During my pilot project while I was at JBI, we struggled long and hard with how to handle the plat. The problem a that we needed SF area labels in the plat, but not anywhere else. This is a common problem I hear from firms that have survey in-house. Too much info on the plat, don’t need it in the other sheets.

Reference text has been mentioned a few times, so I won’t belabor their uses. While at the Texas Civil3D User Group (if you’re in the DFW area, JOIN US! E-mail me for more details…) meeting the other night, I noticed that Parcels were an option for reference text. I was completely shocked!

Now, you might wonder why I was shocked…but I _distinctly_ remember being shot down by Dan Philbrick when I wanted Parcels as Reference Objects! Turns out I was asking the wrong question. In a Parcel Area Label Style, you cannot use a reference object..that was my request, and it’s still unfilled. That’s OK…because a NOTE can reference a parcel.

So…now that Note objects exist, and can reference a parcel, we can essentially create multiple labels for a parcel. One for the lot number (G1-6 as shown here,) and then use a NOTE for the Area. They’re on different layers, and can be manipulated easily in Xrefs. Problem solved.

Oh, and thanks to Dana for the great hack for commas in areas. It’s dumb that we have to resort to a hack like that, but it’s brilliant that it works!