Real quick now - What are the differences between the plethora of Line and Curve Labels in AutoCAD Civil 3D?

Oops! Please do it That Way

Yep. Some are Civil 3D Feature (object) specific like Alignment, Parcel, and the latest new Figure versions. There are General or generic Line and Curve ones too.
Yep. Each Feature’s labels gives you access to the specific “exposed” Feature data, but we aren’t locked in to that. Sometimes the specific Feature data is important and sometimes it is not. We can go plain Jane.

Please explain to me WHY I get this ginormous list of Line or Curve label styles when I modify the Label Properties of a Line (or Curve) Label on many different AutoCAD Civil 3D Features?

What Feature’s Label is it Anyway?

Does this mean you can slap a Parcel Line label on a tangent segment of an Alignment? No.

For Line & Curve labels you always get the choice of the current Feature’s Line or Curve Label Styles and the General (generic) Line and Curve Label Styles. You can’t switch an Alignment’s Labels to a Parcel’s  Label Style. Ah rats!
In Civil 3D, such ability is currently an act of indecent exposure.

Right Click is Your Friend

You can select (collect) Feature labels and modify them to refer to a Style for the Feature or a General one.
Many people discover the core Civil 3D Right click menu’s Select Similar command often works great as a selection tool.

Does the Select Similar command sort by the assigned Style for Labels? Not exactly.

You’d better pay attention. You may not currently see other labels that get selected that you did not recognize as being “similar”. Secondly, a Label Properties pick from any Ribbon is the same action for any selected Labels. All the different types of assignable Label Styles for a Feature with Label Styles are presented in the same Property box like interface. This interface has evolved in small but important ways over the releases of Civil 3D.

Toolspace Label Trickery

If you pay careful attention in the Toolspace>>Settings tab you’ll also note you can replace all found instances of one Label Style with another. Instead of attacking the change from selected Feature(s) you make the change from a selected named Style.

Replace By Style

The Replace Style command (found a selected Style in right click Toolspace menus) is handy for rapid changes in a drawing when you KNOW the Styles you want to change from A to B.
You should also note the Replace Style command is NOT Feature specific at this moment in time either. Way Cool!

Maybe you’d like a command to slap all the Feature Style and Feature Label Styles assigned in a drawing back to Standard? We all sometime have to follow someone (maybe us) who messed up. I know I would. We all may need that niffy chain saw one time or another.  Tell Autodesk.

By the way, you can do this violent act systematically by working from the Toolspace when used in conjunction with Style Purge command. Get rid of the unused Style clutter and change the rest with Replace Style. Remember to Do It on a copy of your drawing.

Label on Reference in the Project

This approach probably deserves posts (there are already some here in this blog), so I’ll just mention it here.
In a working project environment it can be better to annotate references as much as possible. You get the annotation you require when and where you need it, but you aren’t so locked in. You can always kill the reference. Say, “Goodbye”. Reload, re-annotate, and basically publish on demand.

Create and Edit Labels Differ?

To modify a Line and Curve Label the annotative object must already be connected to the Feature’s linear components. If there is no connected label on a Feature, no changes are possible. Huh?

Since there are a lot of ways to create Features inside Civil 3D some of these methods can leave you up a creek without a Set or an assigned Label where you need them. Remember…Right click is your friend.

When you initially Annotate (from the ribbon) a Civil 3D Feature you definitely do NOT get all of these many Line and Curve choices. The Label engine inside Civil 3D these days remains Feature Label Style specific. So, just slam in Standard labels and modify at will. I do. U do 2?
It is faster to Edit than Create.

Small wonder why the” simple” annotative task of getting labels on linear objects is at times so befuddling in Civil 3D. Flexibility and Complexity can create Confusion.

We occasionally have users say that InstantOn Basic and The Jump Kit have “too many” annotative choices. More can be overwhelming at times.
Hey. We do tell you that you’ll probably want to delete the Styles you don’t think you’ll use from your production or publishing templates.
The deleted Styles don’t disappear forever either. We’ve got them organized and put away for you when you do need them.

Next post how to we really get better at this?

Our Jump Customers often ask really good questions about tweaking the thousands of Civil 3D Styles we offer.

"Is there a way that you can make the curve label style not show all the 0’s ahead of the degree for the delta of the curve? 
For example, if the delta is 8° 23’ 34”, then it is displaying as 008° 23’ 34”. 
My preference would be to not show all the 0’s before the 8."

A Good Customer Question

Almost all things are possible in Civil 3D and this one really is. It's relatively easy to adjust too.

