Trimble Business Center

Is there a way to label elevation of a line aligned to that line (without doing a manual bearing segment snap?)

Specifically I want the end of line - (Inverts of Stormwater lines)

IL= @<EL,T,F,2>@

Am I missing something?

The only way that I know to do this john is if you have points for the locations that you want to label, and you have linestrings drawn between those points using the Point ID method (where the line is a dependent object on the points) and this can be created from Feature code processing or from drawing a linestring using Point I vs Coordinate input. Then when you define a Label Style for Point Objects and set the parameters as follows

Then when you label the points that you want to label, because there is a line at the point it can determine the orientation of the text if you have the Align Labels to associated line segment checkbox checked above.

The challenge is that a "line" doesn't have one elevation - it has a series of elevations, so Elevation is not a real property of the line, it needs something else to determine the elevation e.g. Text Insert Point (derives a Station along and an elevation of) or Leader Line (where the tip of the Leader indicates a location along and an elevation of) etc.

If this is critical, and you don't like the need to use SHIFT Click on the line to determine the orientation of the Text for each placement (I assume you know that trick) then we have a toolbox of things that we could use to create a new function for this if you need it (Our place aligned blocks tool does the calculations needed and we could easily create a Place Aligned Text command from that - the only issue is making that Text Smart Text for the reasons mentioned above - line elevations need a location along in order to determine the Z value to display so moving a piece of text would change the elevation for example.

Here is a short video of the 2 options that I think you have. I did discuss with development and they may be able to make a change to fix this issue in certain scenarios - I will let you know if I hear more.

Click Here to download video

Let me know

Alan

Thanks Alan,

I'd gone down that track of creating Invert points (and then created line strings by Point IDs)

Generally our surveyed points are top of pipe and outside say a Manhole whilst the pipe is still exposed during construction. I've then extrapolated the top of pipe line to say 100mm inside the Manhole and taken away the thickness & ID of the pipe to create a calculated Invert.

For some reason originally I could not get my Align labels to associated line segment to check on - I can now and that works,

No I did NOT know about "SHIFT CLICK" for text alignment to the line - that certainly is helpful. After Inserting the Text I was selecting the three pieces of text for the line (either end RL & a Smart Text description, slope & length) using right click in "rotation" box and selecting segment snap. Unfortunately you still have to select "rotation box" - it'd be nice if that could be a default action / shortcut.

I can't see why we couldn't use "Text Insertion Point" for line label (as I am now) but have a Alignment to Line option active  - the Text appears to remain "Value fixed" to the initial insertion point when I move it around so that is good.

As a side comment the Slope line label option I would have thought must use elevation of line points to generate the slope so I'd think that the elevation value would be available? - and aligned to line.

The slope of a line is actually a property stored on each segment of the line, so when you label that you are just labeling the attribute for the segment - the label line routine is labeling the line with its attributes that are constant i.e. Slope, Hz Length, Slope Length etc. The Elevation is not a property of the line, it is a derived value based on where you are on the line, hence the reasoning behind needing to know where on the line you want to label, so a distance along and elevation value for that location can be derived - that is why we use Text Insert Point or Leader Line to label a Line elevation, because that gives us a point that can be converted into the information required. 

I agree that a property of line orientation at the point to be labeled could be derived and the text could be aligned to the line at that location, and we could have rules for how to compute the orientation at a node where the line changes direction. I have requested that development look at that if at all possible and update the system to allow this.

Alan