When we’re establishing existing conditions it really starts with knowing how civil 3D handles points we have to go back to basic geometry when we’re working with points in civil 3D so what is a point geometry points are Zero Dimensional meaning they don’t have volume area length or any other dimension although if geometry points are Zero Dimensional how do you define or visually display a point many times we’re used to x marks the spot but as soon as we Mark the Spot the point is no longer Zero Dimensional when we draw points with survey or existing conditions they typically fall within two categories points that identify a linear shape or points that identify objects points that identify a linear shape can include curb lines corners of buildings or a center line of a road having an x marks the spot point isn’t as critical for a linear shape as it is for identifying objects points that identify objects include marking the location of trees manholes utility poles and different structures these points symbolize the object you’re marking so it really should resemble the structure the point is identifying displaying something visually in civil 3D goes back to our styles so we’ll take a look at that in this video Point Styles control the visual look of the point marker or the X I’m in the 0301 point Styles drawing and you’ll notice that I already have a line drawn and we’re going to create some points within this drawing so first go to the home ribbon and to the create ground data panel now under the points there are many different means to create points in this drawing let’s choose the most popular option Point creation tools we get a little panel right here click these two Chevrons to maximize it I’m going to open this up just a little bit more so we can see what we’re doing here now this new panel right here gives us the same options as this little drop down gives us on the far left we’re going to create points manually now whenever we click on this Chevron if we expand it out it gives us a list of all of our command settings for Point creation Now do you remember when we were working with command settings within the settings tab for the drawing itself now you’re starting to see how these command settings all come into play right they control the default layer of points as well as the default styles if I expand out Point creation
you’ll notice we have some controls when we’re creating a point now for this drawing it’s set so that we won’t be prompted for an elevation see how right now it’s set to automatic rather than manual we’ve got that set to automatic and we have a elevation set for that default which is 100. so we won’t be prompted for an elevation as we’re creating our points again that means that civil 3D will always enter a default elevation of 100 with every point that I create I can change this option at any time and have it prompt for elevations by choosing manual we can also do this with Point descriptions right now it’s set to automatic we can also set that to manual but I’m going to leave that on automatic and you’ll notice that we have a default description of FH for fire hydrant once all of these command settings have been taken care of we can go ahead and create our new point we’ll have a point with a number assigned to it with an FH description with an elevation of 100. let’s click this option to bring it back to automatic let’s collapse this Chevron let’s go over to the far left and manually create a point you’ll see in our command line that it’s asking us to please specify a location for the new point so what I’m going to do is I’m going to go ahead and turn on my object snap by typing in F3
and I’m going to change some of the settings here right now we’ve got it set to endpoint I’m going to leave it just like that
click that first point you can see how it automatically gives us a point number one elevation of 100 and a description of FH for fire hydrant let’s go ahead and do that for the next point I’m going to type in end for endpoint instead you can do that as well there’s lots of ways of of doing things in civil 3D and you’ll see now we have a point number two with the same elevation and the same description and you’ll notice that I wasn’t prompted for any point information the description and elevation were automatically added I’m going to go ahead and exit out of this command by pressing the Escape key if I select one of my points you’ll notice that the contextual ribbon shows up let’s go ahead and click on properties within the ribbon and I’m going to go ahead and dock this off to the right hand side so since I’ve already selected a point the properties palette shows me that point point number one description FH to Coco point and I have some other options here I’ve got style and point label Style now because it’s a civil 3D object it shows up as a kogo point and has two options anytime you’re working with coordinate labels you will have two Styles the marker and the label so you can see right here in the properties panel we’ve got the style of the marker itself and the point label style which is the label this applies for a point but it can also apply to station offset labels for alignments for example or elevation labels for surfaces let’s zoom in on point number one
come back to the properties palette and change the Style by navigating to imv util water hydrant
see how that changed after selecting the style you’ll notice how the marker has changed I wanted the marker to symbolize the object that it’s marking I haven’t changed the label so it shows up as a default label we can see that right here let’s change the point label style to just description
now it’s showing us just the description of that point now look at the grip in the middle it’s a rotated Square there’s a rotation of 45 degrees which actually controls the coordinate if I select it and I move it it’ll change the coordinate and the Z elevation although if I hover over it I get a contextual menu with the point grip you have many different options if we hover over our marker you can see all these different options let’s go ahead and rotate our marker about like so
