Topic: Civil 3D 2008 irritations

[surveyor_randy]

 :pissed:

Maybe I am doing something wrong, but I've found two problems that are really irritating to me (besides the lack of any interest in surveyor needs)

1: Even though I turn Plan Readability off in a label style, whenever I drag a label and then rotate the viewport in paperspace, the dragged labels re-orient themselves to horizontal.

2: Annotation Scale in paperspace does not work the way that I think it should.  I should be able to have my annotations at a seperate scale.

I hope that Autodesk fixes these problems or some creative mind here in the swamp can give me a workaround! Thanks and have a great monday!

[Dinosaur]

Item 1 -
Plan readability may not be the cause here.  Try going into the label style dialog for the labels and go to the dragged state tab.  There you can change the label property from "stacked text" to "as composed"
Item 2 -
I have some problems with the annotation scaling myself.  I think the only way to get different sized labels is to label the element more than once and assign a different style to each.  Most labels with the notable exception of parcel segments can be directed onto different layers and their visibility can be controlled that way.

[mjfarrell]

"
Item 2 -
I have some problems with the annotation scaling myself.  I think the only way to get different sized labels is to label the element more than once and assign a different style to each.  Most labels with the notable exception of parcel segments can be directed onto different layers and their visibility can be controlled that way.

Item two is to set your Text Style First and define it as annotative.
Then you set that style to Annotative on the General Tab of your label style.
Set all labels within the Label Set applied to the Alignment to use this new annotative style.
Create your alignment or applied this label set to your alignment.
Then you make your viewport scale and the annotative to match.
Make another viewport and set its scale and anno scale something other than the first, the same note will rescale itself.
Second file shows different DView and scale.

[Dinosaur]

Really . . . that is something new to try.  I have been too busy getting other things straightened out to look at this issue again . . . but I am working on a new template right now that this will fit into nicely . . . thanks

[mjfarrell]

Really . . . that is something new to try.  I have been too busy getting other things straightened out to look at this issue again . . . but I am working on a new template right now that this will fit into nicely . . . thanks

I can probably make those other things go away as well, or make them easier to live with.

[surveyor_randy]

Item two is to set your Text Style First and define it as annotative.  Then you set that style to Annotative on the General Tab of your label style.

Wow!  Thanks!  That worked great! 

[Dinosaur]

Michael, I am not near a working 2008 install to test this . . . question - what happens with the insert point of the text components of these labels?  Is it still the old behavior of being a fixed distance from the element and floating off away from where it should be, or is it changed proportionally?

[mjfarrell]

Those are unaltered views, at differing scales, and Twists, I saw no abberant behavior

Maybe I need to try rubbing my eyes?     



   Happy to help a Surveyor, Randy.   

[Dinosaur]

This worked great when I got to try it this morning . . . one question though Michael before I write it into my template . . . Should the annotative text style be set at a given paper space height with multiple styles set for each text size you might require in a label along with setting the size in the label composer or leave it set to zero?  I only had time for a brief test and created different text styles for each and duplicated the height in the label.  It seemed to work, but is this the desired method?

[mjfarrell]

I believe you want to leave it as zero in the Text Style definition.
And define it as desired paper size in the LSC, as I think the LSC overrides the Text Style height setting.

[Dinosaur]

Very well, I shall try that tomorrow.  I had quit messing with annotative text when I saw a very disappointing avi demo of the feature when 208 first came out. I frankly did not know you could leave the height at zero for an annotative style until I was reviewing my settings at the end of the day.  This leaves me with another question however . . . If I use this annotative text style with a zero height for regular text, how does AutoCAD know what size it should be in any given viewport?? 

[mjfarrell]

It does some crazy math with your current drawing scale and just wings it. As always you can change it's height in the mtext dialog. However one might chose to place all notes using a Note or Label style and avoid the issue completely.