Kudos to James Wedding for his All Signs Positive post, and Christopher Fugitts’ Discussion Group comments yesterday, I think I figured out how to get my volume surface labels to have the colored tick marks.
In my prior post on the subject, I simply linked to the Wicked Cool Stuff blog where Anthony outlined the steps necessary to represent the surface elevations in a different color based on if the elevation is cut or fill. The original cut fill tick changes are also now shown on Page 19 of the C3d Best Practices PDF file with your 2009 installation.
Well, yesterdays post on the Discussion Group got me thinking. Is there a way to solve the question I had in my prior post? Yes.
Together with the James’ Positive Post, I created two equations – a Minus Scale and a Positive Scale equations using the surface elevation and the negative surface equation that you created for the cut-fill ticks post.
IF({Negative Value}>0,0.00583,0.0001^10)
IF({Point Elevation}>0,0.00583,.0001^10)
I also modified my Station Character block (its just two lines forming a +), and created a Minus Character block. [Note – make sure the color and plot styles are byblock – not bylayer]
Modify the label to include two blocks, plus and minus using the size of the two equations above [might want to rename them from minus scale to minus size].
Turn Off the Marker and now you have cut fill ticks, all in color.
I’ve resisted jumping into Civil 3D for years and have finally made the leap and have a pressing question. I find that cut and fill contours rather than ticks help the customer visualize the earthwork but I can’t figure out how to change the colors of fill (+) contours green and cut (-) contours red in C3D short of exploding the volume surface and moving the resulting plines to appropriate red and green layers. Any better methods?