now my fire hydrant is rotated but my label isn’t if I pick the label grip
I can move the label and the contextual menu opens up independent of the marker itself so let’s go ahead and pick the grip and move it to wherever we want
now you’ll see there’s some additional grips that are now on our label these grips are for a leader when we move a label it goes into what’s known as a drag State when the drag State opens a leader with an arrow could show up depending on the style but since this style doesn’t display a leader it won’t show one although the grips for it still show up if I don’t like these changes I can float over these grips and choose to reset the label or I could reset everything my marker included if I choose to reset all the marker will rotate back to its original rotation and the Label returns to its default state working with points is all about visual control know that you’re dealing with two different styles one for the point marker and one for the point label we now know how to manually manipulate point and label styles but what do we do when we’re working with thousands of points manually changing Styles would be very time consuming there is a process we can use to automate setting the point and label Style Autodesk civil 3D provides us with many ways to automate this process the easiest way to automate Point Styles is to use Point groups to control it we now have our 0302 Point groups exercise file opened up and you’ll see two points we’ll go ahead and select them and in the properties panel you’ll see that both styles for both the point and the label are set to default meaning we haven’t manually overridden the point styles so where can I control my defaults click on the home ribbon palette now choose tool space under the prospector tab you’ll notice there’s a section called Point groups if I expand this you’ll notice we already have a point group called All Points this means there is a collection of all points in the drawing when I right click on this group and choose properties it will provide me with the info about this point group you’ll see on the information tab of the point group properties there are default styles when we have our Point Styles defined within a point group it will dictate the defaults let’s try this out
go ahead and create a new Point group we do this by clicking on the point groups right clicking and then select new now a point group is a way of tagging a point or categorizing them in social media terms it’s a way of hashtagging our points points can belong to multiple Point groups go ahead and name our Point group fire hydrants
let’s change the point style and make the default marker we’ll make that look like a fire hydrant we do that by choosing this right here IMVU till water hydrant now change the point style default to just description
now what points will be included in this group go into the include Tab and include them you can do this by Point numbers by checking this option right here with Point numbers matching and then listing the points or you can do it manually by selecting the points within the drawing the most common way of including points in a point group is to do it automatically by raw description to do this we’re going to say that any point with a raw description of FH or the fire hydrant will be included in this group now we’re going to put an asterisk right after that which means that it’s a wild card if I have a raw description of FH Dash say 301 to number the fire hydrant structure it’ll show up in the point group because it has an asterisk right after it and that makes it a wild card you can also add a comma to add additional raw descriptions that can be included in the point group when the drawing finds a point with the specified raw descriptions it will automatically add them to the point group let’s just leave the fire hydrants with a wild card and we’ll click ok now we have a new Point group called fire hydrants and you’ll see our points are now stylized according to the group we created notice there’s a little square with a DOT when I look at the All Points group this means there’s a collection of points within this point group if I select the group you’ll see a list of points down below
when I look at the all points and fire hydrant Point groups you’ll see our two points are listed in each group
so which point group stylizes The Point the point group at the top has the priority and sets the style for our points you can check in our properties palette
to see a section called primary Point group you can control the order of the primary Point group look under the prospector and right click on the point groups choose properties and a list shows all of our Point groups if we move all points to the top of the list then our hydrants will be stylized by the All Points group style defaults go ahead and click apply click ok when I click OK you’ll see how the point style switches to the default Styles found within all points back in our Point properties if we go ahead and select our points again we can override these defaults manually at any time
let’s go ahead and add another description key to address our power pole situation let’s go to our description key editor and the way that we do that again is we go to our settings tab we go under point
description key sets and right click and click edit keys we get our Point description key editor right here I’m going to set it right here and first let’s go ahead and add a brand new description key right click on our Oak click new and let’s type in our code of pp which is what we have listed right here let’s change the style of the point itself we want it to look like a power pole so go ahead and check the style select the default
and let’s look for our power pole right here click ok our Point label style let’s keep all that consistent let’s go ahead and have that keep that checked and we’ll select just description
