this single contour here. So you can see along here, I actually ended up creating a whole bunch more because it continued up through here. But if I do a single label for my surface and I do a single contour so that we have one that's separated out from these and we can pick it up easily, I'm going to go place it on this contour here.
And what you'll notice is this label behaves identical to the labels that were placed using our incrementally along contour. So our annotation surface labels, multiple at interval, the interval labels are identical to a single label being placed. Now, the interesting thing about a single label being placed is that it is just a multiple label with a very, very short line.
If I take this line and I extend it out, it now behaves as a multiple. So I can come out here and cross contours and it will add in labels at these contours. So in reality, we are just creating one type.
It's just whether or not you pick two points or pick or it automatically picks a small line for you. And then whether or not it's going to place multiple at a specific interval. So in reality, all the same labels, but just different ways to apply those labels into your drawing and gaining efficiencies, depending on how you want those labels to be applied.
So I'm going to go ahead and save this drawing. And then I'll meet you in the next video where we'll actually talk about the underpinnings of these labels and go into the label creation method.
