Displaying points in Civil 3D
One of the more confusing aspects of working with points in Civil 3D is getting them to display how you want them to. This gets even more confusing when adding in Description keys and Point Groups. When a point gets created in Civil 3D a point style and point label style get assigned to the point. This can be directly to the point through default styles/ description keys, or through point groups.
A quick note about default styles. Default styles are only used when the “Disable Description keys is set to TRUE in the create points dialog box. If this is left to the default False, Civil 3D will search through the Description Keys first, when no match is found, no style will be assigned to the point and Civil 3D will move on to the top level point group that contains the points.
Now for how point and label styles are displayed in the drawing. There is a hierarchy for point assignment and display:
- If a point style is set in the Point Group and the Override setting is turned on, then this is the style that will be used.
- If not; if the point itself has a style applied to it, then this is the style that will be used.
- If neither of the above are true it will use the style that is assigned to the point group.
Let’s have a look at an example:
In the drawing there are a two point groups, the default _All Points, with Basic and Elevation and Description styles, and Shrubs. Shrubs has it’s point style set to Shrub – 1.5m and Point Label Style set to Description Only. Included in the point group are points that have a description of *SHR
The default styles are set to Iron Pin and Elevation Only.
For the first point the following parameters will be used:
- No Description keys created
- Disable Description Keys set to True
- Shrub description
The point will use get placed in both point groups but use the default point and style labels. In this case the styles also get assigned to the point itself.
For the second point the following parameters will be used:
- No Description keys created
- Disable Description Keys set to False
- Shrub description
The point will use get placed in both point groups and use the point and style labels from the top most Point Group. In this case the Shrubs Point Group. No styles get assigned to the point itself.
For the third point the following parameters will be used:
- No Description keys created
- Disable Description Keys set to False
- Shrubs 3 description
- Hydrant and Description Only styles applied to the point.
The point will use get placed in both point groups and use the point and style labels that have been applied to the point itself.
For the fourth point the following parameters will be used:
- Description key created using Guy Pole and Description styles.
- Disable Description Keys set to False
- Shrubs 4 description
We now have a description key created which is controlling the styles of the point and the styles are being applied directly to the point. Even though the point is being placed in a point group, because the Override is turned off, it will use the styles from the description keys.
Point groups can be used to control the display of points, ie: the top point group controls the styles of points for all of the points contained in it. When the overrides check boxes are turned off, this ONLY applies to the example of the second point placed above.
When the Overrides are tuned on, the point group will control the styles of the points contained in that group, regardless of whether the style was assigned a with a different method.
As you can see, there are many different ways to get points to display, individual or a combination of methods can be used to get points to display how you want.
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