Contour Labels

[stephanie]

I want to make the contour labels be the only thing that shows up on my surface. Is there any way to do this? Seems like if I turn off the contours the labels are tied to the the contours so when you turn them off in the surface style the labels also turn off. I could explode the labels but then they would not be tied to the contours any more.

Just to explain why I want this. I would prefer to show the finished contours I manually draw. Even with contour smoothing all the way up it still looks "choppy"

the only way I have found to fix it is to turn the color of the contours to an "invisible" color and send it to the back.

Thanks.

[Joe-Bouza]

You cant have the contour lables on a layer of their own and freeze the contour layer without freeezing the TIN

[gauss2069]

Joe, Yes you can. go to your settings and chnge your major and minor labels to a layer which you can freeze. Remember to have intermediate and independent layer on (settings-object layers) Thanks,

[peterfunkautodesk]

An alternate workflow that while not answering the question solves the underlaying design intent.

1. Draw the contours as you want them to display (make sure that you snap to one of the org so you get the elevation set.

2. Make a new surface and add those polylines to the surface as contours

3. Turn off the surface other surface

4. Label the new surface

The advantanges I see to this are:

1. The surface will adjust when you change the polylines.

2. The labels would refect the contours including any spot elevations

3. You could pull earth work from the new design surface

4. You could stake out the new design surface.

Cheers,

Peter Funk

Autodesk, Inc.

2012 Tip: Splines and splined polylines can be used to create surface contours / breaklines without modification.

PS To answer the question, I'm not sure if you can turn off the contours and leave the labels. Using a no plot layer might work, but I don't think that is really the solution that you need to use.