click ok next I’m going to change the format but notice that we aren’t changing the raw description of pp if we exported this point to an ASCII file it would still say PP we’re simply changing the format of how it’s being read visually within the drawing
so instead of going with the raw description of pp I’m going to type in up in enter next let’s go ahead and change the layer click on that box right here and let’s find our layer
V util power structure click ok now we have a brand new description key that we’ve added to our set let’s go ahead and close this down if you remember the way that we apply description keys so we go ahead and click on our Point groups right click on all points and click apply description keys see how the new Styles have been applied and even the label style has been applied so there’s even more power with the description key editor let’s take a look at our small little oak tree remember that problem that we had earlier let’s see if we can scale this point we’re going to apply a rule that the diameter of the tree at the breast height is about a foot of the size of the critical root Zone which is the diameter of the tree notice that our field crew entered a 24 inch diameter we’ll use that along with our ability to scale let’s take a look at this checked box under parameter one this is a zero base collection the way this works is it will read the first piece of text as a number after the code our code is Oak which is zero if we look at our power pole the pp code is zero if we look at the fire hydrant the FH is zero anything after it will be parameter one because there is a space between these two when we add another space to the code it will put that on parameter 2. so know that the number entered after Oak will be parameter one or the second piece of text after the space we’ll use this to apply the scale to x y and z
go ahead and check those boxes so we’ll take the raw description of Oak 24 and reformat that a 24 inch oak makes a little more sense than oak 24. we’re going to take parameter 1. and put a little quotation mark for inches space then parameter 0. let’s go ahead and do that go ahead and click in our format box
and we’ll put in dollar sign for string 1 for our parameter and then put our quotes for inches go ahead and put a space dollar sign for string and then type in 0 because we want our raw code to show up there
then go ahead and hit enter now again the parameter is defined by the dollar sign in each of these cases the dollar sign equals string now if there’s a dollar sign with an asterisk it will simply read the entire string that’s in the Raw description exactly as it is or we can override it completely and say ignore the raw description and we’re going to put in our own so there are three different Avenues here for how we’re changing what they call the full description remember our styling is using this so again the way that we have it set up is that it’s going to read the string of parameter one and then add quotation marks space and then read parameter zero let’s go ahead and close this box again remember how we apply our description keys right click on all points apply description keys now you can see how our oak tree has changed it’s been sized up according to the diameter entered for the tree then the drawing took the values from the raw description and reformatted them to read properly all of this was done by applying description keys now imagine the list of descriptions a survey crew might have this list can be rather lengthy if a standard list of descriptions and codes are set to a specific standard for a company it could automate how these points look this can save time by putting everything on the right layer style and label using description keys you’ll find that most of the data in civil 3D is typically kept within the drawing however you’ll find that we can link data between drawings later survey data can be a separate entity civil 3D handles it by keeping it outside the drawing in what they call a survey database the survey database will collect all of the points collected in the field and convert them to points Line work and figures in your drawing you can find the survey database under the survey tab within the toolspace palette again the survey database is the main area where our project data will be stored this data won’t be stored in the drawing but outside in a separate directory in our project folder take a look at the equipment databases it allows us to adjust the equipment settings as the points are brought in when I right click on the sample database
and say manage equipment database you’ll see settings that are available within the equipment database manager this information includes EDM and where your prism offset is let’s close that down for right now most companies usually have already made adjustments to this and may use other means to translate this equipment databases aren’t used as often in companies using civil 3D in the survey the figure prefix allows us to control how the line work looks when it’s drawn for example what layer it goes on and what style is used when you’re working with a civil 3D object what style will be used and what kind of figure is it there are a few different types of figures horizontal figures that control Line work and figures having 3D control such as a brake line all of this will be stored in the figure prefix database let’s open up a sample one right click and choose manage figure database you’ll see nothing here but you’ll see the columns we’ll be creating or editing the figure prefix database soon but you’ll have the name of the figure which is the point description let’s cancel this as well
the fourth database is called the line work code sets for example when a figure is drawn the drawing needs to know when to start and end a line or perhaps we have a curved line the drawing needs to know the beginning and ending as well as a point on the Curve all of these are controlled within the line work code set right click on the sample and choose properties
