Creating Northing and Easting Point Label Style in Civil 3D

In this video we're going to discuss point label styles. We're going to create a new point label style and we're going to assign it to one of our existing points inside of the drawing.

So to do that we're going to navigate over to the Toolspace window again, we're going to select Settings, we're going to drop down Points, and we're going to go to Label Styles. We're going to drop that down and we're going to right-click on Label Styles. We're going to go ahead and select New and a New Label Style Composer window comes up.

We're going to go ahead and go to the Information tab first. We're going to put in a new name for this and we are going to be doing a Northing and Easting point label style. I am not going to define a description and Civil 3D automatically defines who created it and who last modified it so we will not change these.

We're going to navigate to the General tab next and inside the General tab is all of the general settings for our label style. So inside of here we have the text style so the type of text that's being displayed, the Label Visibility whether or not that label is visible or not, and what layer that label will be on. We have the behavior of that label which is the Orientation Reference for that label which is either oriented to the Object, the View, or the World Coordinate System.

I'm going to go ahead and select Object and whether or not we have a forced insertion None, Top, or Bottom based on our Orientation Reference. Then we have the options for Plan Readability and what Plan Readability is that it determines whether or not text can be displayed almost or nearly upside down. So based on your Readability Bias your text will reorient itself when it passes a certain angle.

Learn Civil 3D

• Nationally accredited
• Create your own portfolio
• Free student software
• Learn at your convenience
• Authorized Autodesk training center

Learn More

If you have Plan Readability turned on set to true then when you pass a certain Readability Bias angle the text will reorient itself so that it remains readable on your plans. Then we have the Flip Anchors with Text and what this does is that based on what text you have in here there are different anchor points and when you engage Plan Readability there's a chance for your anchors to have become reversed and you can either have it set to false and not allow those anchors to reverse themselves or you can have it set to true and Civil 3D will try and retain your anchor orientation. We're going to move on next to the Layout tab and so inside of here you have the different components of your labels.

So Civil 3D has three different styles of components that you have available to you to create a label with. You have text, lines, and blocks. Most often you're going to have labels created of just text.

For example ours here is a Number Elevation Description label style. We're going to modify these but if we wanted to we could add a line and Civil 3D would place a line into that label and based on the information that we have here you can change and reorient that line. We have the name of that line, the visibility of that line, where the anchor for that line is, we have the start point of that anchor, we have the end point of the anchor, and then based on these options whether or not these display themselves and you can change these.

Then we have the options for the line itself. We have a fixed length and we have a set length here that we can redefine. We have angles of that line.

We have start point X offset and start point y offsets. Then we have color, line type, and line weight options. I am not going to use a line in this so to remove any item inside of this component name drop down you can select it and then choose X for delete component.

You also have options for copying components and for changing the draw order of your components. I'm going to go ahead and edit these ones because I don't need more text components. I also don't need a block component.

If we wanted to create a block component we would select block and then we would go through the options for that block component. So you have your name, visibility, anchor, and anchor point, and then you have the block that you're going to use. So you could select a block from any of the blocks that are inside of your drawing.

You can choose your block height, your rotation angle, your attachment point, your offsets, your color, your line type, and your line weight. I'm going to go ahead and delete this block as well. I'm going to actually go ahead and delete my point description and then I'm going to modify my point number and point elevation.

I am creating a new label style called Northing Easting. So I'm going to make the top component my Northing. So I'm going to go to name.

I'm going to type in Northing. Then I'm going to drop down to visibility. I do want it to be visible.

I want to have my anchor component to be point elevation and that is this option here. So the elevation is anchored in the middle and my Northing will be anchored above based on my offsets. So I have my anchor component to point elevation.

I have my anchor point to top left. I'm going to go ahead and go to my contents. I'm going to hit the ellipses and inside of here is the text component editor.

Inside of the text component editor, you can select the different types of text that you have available to you for individual label styles. Each object inside Civil 3D has different properties assigned to it. So the drop down for this text component editor inside of a point label style will have different objects available than, let's say for example, a surface label style or an alignment label style.

These are ones that are specific to the point style that we're creating. So I'm going to go ahead and go into this window here selecting the text that's already in here and I'm going to backspace and delete it out. Then I'm going to drop down here.

