Understanding how to label profile views and alignments in Civil 3D is crucial for creating accurate and detailed designs. This article provides detailed instructions on how to use the menu bar and annotation tools to create two different types of labels, station elevation and depth, while also highlighting important considerations to keep in mind during the process.
Key Insights
- The article focuses on how to label profile views and alignments in Civil 3D using the menu bar and annotation tools, with a particular emphasis on station elevation and depth labels.
- While creating labels, it's important to remember that they are linked to a specific profile view, not the entities inside of the profile view. This means that if changes are made to the objects within the profile view, the labels will not dynamically update and will need to be manually adjusted.
- Both station elevation and depth labels provide valuable insights into a design, but require careful and accurate placement within the profile view window. The user must be aware that these labels will not automatically update if adjustments are made to the design profile.
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In this video, we're going to start talking about labeling our profile views and alignments. In this video, we're going to do two different kinds of labels associated with profile views.
To do that, you're going to need to have your menu bar at the top turned on. Mine's already turned on, but if you don't have yours turned on yet, type in the command "menu bar" and then enter the value of 1 to turn on your menu bar. If it's not turned on, it's currently set to 0; entering 1 will turn it on.
Once you have that menu bar turned on, we're going to go up to the Annotation menu and drop down to find our profile view labels. The two options are Station Elevation and Depth.
Now, the thing to keep in mind when we are talking about these profile view labels is that they are linked to a specific profile view, not the entities inside the profile view. I'll show you an example of that in a minute. I'm going to go ahead and do a Station Elevation label.
I'm going to select Station Elevation, and then Civil 3D will prompt me to select a profile view. I'm going to go ahead and navigate into my dev main profile view window. I'm going to select anywhere inside the profile view window on one of the grid lines or on the border.
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Then Civil 3D is going to give me a red line that shows the station location where I'm going to be placing this label. I'm going to go ahead and go somewhere on this design profile and snap to the endpoint of this curve. Now, normally inside Civil 3D, you would think that if you were snapping to a point there—and now I've snapped to the endpoint of that curve—Civil 3D has locked me into that station.
I'm now selecting the elevation of this label. I'm going to go ahead and snap to the same point that I snapped for the station, and Civil 3D gives me a label for my station and elevation. Now, as I was saying before, you would think that if you were locking in or snapping on to an object inside of Civil 3D, this label would be associated with that object, but that is not the case for a profile view label.
The label itself is linked to the profile view, not to the objects inside of the profile view. If I put this point here, it will not dynamically update to the same point on the design profile. If I were to take this design profile, grab this grip, and move it somewhere, Civil 3D will keep my label here, but the point that I was trying to label has now moved elsewhere.
It's important to note this so you can ensure that you do not neglect to change the labels if you were to do a Station Elevation label or, in the other case we're about to cover—a Depth label. These labels will not modify based on grip edits to your design profiles.
You have to move them manually. So I'm going to go ahead and go back up to Annotation. I'm going to go to Profile View Labels and select Depth.
From here, it's going to ask me to select a profile view. I'm going to go ahead and click anywhere in my profile view window. So I'm going to pick a grid line here.
Then Civil 3D is going to ask me to specify a station, and I'm going to go to the first point that I want to label a depth on. I'm going to try to figure out what the depth is between the beginning of this tangent section and the end of this tangent section. I'm going to go ahead and snap to the endpoint of this line, and then Civil 3D asks me to pick a second point on the screen.
So I'm going to go ahead and pick this second point over here. Civil 3D has now returned a depth of 4.52 feet between the two selected points. Again, this label is linked to the profile view, not the design profile.
If I were to take this line, this tangent, and move it up here, the label stays here. It does not automatically update with my design profile because the design profile is not linked to the label. The profile view is linked to the label.
Moving on from here, you do have options for grip edits for these labels. I can take this label and move it anywhere along this line. This depth label functions similarly to a contour label line; it's just giving you a definition between two points.
If you get a number like -0.80, and you don't like that number and want to change it, all you have to do is change which endpoint you clicked on. I'm getting an error here. I'm going to go ahead and click OK.
My label moved and shifted, but that's fine. So I'm going to go back down here and snap it back in here, and then snap it back into here. Now I'm going to take this label.
You have two grip edit options here. You can either move it into a drag state, where it will point to the location where it's anchored, or you can move the whole label itself and it will update its data as you move it around. You'll see as I move this, the station updates and the elevation updates.
I'm going to go ahead and move this to a drag state so it's not sitting right on my curve. Then I'm going to zoom out, save, and then I'll meet you in the next video.