you’ll see all of the different coding methods that can be set within the database these databases are not drawing specific and they’re located at a different location in our settings let’s close out of this if you notice as I float over one of these it’ll actually say where they’re located the path of that line code set by default when we create or install Autodesk civil 3D what if we want to set that to another location here are some buttons up at the top that’ll give us some of that control you can choose the button on the far left called survey user settings within the survey user settings you can Define where all of these databases are stored such as the survey database the equipment database Line work and figure defaults once you’ve defined installed or deployed this it can be done per user companies who are actually creating deployments for the software can set this in their deployment and so it’s recommended that you would have this set to some shared location on a network so that you don’t have a different linework code set from the surveyors working next to you let’s take a look at how we can import survey data you can always import points by clicking on the insert tab and you can insert points directly into the drawing using the option to insert points from a file this creates points from an external ASCII file and it Imports them directly into the drawing as opposed to using the database there’s also an option to import points from an external file into the drawing using the import survey data button on the insert tab we’ll be focusing on this method of importing data in order to bring these points into a survey database when I choose this option
it’s going to walk me through a wizard to import the data into the survey database typically anytime you see the word survey in front of the functions in civil 3D chances are you’re working with data in the database remember when we’re editing a survey point we’re adjusting values in the survey database not just the drawing we’re in let’s cancel out of this and create our new local survey database in a different way go ahead and click on the survey tab in your tool space palette and right click on survey databases click set working folder now this will be the directory that will contain our database most databases will have the working folders set to a project directory on a company Network if you put a survey database on your local hard drive it won’t be accessible to others who might be working on the project so for demonstration purposes we’ll be setting our working folder to a directory on my local hard drive click select folder next let’s right click again on the survey database
and select create new local survey database we’re going to name this database civil
3D example
click ok now there’s some survey database settings and some defaults that again are coming into play from the survey user settings here let’s open up the survey database settings and see what we can edit go ahead and right click on our database and choose edit survey database settings
first off notice that the survey database has its own coordinate Zone and system remember we’re not working with a drawing we’re working with the database the database will store everything on its own coordinate system and other values when we import data it’ll handle the translation for you so we’re going to go ahead and set this coordinate system go ahead and click this button and then our project is in Georgia so right under categories click this drop down menu and go to
USA Georgia now the coordinate system is NAD 83 West Zone to the U.S foot so we’ll go ahead and select that here
NAD 83 Georgia State plain West Zone U.S foot then I click ok
when I do that you’ll see that the distance is automatically set to us foot and it’s grayed out because it’s part of this coordinate system if you want you can always leave the coordinate system blank but make sure that the distance is set to U.S foot and again the translation would be fine now there’s a few other values and settings that you can set here and you can choose to create somewhat of a settings template to import or export those settings for future use I’m going to go ahead and click ok so now our survey database is created and ready to have data added to it so let’s go ahead and add some simple data let’s go ahead and right click on our database we’ll open for edit
and then what we want to do is go ahead and click on import events right click and click import survey data now it gives us a little wizard right here and since we’ve already set up our database settings we won’t have to go through this particular side of the wizard so let’s go ahead and click next so now if we look here under the data source type we have several different options you can even import points that are already within the drawing into the survey database but we don’t necessarily need to do that right now let’s uh let’s go ahead and pick Point file
and what we’re going to do is we’re going to pick an external ASCII file and import that into our Wizard and we do that by clicking on the plus and I’ve got this survey data just sitting on my desktop right now so go ahead and click open it’s a text file
now what civil 3D will attempt to do is to determine what the point file format is and right now it has selected easting northing and elevation that’s what the e and z stands for but that’s not exactly the format that this file is in the file that we’re working with is a point number northing easting elevation and description so click this option all the way down at the bottom and you can see a preview of what that looks like