I'm going to select Northing and then I have the options for that Northing text style. I have my units, my precision, my rounding, my decimal character, my digital grouping symbol, and how my digital grouping is taking place. I also have my sign.

So from here, I'm going to go ahead and go with units of foot and my precision. I'm going to go down to two places and then to get this information placed into my label, you

Have to hit the arrow button to make it go across. So I'm going to click that and now I have a text code for what is going to be pulled out of my point in Sybil 3D and displayed on the window.

From here, you also have the format tab which will give you your text style, your justification, your font style, and your colors. I'm going to go ahead and click okay and so from here we can see our point number no longer displays here. We have our Northing being displayed.

I'm going to drop down, select point elevation. I'm going to go to my name. In this instance, this was already created and it's the originating point.

I can't modify this point. What I'm going to go ahead and do now is I'm actually going to delete this and it's giving me an option of telling me that it is a child style and whether or not I want to delete it. I'm going to go ahead and say yes and then I'm going to copy my Northing below.

So I'm going to go ahead and copy component and I'm going to change it to Easting. Now I have an option for my Northing and my Easting. I'm going to take my Easting and I'm going to anchor it to the feature.

I'm going to go up to my Northing and I'm going to actually change this to anchor it to my Easting so that I have my Northing above, my Easting underneath it. I'm going to navigate back to Easting. So I'm going to go to my anchor point.

I'm going to drop down and I'm going to select bottom right. So from here, I now have the options for my contents. I'm going to go ahead and click on the ellipses and my text component editor comes back up.

I'm going to select all of the text that's over in this window. I'm going to delete it out and then I'm going to drop down and select my Easting. I'm going to go ahead and change my precision to two decimals and I'm going to hit the arrow over to bring my text line code into this window.

I'm going to click okay and so now we'll see that we have a Northing and an Easting. So in order for us to remember that this is a Northing and an Easting, I'm actually going to go ahead and make a new edit to my components. I'm going to go into my Easting component.

I'm going to go and select in the front here. I'm going to type E and colon and space. So then I'll click okay and so now in my label style, it has the text that I input and then the code for the information that Civil 3D is pulling.

Now I'm going to go back to Northing. I'm going to select components. I'm going to edit it by clicking on the ellipses.

I'm going to go up into the text window. I'm going to type N colon space so that we know that this is our Northing. So I have my Northing and my Easting.

Moving on to the next tab, we have the options for drag state. So inside of drag state, this is as we did when we were doing the rotation and orientation of the labels using grip edits. If

You create a drag state for your label style, what will it look like? We have the arrowhead style, the arrowhead size, whether or not it's visible in a drag state, the type, so a straight leader or a spline leader.

We have the color of the leader. We have the line type of the leader and the line weight of the leader. Now we move down and how do we want the drag state component to be? We want it to display as stacked text or as composed.

I'm going to go ahead and choose as composed so that it pulls all of the information from how we composed it in our layout tab. If we did not want to have it as composed, then we could select stacked text and then set all of the settings for the stacked text. So I'm going to go ahead and select as composed and move on to the next tab.

Inside of here, we have the summary tab, which is the same as our point marker style window, but this is the summary tab for the label style composer. And it goes through the different summary information for component one, which is our northing, component two, which is our easting, our information tab, our label tab, or our general tab, our behavior for our general tab, our plan readability for our general tab, our leader for our drag state tab, and then our drag state component for our drag state tab. I'm going to go ahead and click okay, and we'll see over here under label styles that we now have a northing and easting label style created.

There was already one inside of the drawing noted as northing and easting, but this is the one that we just created. I'm going to go ahead and go to my description key sets. I'm going to select survey.

I'm going to right click. I'm going to go to edit keys, and then I am going to force this label style onto our FND description key. So I'm going to go ahead and go over to point label style, drop down to FND, click on this description only.

I'm going to drop down. I'm going to select northing-easting. I'm going to click okay.

I'm going to check the box to close this window, and then I'm going to select any point in my drawing, right click, select similar, and then I'm going to right click again, and I'm going to apply description keys. Once I've done this, I can go navigate to any of the red text here, and what you'll see is our new label style has been put on any of the FND points with our northing and our easting of these found monuments. What I'm going to go ahead and do next is I'm going to save, and then I will see you in the next video where we'll talk about adjusting datums and editing datum and coordinate properties.