Civil 3D offers many time-saving and convenient features, and I'm trying to move us in a direction of using them more consistently. The issue I haven't been able to get around is the glaring lack of customization options in the Dragged State tab of Label Styles.
At my firm, our distance and bearing heights are different: distance text is 0.14" * [scale] and bearing text is 0.12" * [scale]. If I want my text components to maintain their different text heights during Dragged State, I have to have it set to "As Composed." The issue is that the annotation stays rotated to whatever angle the object it's annotating is at, and the leader landing either goes to the top center or the middle center of the annotation instead of the left or right side. The text also doesn't justify left or right depending on which side of the leader it's on; it stays in whatever alignment formation it's been composed in.
If I change Dragged State to "Stacked Text," fantastic! My text goes horizontal like I want, the leader landing goes to the middle left/right of my annotation (depending on which side it's on), my text components justify left/right (depending on which side of the leader they're on), all is good. Except for two things:
- The fact that my text components must be the same text height when using "Stacked Text." Again, my company has our distance and bearing heights set differently.
- "Flip label" doesn't work on dragged state components, and it'd be nice if it did. This would cut down a little on the Label Styles firms have to create, because there wouldn't have to be one for distance over bearing, one for bearing over distance, etc. (This one is more of an added convenience feature, but obviously not something that makes the Label Styles feature unusable in certain instances like Item #1 does.)
So, in the event I have to drag a label, I have to delete that label and put a multileader in its place and manually insert and format the data, which defeats the purpose of using the quicker, more automated, and streamlined/consistent methods of annotation that Civil 3D has is supposed to have built in.
I would love to see Label Styles updated to either allow more customization/fluidity when using the "As Composed" setting, so the issues I've mentioned above aren't an issue, or making it where "Stacked Text" will allow you to add a different text height to each component of the Label Style if a user would like.
For example, in "As Composed," I believe a user should be able to specify whether they want the components to remain in their original orientation or be set to a different orientation during dragged state. Then, we should be able to specify if we want the text justified to the side the leader attachment is on. Finally, we should be able to specify where the leader attachment is located (like we can in the "Stacked Text" option). Unless I'm overlooking something, I believe adding these to the "As Composed" options would solve the issues. And I believe having these customization options would further emphasize and support the purpose of the "As Composed" setting.
To solve the issue for "Stacked Text," I believe we would just need the option to give each component of the label a different text height (like a checkbox that tells them to "maintain original text height" or something of that nature).