so go ahead and click next the wizard will ask for the survey Networks we’ve already created that within our settings so we’ll go ahead and click next lastly we have our import settings if we scroll down here everything appears to be correct one of the things that I want to do is I want to process the line work during the import go ahead and check that box and it’s on the current Line work code set of sample which is correct and the Civil 3D will also give our import event the text file name so in other words this import event will appear underneath our survey database under import events next I want to look down here we’ve got insert figure objects which is checked on I want to also import survey points that’s very important and then click finish
now you can see the power of that import event if we look within our tool space and we expand this a little bit more you’ll see that civil 3D created an import event for that specific text file we can look under survey points we have all of our points now listed within our database and another way to check to see if our points are within our database or within our drawing you can go into prospector
and if you click on points you’ll see that all of these points are actually locked so when when the points are locked within a drawing that means that it’s connected to a survey database okay so in this lesson we’re going to be assigning user-defined properties to points now in this exercise you’ll use the point groups to associate user-defined properties with points in your drawing this exercise continues from creating a label style that displays a user-defined property and so let’s go about assigning user-defined properties to points if you’re in CAD go to your points Dash 4C drawing which is located in your tutorials folder and then after that go ahead and go over to your tool space and then click on make sure you’re on the prospector tab which is what we’re in right now and then we want to focus on let me see here we want to focus on point groups right here let’s open this portion up a little bit more
okay now you see if I click on points I get a listing of points down here at the bottom and then under Point groups I get a totally different list okay if I open up this classification I get a list right here and what we want to do is in the item View we want to click store manholes right here
and for classification we want to change this to manhole UDP
so after we’ve done that we’re going to apply the user-defined property Point label Style so in the prospector Tree View expand the point groups so we’re going to expand this
click store manholes
if we open this up even further than if we scroll all the way over like so we have our Point label Style if I don’t want it all the way over here I can click and drag this column so that it’s maybe over here So It Isn’t So Far Over and for 307 if I wanted to change this
I could click that cell and I can change the label Style to manhole UDP then click ok
now if I wanted to I could click on 307 again and zoom to and here’s that manual right here see how it lists the invert right here well how about this how about instead of all of this other stuff see all this other stuff that we don’t really need right here we can click right here and we can go down here grid listing we can turn that off we can turn this off longitude latitude scale factor all the stuff that we don’t really need to view at this time and we can just leave it like that so we can kind of keep it a little a little easier to understand here let’s move this a little further over that’s our Point label style column what did it look like before if we click on this cell again and we go back to standard
see how that changes back so if I want to bring that back again click that click on standard again and click on manhole UDP then click ok this references our last exercise from our last video tutorial so if you want to know how to add this user-defined information into this label Style Just revert back to the the previous video or previous exercise within this course okay we’re going to repeat the steps that we just went through and we’re going to change this the style to manhole UDP for point
667.
just like so we’ll zoom in
you can see that’s changed okay now we’re going to specify user-defined property values for 307 we’ll click on that then we’re going to look for the manhole invert cell it’s not listed here let’s see if we can get that to pop up if we right click on our column heading right here and if we scroll down
here we go manhole pipe and invert let’s check that back on
and we scroll over here
yeah there’s a lot of stuff going on this is it right here this is our user defined property right here I’m going to move this over here kind of shift it over remove that well maybe over there
okay uh one more let’s try one more okay that’s better okay so for Point 307 we’ve got that highlighted we’ve got our pipe in invert column listed so we want to actually add an invert elevation for this we’ll change this to 93 0.05 then hit enter and let’s Zoom to that point zoom two zoom out a little bit and there’s our invert elevation right here let’s go to 667. Let’s Zoom to that point
if we zoom out a little bit here let’s scrunch this up a little bit okay here’s our invert listing 667 we scroll over to our manhole where’s it at did it move
let’s just slowly scroll over
and it looks like the column moved that’s a little weird isn’t it okay here it is manhole pipe and invert for 667 which is right here click that and we will type in an elevation of 93. then hit enter and there you have it
okay in this tutorial we’re going to be importing points with user-defined properties in this exercise you’ll create a custom Point file format and then import Point information that includes user-defined properties from an external file such as like a text file or something like that this this exercise continues from assigning user-defined properties to points so we’re going to create a point file format for importing user-defined properties what we’re going to do first is we’re going to open up our points Dash 40 drawing which is located in your tutorials folder
and then we’re going to go into our tool space and then go under our settings tab
now after that we have our point collection right here is our point
