Dynamic Notes in C3D 2007

Today’s Dave and Dan Show was all about new production drafting capabilities in Civil 3D 2007. Again, I gotta tell you people, these weekly webcasts are like a gold mine. They’re short, they’re incredibly informative, and best of all, they’re FREE! What more can you ask for.

A new feature in C3D 2007 is dynamic notes. They’re very nice, and I’ve got some samples to show. What’s even nicer is the inclusion of REFERNCE TEXT – yes, I can create any style note that references object data. For example:

Here’s a spot elevation:

What’s so special about it? A few things make this note stand out – first of all, notice the background mask on it. (note: ok, so you can’t see my background contours so well in this image. Trust me, there’s contours there, and they’re masked!) Yes, I can mask the contours with my label now. And once I insert one label, all I have to do is copy it and place new ones anywhere I want to. And what happens if I move it? The elevation updates, of course! Sweet!

Here’s a general note:

Again, note the background mask (which can be turned off if you want it to. And changing the text contained in the note is as simple as right clicking on the note, and clicking “Edit Lable Text” This allows a note, or “dumb text” to have the automatic resizing effects that other labels do when you change your viewport scale.

The last label that we’re going to look at is a label that contains reference text. This is where new labels really shine. Let’s say that I want to label the intersection of two alignments. I’ve created a note style that references the station of each alignment and the alignment name. Here’s a sample:

The good news is that they aren’t that hard to set up, providing you have a pretty good grasp of label style creation. Email me if you’d like more information on creating these new label styles.

Have fun!

Comments are closed.