Learn about the features of point identity markers within the point creation toolbar, and how to navigate and modify these tools. This article covers detailed instructions on how to adjust default layers, styles, and name formats, and gives insight into parameters such as local coordinates, elevations, and point descriptions.
Key Insights
- The point identity markers offer a variety of parameters and values that can be adjusted according to the user's preferences. These include default layers and styles, point creation settings, default name formats, and point identities.
- Each parameter has its own set of options. For example, users can choose local coordinates, grid coordinates, graphic coordinates, or geographic coordinates for their point creation. They also have the option to specify a default elevation, and determine whether Civil 3D should prompt for an elevation or a point name.
- Default styles and label styles can be modified individually per point within the drawing, or updated via the settings tab of the tool space for a specific style or label style. This feature offers greater flexibility and customization in point creation.
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In this video we're going to talk about some point identity markers inside of the point creation toolbar. So to do that we're going to navigate back up to points, we're going to select the point creation tools, and we're going to have the point creation toolbar.
On the far right side of the point creation toolbar you'll notice these two down arrows. If you click this you'll see an additional window that pops down from here that has parameters and values. And inside of here we have default layers, point creation, default style, default name format, and point identity.
So inside of here under point default layer, this is the default layer for the points that you're going to create. If you wanted to change the layer that you were putting creating your points onto, you could click on the ellipses and then you could select a new layer for the points that you're creating. From here you have the options for how your point is created.
Now these are a little more difficult to go through and you may or may not understand what they are for, but you have options for what your coordinates are, what the local coordinates are for your drawing, the grid coordinates, your graphic coordinates, or your geographic coordinates, um, whether or not Civil 3D should prompt you for an elevation or give you an automatic elevation or not give an elevation at all, prompt for point names. And so point names are different from point descriptions. And the options that we had over here, we did not specify a point name.
And all of these options can be modified or added later. So I generally, when I'm working through points and creating points, I leave these point creation settings as they come out of the box for Civil 3D. So moving on, we have prompts for descriptions.
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So you have manual, none, automatic to the object or automatic. Ours was selected as manual. That's why we had to keep typing in our GS for our point descriptions.
Um, moving on from there, default elevation, you can specify a default elevation. If there isn't one associated to an object, then the default elevation for our points that we created was zero. Then you have the options of match on description parameters.
And so these are items that are underneath description key sets, which we'll get to in a future video. So just know that you have the options for matching of the description parameters that we'll talk about. And then you have your description key sets and whether or not those are going to apply or not apply to the drawing.
And then you have echo coordinates to command lines. So whether or not it will tell you the coordinates of that point in the command line after you've created that point. So moving on and closing this down, we have the default styles.
And so you can see here, the default styles for the point that we're creating is a basic point marker, a point style, and a basic label of point label style point number elevation description. So moving on from here, you can see that these are grayed out and you can't change these. Those are actually contained within the settings tab of the tool space.
And we'll navigate there and I'll show you where that can be changed as soon as we're out of this point creation toolbar. We're going to minimize this again, maximize the default name format. So this is how your points will be named.
When we had this as prompt for point names, we have none. It uses the default naming format to give a name to these points. So you have a point group name if you're creating a point group and a point name template if you're creating a point.
So it'll be point dash and then what it has a counter and it basically does it looks back to the previous number in the counter and adds the next counter to the name. So point one and then when you create one after point one, it would be point two, point three, and so on and so forth. So minimizing that we go to point identity.
And so this gives us an option for what the next point number is going to be. If you want to jump up numbers or fall back numbers, you can input a new point number in here. You can use sequential numbering, yes or no.
You can do point number offsets. If you wanted to offset your numbers by tens or fives, then you can input that here. Sequence point numbers from 100 or you can input a different number here.
If point numbers are supplied, then use it or you can choose to ignore or add an offset. Force names, you don't want to force the names or you do want to force the names. And then if point numbers already exist, notify, overwrite, merge, or renumber.
So this is what would happen if you happen to use a point number that was already existing in the drawing. Same thing if point names already exist, how you want to handle having a point name that's the same because the point name has to be an individual name that can't be shared across other points. And then you have the option of if point numbers need to be assigned, use next point number or sequence from.
So moving on from here, we're going to minimize because as I said before, we're going to talk about what you can do and how you can change this default style. These styles and these label styles, the point style and the label style, can be modified in the drawing individually per point. But if you would like to have these updated for a specific style or label style, and we'll discuss point styles and label styles in a future video, but if you wanted to have one selected rather than the ones that are in this drop down, you would navigate to it by closing down this window, and you can leave this expanded or not, and go ahead and close it, navigate to the settings tab, select settings, drop down points, go to commands, and then you're going to go to a command of create points.
I'm going to go ahead and select create points, right click, and click edit command settings. And so inside of here, these are all the settings for the command of create points. So inside of here, you can see that we have default styles.
If I drop down default styles, now you can see that we have point style and label style. They are available for changing. And so if I wanted to select a different point style, I could select the ellipses, and then I can drop down and choose a different point style that is
Existing inside this drawing, or I could go ahead and create a new one, and we'll go over how to create new and edit point styles and point label styles in a different video.
But just so that you know that this is available, you can change that value that we had inside of our table. So for example, I'm going to go ahead and change my point elevation description to description only. I'm going to go ahead and click okay, and then I'm going to go ahead and click apply, and then click okay.
And if we navigate up to points, go to point creation tools, and we navigate to the default styles, and we drop down, now you'll see that description only populates inside of the point label style. So that does it for talking about point identities and styles. We're going to go ahead and finish up this video, and in the next video, we're going to talk about actually editing these points and assigning specific styles and label styles.
