Possible to label bearings not in world UCS?

[Anonymous]

I've got to label bearings on property lines, but the legal plan bearings are slightly different than the world UCS bearings.  I've tried a couple lisp files & created  a bearing label block with a field for the rotation, but none work with a user UCS.  Is it possible to do?

[RussellSurveyor · Accepted solution]

I've never tried it, but I can see the benefit sometimes.

Create an expression to add an angular constant to your segment direction, then reference that expression instead of the true direction in the label style. I did a simple one adding 25 degrees to my bearing. You'll need to convert your constant from degrees to radians and format it as "Direction". I'd also suggest you show the constant in the expression name, and add something to the label to indicate it's not the true bearing. Below are a couple of screen shots to help.

[AllenJessup]

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@Anonymous wrote:

 but none work with a user UCS.

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A lot of things don't work correctly if a UCS is set. That's why I recommend not using them. You may also have trouble with an expression with anything other than the WCS set.

Allen

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your help.

Where do I reference the expression in the label style?

[RussellSurveyor]

After you build it, it will appear in the  dropdown list with the other fields. I believe they are specific to the type of label where you build it (i.e., "Alignment > Label Styles > Line > Expressions" will not be available to "Parcel > Label Styles > Line > Expressions").

[george.hatch]

I would absolutely agree!  When at all possible you should leave the user USC at its standard world coordinates.  This ensures that many other things that rely on the user USC do not loose there functionality.  Worst thing you can do is solve a problem only to create another one down the road

[Anonymous]

I do everything in world.  It's just that I was looking to automatically label the bearings so they match the legal plans, which are 36" different from world.

[Sinc]

Yes, this is a feature missing from C3D.  There was a feature that sort-of enabled this feature in LDD, but it wasn't implemented very well, and created a lot of obscure problems.  So Autodesk seems to have decided to completely eliminate it in C3D, even though we still need something like it (that works better, of course).

[AllenJessup]

Base Point/North Rotation wasn't really implemented for handling new drawings with coordinate systems other than plan. The original intent was to offer someone who bought DCA [Softdesk and LDT's predecessor] a way to work in drawing they had created in Autocad in no particular system.

The only reason I know this is that I know someone who worked for Dave Arnold at that time. So they never looked for a way to make it "work".

Allen

[Sinc]

We've run into several situations where we do a survey using one basis of bearings, and then at the end have someone else want us in a different basis of bearings.  It generally relates to the way all of our subdivisions are platted on a ground-based system, and adjacent subdivisions may use different bases of bearings.

So there are situations where we want to keep all our coordinates the same, because we don't want to change all our control point coordinates, along with previously-collected data, but we may want to create an exhibit or plat that lists bearings in relation to a different basis of bearings.  In other words, we may want to add some sort of "offset" to all bearings on our plat.  We can do that via Expressions, but it can involve creating a LOT of new child styles, and is a real pain.  The only other option is to try to rotate everything, but that introduces even worse problems, and generally doesn't work.  An option that lets us offset all displayed bearings by a specific amount would come in very handy in some situations.  Of course, such a feature also introduces a layer of potential confusion, if the UI doesn't make clear what is going on in the drawing.  But this could be handled by good UI design.

[AllenJessup]

I know exactly what you mean. I'm not in a position to need that now. But in other employment I would create a drawing just to plot in the other system. It would only contain what we needed to show on the plot. We'd keep all our notes about things like this in a Read_Me layer.

I don't have 2013 installed yet. I do know it has the ability to label boundary by Point. So if you Xrefed the drawing and rotated the Xref. It's possible you might be able to label everything in the revised system. Still kludgy but maybe better than all the styles.

Allen

[Sinc]

Yep, still a very messy "solution", if you can call it that.  Of course, Autodesk failed to realize that they also need a "Label Curve by Points" command, so you still can't do that, even though they added the "Label Lines by Points".

It's also impossible to use Civil 3D Labels on an XREF that has been rotated...  For example, if you insert an XREF an rotate it, then attempt to pop a label in the current drawing onto a Parcel in the XREF, you get a label that says "<XREF mopved>" instead of anything useful.

Lots of problems, leading to lots of time lost unnecessarily...  But luckily, these situations are more the exception than the rule, so we typically gain time by using C3D, even though sometimes we have to go through massive headaches due to failures in the program's design.