Existing Ground Surface and Data Shortcuts

[taneum]

I have a rather large project for a roadway reconstruction.  Therefore, the existing utilities are in a separate drawing and the existing ground surface model is in a separate drawing.  All the above surface items (curb and gutter, asphalt, concrete, signs, sidewalks, landscaping, etc..) are in the master drawing.  I then xref'd in my utility drawing and though I would use data shortcuts for my existing ground surface drawing.  I took the surveyed triangles (3d faces) from our raw survey drawing and copied them into my surface drawing, created a surface from the triangles, created a boundary and such.  So far everything is good.  I created the working folder for the data shortcuts for this project and saved the drawing and closed it.  I went into my master drawing and clicked on "Create Reference".  I did not promote.  The reference came though and everything is fine.  Now I want to add contour labels in my surface drawing which I did but they do not show up in my master drawing but the contours themselves do.  Do I have to promote this drawing into my master drawing so I can create the contour labels in my master drawing?  I guess that is fine but the issue is we have small areas of topo that will be added as needed down the road.  If I promote the surface drawing into my master drawing then when I add topo to the surface drawing, it wont update in my master drawing.  Lots of confusing info. and maybe I am going at this all wrong.  Anyone have any ideas around this issue of mine?

[tcorey]

Your post is a little confusing, so maybe I read it wrong, but here's my shot at an answer:

The basics of the whole Data Shortcut and Labels topic are:

Labels stay put in the drawing in which they were created. Labeling in the drawing where the surface was created will not make the labels migrate to a new drawing when the surface is referenced.Conversely, labeling inside the drawing where the surface was referenced will not send the labels back to the surface's parent drawing.

Labels do go with a surface when any drawing that contains a surface and labels is Xref'd. Optionally, you can Xref a drawing that has a surface and then add labels in the container drawing.

Best regards,

Tim

[sboon]

If you created labels in your source drawing then they do not become part of the data reference.  You need to create the labels in the drawing where you intend to show them. 

[taneum]

Okay so most of the beginning of my post probably was useless information.  My existing surface drawing is "referenced" into my base drawing through data shortcuts, not an xref.  I did not "promote" it.  In my base drawing on the "prospector" tab the surface shows up but when I right click on it there is no option to "add labels" like there would be had I 'Promoted" it.  Make sense?  The problem is, if I "promote" the surface I can add elevation labels to the surface model, but, how do I add more survey data to the model at a later date?  I can't because the surface model now resides in both drawings since I "promoted" it into my base drawing.

[taneum]

.....Am I getting confused between "promoting" and "create reference" with data shortcuts?  It's my understanding that when I create the data shortcut of my surface model I have two choices when bringing it into my base drawing:

 a) I can click on "create reference" which brings the surface model into my base drawing but I cannot manipulate it in my base drawing.  If I want to do anything to it I need to go into the drawing that the surface model resides in.

 b) I can "promote" the surface model which actually brings the surface model into my base drawing and now I can manipulate it however I want to in that base drawing as it is now a fully functional model in the base drawing.

[corcad]

You do not need to promote the surface in order to label it. In fact, you dont even need to data reference the surface if all you intend to do is label the surface. You can simply xref it.

To answer your question though, you do not see the option to "Add Label" on a referenced surface in the Prospector. Instead of adding labels that way you will want to use the Add Lables button in the Annotate tab of the Ribbon. When you choose a suirface label to create you will be prompted to "Select a surface". Using this method you can select both xref'd or dref'd surfaces. 

Does this answer your question?

Matthew Corbin

[taneum]

I will try this..................................

[Neilw_05]

It might help to understand that when you create a data shortcut (data reference) you are creating a new surface object in your host drawing. It behaves as any other surface in that you can sample it, label it, change it's display style and everything else you can do with a surface (except edits). The difference is the source data is stored in a separate drawing file UNLESS you promote it. Then it literally gets copied into your host drawing and is no longer associated with the source drawing.

If you instead attach the surface drawing as an XREF you will then see the surface as it is displayed in the source drawing, including labels, but you can't use it for modeling. In cases where you want to show the surface in multiple drawings as it is displayed in the base file, you could create a data shortcut to make it available for sampling and also XREF it in for display purposes. Just set the data shortcut version to a no display style.

[taneum]

..........yep that worked so you can label contours that are only referenced and not promoted to your drawing.  Hopefully more people find this out as I have seen a lot of posts where people say you cant.

Thanks.

[tcorey]

If you promote a reference surface, now you have two surfaces, disconnected.

If you simply reference the surface, do not promote, and want to add survey data to it, you need to open the drawing from which the data shortcut was created.That's called the surfaces Source drawing. You can right click the surface under the Data Shortcuts collection in the Prospector tab of Toolspace.

The shortcut menu will have and option to Open Source Drawing. Go there, add your survey data, save the drawing. When you get back to the drawing that contains the reference, if it has been open all this time, you should get a bubble in the lower right corner telling you to synchronize.

Tim

[corcad]

The same goes for Pipe Networks & Alignments! I've gotten used to using the Annotate tab for everything now. As much as I love using the right-click menus for everything they are inconsistent in some ways.

Case Closed?

Matthew Corbin

[taneum]

Yep.....thanks again Matt.  I hate how there are 5 different places to do things and they all differ in what you can do and how you do it.