if we we can expand this collection right here
and then we’ve got Point file formats go ahead and expand that so you can see what’s going on right here you can see all the different formats right here what these formats mean are northing easting and Z means the uh the elevation and it’s all space delimited for this particular file format with
say for this file format the p means like Point number N means northing e means easting Z means elevation and then d means description so that file format is for text files that you know you you get from a survey crew that they Supply to you in order to import that information into your civil 3D program so what we’re going to do is we’re going to create our own file format right here
and we’re going to do that by right clicking on point file formats and we’re going to create a new one we get our 0.5 formats dialog box we’re going to select user Point file then click ok
and we get our Point file format dialog box
I’m going to enter in some information here
I’m going to type in manhole data
for the comment tag I’m gonna put a hashtag in here
then for format options I’m going to select delimited by
it’s going to be delimited by a comma
and a table of column names we’re going to click the First Column heading right here
and we get our 0.5 formats select column name dialog box
and it says select the name of the column from the list of available names if the column contains data that’s not used choose unused okay so if we click this drop down we’re going to select Point number then we’re going to click ok we’re going to repeat this we’re going to go to column number two that’s unused for column name we’re going to select this and we’re going to select manhole material
then we’re going to click ok
so you can see
how that’s coming along then the next one select that click this drop down
and we’re going to go down we’re going to select manhole pipe in invert
then we’re going to click ok
next is going to be the manhole diameter I’m sorry the manhole in diameter
select that click ok select the next one this one is going to be pipe in material
click OK let me expand this so you can see a little bit more of what’s going on here
pipe in pipe in diameter material
okay now it’s time for
pipe out pipe out invert right here
click ok
here’s the next one manhole pipe out diameter is the next one
and then last is going to be manhole pipe out material
right there so you see after we’ve as we’re going through the list of all all of these different I guess uh user-defined properties they’re all being taken out of this list
manhole pipe out material was the last one do we have one that was
manhole diameter did we list that
no we didn’t list that okay we’ll do this
yeah we’re missing one manhole diameter let’s put it right here
see that right there click ok and I’m going to move this right [Music]
here okay see how I did that you can move the columns by clicking on it and putting it over here there we go okay then we click ok
we’re going to import user-defined Property Data from a text file in the tool space we’re going to go to our prospector tab and we’re going to ensure that our Point groups is expanded and we’re going to select the storm manholes group right here if I hover over this you’ll see that it says that this item contains nine sub items so nine points of data some of the data columns are blank
if I expand this I look around here yeah we can see some of the data right here we’ve got our we’ve got our Point number we’ve got our easting northing elevation raw description full description description format and we got some extra information right here and we’ve got all of this stuff
some of that stuff is missing
see how the manhole material information is missing right here okay so in the tool space under the prospector tab we’re going to go click on points we’re going to right click and select create
then we’re going to select this button right here to import points we’ve got our import points dialog box if we scroll down under the point file format
we’ve got our manhole data that we just created so if we select that and then we press the Plus if I go up one level within my civil tutorials I’ve got my manhole data a text file this is what we got from the field crew click open then we have all of our information let’s make this a little bit larger here see all this data we’ve got the manhole material which is concrete we’ve got the manhole diameter which is 48 we’ve got all of this extra information that we can import now we’re going to go ahead and click ok
then we get the duplicate Point number dialog box sometimes this happens for the resolution what we’re going to do is we’re going to merge
then click OK and we’re going to apply this to all duplicate Point numbers
so the point data has been imported I’m going to close this now go into your prospector tab again within your tool space and click on the manholes point group and let’s see the information there it is remember how before we didn’t have the manhole material now we’ve got concrete listed right here we’ve got our manhole diameter we’ve got a lot of that information that we were missing before
that’s all been imported into our drawing so that’s how that works in this lesson we’re going to be querying user-defined property information which will create a point group the list of points included in the group is determined by a query that contains user-defined properties this exercise continues from importing points with user-defined properties so let’s go ahead and create a point query go ahead and open up your points Dash 4E drawing which is located in your tutorials folder next go ahead and go into your tool space and then into your prospector tab and you’ll notice that if we click on point groups and right click we can go ahead and select new we’re going to create a brand new Point group we get our Point group dialog box we’re going to rename this we’re going to call this storm
manholes