In InstantOn Basic (IOB), we have Curve Label styles that actually do this both ways in our templates. You can see this in the picture above. Our labels go to distinct and compliant NCS (National CAD Standard) layers too. That's why the labels are different colors in the picture above. The Jump is about more useful possibilities after all.

Work the Same and Publish On Demand is what it's all about.

The issue is getting to the right label and/or tweaking the one you prefer or need to use.

There are TWO different kinds of Line and Curve Labels you can employ in AutoCAD Civil 3D.

One for ANY linework and one we can ONLY use for Parcel segments. I'd guess from the question that the customer is probably using the “General” Line and Curve label style and NOT the specific Parcel segment ones. The Parcel segment ones are already formatted that way in IOB by default.

General Line and Curve Labels are stored in
Toolspace>>Settings>>General>>Label Styles.

Our Civil 3D templates have a variety of kinds of Curve Label Styles too.

Civil 3D Lables are divided into Parent Child families.

• For InstantOn Basic Curve labels the ones with "V" in the parent name are linked to the VIEW – this means they ALWAYS stay aligned to the View – these are usually “stacked” labels for obvious reasons.
• The one without a "V" in the parent name are linked to the OBJECT – the segment itself. They can follow the curve's geometry but don't have to all the time.
• The Curve labels with a capital “D” use surveyor delta  in degrees minutes and seconds.
• The Curve Labels with little “d” use decimal degrees.

All of our Rule based Civil 3D Style Naming Conventions are documented in the Jump Platform Standards which anyone may download and employ. Many people and organizations do. 

Adjust a Label Style's Format Properties

We'll need to edit the appropriate “D” Curve Label Styles. Specifically, we need to adjust a part of the “formatting” of a part of the label Contents of the named label style(s).

Find the “right” label Style you want to change in the
Toolspace>>Settings>General>Label Styles>>Curves section.

Right click and pick edit
This opens the Label Style Composer
Go to the Layout tab

All the IOB Curve labels have separate Above (labels above the segment), Below (label below the segment), and Tag (curve numbering label) components.One of the Above or Below components will have the Visibility property set to “False” –in the picture above the Below component is invisible.

You only care about and need to edit the “Visible” component. Go to the visible component.

When you mouseover the Contents property in the Label Style Editor it will show this.

Note the “[General Segment Total Angle has some formatting after it. This is what we need to change. The stuff in front of it - {\Arial|b0|i0|c0|p32;U+0394} creates the delta symbol. We do NOT want to mess with that when we change the formatting.
Employing this NCS 4.0 and NCS 5.0 compliant Windows Arial Truetype font reduces downstream display issues for everyone we share things with.
Standard compliance also increases the transportability of what you produce and publish from AutoCAD Civil 3D.
Better Publish on Demand capability is built into IOB.

Pick on the ellipsis icon in Contents field for the appropriate Above or Below component.
This opens the Text Component Editor (TCE).
What appeared in the Contents mouseover now shows in the TCE Edit box.

Pick on the General Segment Total Angle area (the stuff between the <> characters) in the Edit box

The area will highlight and CHANGE the values that appear on the Properties side.

The General Segment Total Angle should be selected from the list of potential values for the Feature Label.

Scroll down in the General Segment Total Angle Properties list

Change the Drop leading zeros property from “no” to “yes”.

Click on the Input arrow to push the current new properties BACK into the label text.

Note that the DZN (drop zeros No) format property changes to DZY (drop zeros Yes).

Click OK to save and exit the Text Component Editor

Nothing visibly changes in the Label Style Editor (except the Contents mouseover of course).

Pick Apply and Ok to finish editing the Style and get rid of the Leading zeros of the delta angles for only this Curve Label style in only the current drawing.

Test the Curve Label Style with a curve segment in a drawing to make sure you got it right. If it works correctly, you'd better perform the essentential Style Maintenance.

Do it One place? Do it Many Places?

Remember Windows keyboard shortcuts can help you out inside the Text Component Editor if you need to adjust an entire family of Label Styles. In our example remember you can Copy the General Segment Total Angle properties from the TCE box to the Windows clipboard (Crtl C) to later paste (Crtl V) them into the TCE box of other closely related labels so they behave  EXACTLY the same. When that's complete you need to make sure these new AutoCAD Civil 3D Curve Label Styles get into your templates etc.

Did we follow the Simple Style Rules? Nope.
Don't know what the Simple Style Rules are?
Search for that in this blog to discover More.
But we got 'er done.

Get the Jump

Hope that does the trick…