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posted 07/05/07 by Nick Zeeben Cross Sections Part 2

First things first. When I wrote the original post I did the text on my plane ride back from Europe and didnt bother to look up spelling in our corporate directory. I should have, becuase I spelled Joerg's name wrong. So now that I have that correct it is actually spelled Jörg in German. Jörg also wante d to make sure I passed along some credit to Chakri Gavini one of our product designers based in Manchester, so I will tick that off the list as well.


And now to the show. Last time I showed a couple of screen caps of some creative cross section labeling to avoid band clutter. Today as promised I will attempt to breakdown just what makes this tick.

I took the existing band style with all of the overlapping offsets, copied it and promptly turned off all the labels. Now you are probably asking why is he turning off labels, that is what we are after, now this is a true statement, but we are going to use DIFFERENT labels to accomplish this task. All we need is an empty band space in which to insert our shiny new labels.

Next step, code set styles. I know, I know, you already spent months learning what these do and finally have cross sections looking how you would like. We need to add at least 3 custom codes to the markers section. See the screen shot below.Insert screen of adding left, right and straight.



Still no labels, but we are getting close I promise. We need some custom Marker label styles for our new codes. I named mine to match the custom codes, so I have 2 marker label styles: Left and Straight. The key to these label styles is the new attachment point option that was added in 2008. Bottom of section view, because I know where my band falls below the section, and how tall my band is I am able to draw a line in the band projected down from the points on my design.



Now the left style is just a little fancier adding in an angled segment to provide me some clearance to the labels next door.
Centering these labels in the band is another trick. I create a line component, with an x offset that matches the change in x of the angled portion, I then set visible to false. I then simply attach the band text to the middle of this hidden line.

So voila, you have flexible band labeling. The example Jörg created had two different angles to allow for a single stretch and a double; I am only giving you a left and straight style. I can’t do all the work for you.

But wait, you still don’t see any labels do you? I know I said we were getting close, maybe I lied, and good things don’t come free or easy so hang with me.

So earlier we added custom codes to our code set style, take you shiny and new marker label styles and assign them as appropriate to your custom codes.

Last stop I promise. How do you add custom codes at specific locations on your corridor assemblies? The answer my friends is Marked Points. Simply take the marked point sub-assembly, type in which ever code is appropriate. See the annotated image below for how I labeled mine.

That’s it that’s all. Hope you liked it, go grab the style here if you didn’t the first time. Due to the nature of this one it will certainly require some edits to fit with the styles you have defined but it should give you a good start.

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