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…