An InRoads user asked for Mark's thoughts on this question :

Good Morning Mark,

I hope this email finds you well. Is there a website that we can access to search this wonderful knowledge that you have been sending to us through the Zen Illumination series? In the tech tip entitled Contour Smoothing (Zen Illuminations #87), I see that you were able to display elevation point labels at 45 degrees next to the node of each random shot. Do you have a tech tip covering the subject of labeling points?

Thanks

The G-Man  

Here is the Zen Dude's response:

Hello my Friend!!!

Sorry it took so long to reply, I was working on something that I didn't want to pull myself away from.

To answer your first question, once our new website is up, which will be soon, we will have a Knowledge Center where you will have access to our complete library of tech tips and newsletters as well as other downloads such as the sample job that goes with our books, erratas, training PDFs, videos, etc. This is something we had on our very first website but this new Knowledge Center will be an expanded version of that.

As for your technical question, I didn't have a technical tip on this so I created one especially for you!! 

When placing the Design & Existing Text on any grading grid or other location you will use either the InRoads > View Surface > Single Point > Surface Elevation tool or the InRoads > View Surface > Surface Elevations

The key to getting what you want is the configuration of the Preference. I generally set up a bunch of different Preferences that I use in varying combinations to get the display I want in the drawing.

Here are a couple variants that you can set up:

Advanced Tab:

Main Tab:

Elevation Symbology for the text:

Point Symbology:

The proposed text would be the same settings but the Advanced tab parenthesis would be removed. This would be saved as a different Preference.

If you wanted to get fancier and use a leader instead of the '+' where the point is located, you would do that with a Cell because InRoads doesn't have a way in this command to do that automatically.

And use the Cell for the Symbology Point instead of the '+'.

This would look like:

Now with this option you have to start considering the text Justification and Offsets on theSymbology for the Text to get it below the leader Cell.

Now, to really get fancy, you could apply this command twice - once to draw the leader and Existing grade (below the leader), and once to draw the Design grade (above the leader). This would take two Preferences, one for the existing grade and leader, and then another for just the design grade.

Keep in mind the subject of scales would all have to be considered for the Text, the Symbolor Cell and this would play into the InRoads Global Scale Factors as well as the MicroStation Annotation Scaling if you are using that.

These might be some basic Preference, based on the earlier work shown here.

• Z - (Ex 45 Deg) - Used to place a tick and existing elevation in parenthesis from the existing DTM at a 45 degree angle for a particular drawing scale.
• Z - (Ex 45 Deg) w/ Leader - Used to place a leader and existing elevation in parenthesis below the leader from the existing DTM at a 45 degree angle for a particular drawing scale.
• Z - Prop 45 Deg - To be used with Z - (Ex 45 Deg) w/ Leader to place the design elevation above the leader from the design DTM at a 45 degree angle for a particular drawing scale.

And of course you'll come up with many more of your own after doing these, but they will be based on what you need to get on your drawings that are compliant with your standards.

A potential workflow for placing single spot elevations could be:

1)      You have some edge of pavement, or sawcut line, or whatever that requires the Existing and Design elevations.

2)      Go into to command and set the Surface to the Existing DTM

3)      Load the Preference called Z - (Ex 45 Deg) w/ Leader

4)      Apply the command and snap to the location of the spot elevation. Continue doing any other grading locations along your MicroStation feature or grading grid.

5)      Set the Surface to the Design DTM

6)      Load the Preference called Z - Prop 45 Deg

7)      Apply the command and snap to the location of the spot elevation. Continue doing any other grading locations along your MicroStation feature or grading grid.

Enjoy!!!!

Civilly yours,  

-zen