Learn about the intricacies of creating alignment labels in Civil 3D, including the differences between station offset fixed points and station offsets. This article provides detailed steps on how to select alignments, set stations and offsets, place labels, and understand how positive and negative values relate to left and right orientations.
Key Insights
- The article explains how to create alignment labels in Civil 3D using both station offset fixed points and station offsets. The former involves selecting a single point in space, while the latter requires selecting the station and the offset individually.
- When placing labels, you can select a point in space or manually input information. This allows for precise positioning of labels at specific stations and offsets.
- The orientation of positive and negative values in relation to left or right positioning is dependent on your view along the alignment. As an example, if you're driving south, the left (east) side would be negative, and the right (west) side would be positive.
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Now that we talked about the profile view labels, we're gonna go ahead and talk about alignment labels. We're gonna go up to the annotation dropdown, we're gonna navigate to alignment labels, and inside alignment labels, we have a lot more options than we had under our profile view labels.
We have station offset fixed point, station offset, single segment, multiple segment, point of intersection, and multiple point of intersection. So in this video, we're gonna talk about our station offset fixed point and station offset. In the next video, we'll do a multiple segment, and then in the following video, we'll do a point of intersection.
So moving on from here, we're gonna first do a station offset fixed point. So what Civil 3D is gonna do is it's going to ask us to select an alignment. I'm gonna navigate in and select my dev main alignment.
Then what Civil 3D is asking me to do is set my station and my offset. I'm selecting a single point in space, and then Civil 3D is going to place a label. So I'm gonna go ahead and pick somewhere in space, Civil 3D places the label, and I can move on to placing another label.
So there's a difference in how we do these labels based on our station offset versus fixed point. So fixed point, as you saw, was a single point. You selected an alignment, and at that point, you picked the station and offset in a single action.
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With station offset, you select the station and the offset individually rather than together. So what I'm gonna go ahead and do is I'm going to select that label. I'm gonna go ahead and select alignment.
And then what I'm going to be doing now is I'm going to be specifying the station along my alignment that I wanna place a label. So I'm gonna pick somewhere here, and then I am going to have to select my offset. Now I can pick somewhere.
It's locking me into the station, and now I'm moving in and out along that station point to set this label. Now I can set a point here. Now, you can set these labels.
Instead of picking a point in space, you can also just type in information. So let's say I wanted to put a label at 600 or 6 plus 00. I can type 600, hit ENTER.
It locks me into the 6 plus 00. And then depending on if you are left or right of your alignment, you are either going to be positive or negative, and it's dependent on your view along the alignment. So as you drive along the alignment, which is left and which is right.
So this is driving downwards to the south. So our left is the east side and our right is the west side. So the right side is gonna be positive.
The left side is gonna be negative. If I wanted to have something labeled on the left side at 15 feet, then I could type in negative 15, and I would get a label for a station of 6 plus 00 at an offset of 15 feet to the left as indicated here with an L. Now that we have these labels in place, I'm gonna go ahead and save, and I'll meet you in the next video.
