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CHAPTER 1 GettinG Dirty: the Basics of civil 3D
13. Click the arrow circled in Figure 1.21 to insert your label text and elevation code into the
preview area.
14. Click OK to exit this dialog, and you’ll be back at the Label Style Composer.
15. Your label is complete. You can click OK to exit, but you might want to leave the label
open as we discuss the Dragged State and Summary tabs next.
How Many Dialogs Is That?
You can see why many Civil 3D instructors refer to label creation as “heading down the rabbit hole.”
You’re a couple of dialogs deep just making the simplest of label styles, with one static text compo-
nent. It’s easy to get confused, but don’t worry—it becomes second nature! The Text Component
Editor is another common dialog that appears in every label-style creation exercise.
Let’s look at the rest of the options, even though you won’t be making any changes:
Text Height determines the plotted height of the label. Remember, Civil 3D knows you’re
going to print and will attempt to give you inches or millimeters.
Rotation Angle, X Offset, and Y Offset give you the ability to refine the placement of this
component by rotating or displacing the text in an x or y direction.
Attachment determines which of the nine points on the label components bounding box are
attached to the anchor point. See Figure 1.18 for an illustration. Change the attachment of the
reference text component to Top Left. This will attach the upper-left corner of this proposed
elevation reference text to the bottom left of the Surface Elevation component.
Color and Lineweight allow you to hard-code a color if desired. It’s a good idea to leave these
values set to ByLayer unless you have a good reason to change them.
The final piece of the component puzzle is a Border option. These options are as follows:
Visibility is obvious, turning the border on and off for this component. Remember that com-
ponent borders shrink to the individual component: if you’re using multiple components in a
label, they all have their own borders.
Figure 1.21
Don’t forget
the arrow!
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