I wrote about this in one of my “What’s New for 2008” posts a few months back, but I did a road show today and got the following question in my email that I thought was worth a blog posting.

I attended the CAD discussion this morning and I have a follow up question with one of the topics discussed today.  When you profiled the sanitary sewer pipes and the structures, you connected a pipe at the end structure and showed it facing outward.  (This was done by turning the option on in the display tab of the structure properties.)  I was wondering, can dynamic labels can be attached to these intersecting pipes on the profile or are they just there as a place holder?  The reason for this is that if we have the pipe shown on the profile, we would want a label that would tell us the invert of that pipe. 

The answer is yes… but maybe no.  What I mean by this is- yes we can absolutely label the invert of this pipe.  But I don’t know a way to automatically label the invert at the invert location.  Does that make any sense?  Likely not.  So here are some pictures to pick up where my words run out.

A structure label will label all incoming/outgoing pipes.  You can also add the direction that the pipe is coming from and/or the name of the pipes in question.

If I want the label down at the invert location… My brain is working overtime here.  I have all kinds of ideas that wouldn’t work.  Like… a pipe label attached at the pipe start, but that wouldn’t work because we aren’t really looking at the pipe in question, etc. etc.

My best idea, and I am open to suggestions, is something I have done in the past with pipe crossings.  You can make a profile view label that is dynamic to the profile, but would have to be moved when your pipe moved.  Surprisingly, that little crossing mark inside the structure actually can be snapped to using endpoint osnap, so you can nail the invert spot on.

This is a profile view label, so of course, it has no smarts to the pipe itself, and there is no reference text that can pull pipe information (I double checked) so you’d just have to override the label text if you wanted to add more. 

You’ll be seeing more of me over the next few weeks.  I’m happy to say that the project that was sapping all of my writing energy the past few months has finally come to a close.  I’ve also managed to rack up enough frequent traveler points to afford that all inclusive week at the Black Sea Hilton I’ve been coveting, but that will have to wait until the winter (blackout periods, you know) so I will be here blogging my heart out.

I am also doing a really neat custom training next week with a group that does things like dams, spillways, stream projects, GIS work, and more so I know I will have some tidbits to share.