invert in on the query Builder tab we’ll select that we’re going to check to modify our query then we’re going to right click in this area right here within our our table area and we’re going to insert a row now for the property we’re going to select a user defined property click the drop down and select manhole in invert okay and then for the operator we are going to go with less than after that the value double click on the cell right here we’re going to type in 93. an invert of 93 then click apply whoa what just happened I’ve got all of these ground shots showing up within this point group I must have done something wrong well let’s check it out let’s see if we click on points and we open this up a little bit more
we’ve got our entire list of points here we’ve got everything okay including our ground shots now if we scroll all the way over to our manhole in invert should show up as a column here it is see right here manhole pipe in invert it looks like the query did it right every single shot it looks like we have a zero elevation listed for every single one of these points so our query is doing things properly if we really wanted to get interesting right click select properties let’s just say we don’t want to include those ground shots let’s go into our query Builder uncheck this modify query go to include and we’re going to include raw descriptions matching manhole actually let me cancel out of this let me make sure I’m doing this right if we go under storm manholes right click go under properties
going to include I’m going to copy this description right here Ctrl C
cancel out of this go back into our Point group click properties
make sure our modify query is turned off go into include click the check box with raw descriptions matching click this area then paste that information then go into the query Builder and we’re going to select this modify query check box again but in this query this is including now the raw description of our manhole if we right click select insert row we’re going to select this property select manhole pipe invert again pipe in invert again then select an operator of less than and a value of 93. and hit enter now this is very important don’t be sure that you don’t miss this step make sure that you set the operator with this drop down and select and then click apply this should get rid of all of our ground shots and only include are manholes click apply then click ok
then type R E A excuse me Rea to regen all voila so it looks like after we applied that if we go into our Point group select that you can see how we now have only four different store manholes that have a pipe in invert elevation of less than 93. so that’s how you go about querying user-defined property information in civil 3D so in this lesson we’re going to be learning about creating a label style that displays a user defined property in the last exercise we went over creating user defined properties but but in this exercise you’ll create a label style that displays user-defined property information for a point okay we’re going to be creating a label style that displays again a user-defined property information and it uses the drawing from points Dash 4B which is located in your tutorials folder for those that are subscribers so when you open this up we have all of these points a lot of these points are for the pond and we’ve got some storm manhole points here as well
but once we’ve opened up the points Dash 4B drawing you can go ahead and go into your tool space which is right here and then go into the settings tab okay now what we’re going to do is under point we’re going to expand that
we have label styles go ahead and expand that we’re going to click on standard right click and select copy
we get our label style composer dialog box and you can see we’ve got standard listed right here but we also have in these little brackets we’ve got a copy since we’re dealing with a copy we’re going to change the name to manhole UDP then after that we’re going to go into our layout tab see we’ve got a preview listed right here to show what we’re going to be dealing with whenever we make our changes okay and over here we want to make sure that we’re on Point label Style and not on point Style so be sure you’re on that so now any edits that you make to the point label style will be displayed in the preview pane what we’re going to do now is we’re going to click
this button right here to create a text component this is a text component for our label and see already we’re getting something going on right here in our preview okay and our component editor right here for the name we’re going to call this invert in
for our anchor component we’re going to change this to point description then for Anchor Point
we’re going to Anchor this to the bottom left and then for the text attachment we’re going to change this
to top left and you can see all of these changes being reflected in our preview pane now under text for contents we’re going to change this
we’re going to highlight this portion right here which is our text
we’ve got our text component editor our dialog box on the properties tab properties we’re going to go to manhole which correlates or corresponds to our name which is invert in that’s our pipe in invert then for precision we’re going to change this to two decimal places
then we’re gonna this is very important again make sure that once you’ve made all of these changes click this Arrow right here to activate that puts it into the preview pane then what we’re going to do is we’re going to click in front of this click in front of our code and we’re going to type in vert in colon and space
then after that click ok and you can see how that changes actually if I wanted to I can click my middle wheel and I can
Zoom real time in and out or if I hold down on the middle click wheel I can pan so you can see what’s going on in this preview window and that’s how you go about creating a label style that displays a user-defined property click ok that’s it folks
