Rotate Surface Labels

Ever since I’ve been listed as a contributor, James has been busting my chops to post something. I thought I could game the system with my feeble post about the issue with Vault and Office apps. No such luck. So here is something that many of you have asked about. How do I create a surface spot elevation that can be rotated to any angle using the standard Acad rotate command? This technique is pretty straight forward and gives the desired result.

Under General labels, create a line label with a Reference Text component that references a surface. The label style should include 2 components: the direction arrow and the reference text. Set the direction arrow properties such that it is invisible; it is not offset from the line and that its length is not fixed. This is the anchor component for the reference text. Note other settings such as min length and arrow head size

.Direction Arrow

The Reference text component should anchor to the direction arrow start.

Spot Elev

Next draw a VERY short line and then label it using your new line label. If you need to rotate your label, you actually rotate the very short line and the label rotates with it. You can then copy this line/label combination around your site adding labels where needed

Rotate

Get really nutty and add a block component to represent the tick mark and use the acad Group command to lump everything together.

Enjoy

3 comments

  1. Paymon F says:

    I agree with James. You need to contribute more tips like this very useful work around.

  2. Matt Kolberg says:

    Way to think outside the box Mark. That’s cool.

    Matt