Editing Alignment Labels

Working with alignment labels is a bit different than working with other labels because alignment labels exist in groups. If you click a major station label, for example, all of the major station labels for the entire alignment will be selected. So, what if you want to change something about just one label? The answer is to use your Ctrl key when selecting individual labels within a group.

Tips:This Ctrl key trick works for many types of labels that exist in groups.

Another type of label edit which you’ll be introduced to in this section is flipping. Flipping a label simply means switching it over to the other side of the line.

To practice making edits to alignment labels, complete the following steps:

The Exercise File can be downloaded at the end of the article  

1. Open the drawing named Editing Alignment Labels.dwg located in the Chapter 06 class data folder.

   Tips:Notice that the right-of-way line is passing through the geometry point labels. These labels should be moved beyond the right-of-way line, which you will do in the next few steps.


2. Click one of the geometry point labels on the Jordan Court alignment. Then click Edit Label Group on the contextual ribbon tab that appears.
3. Click in the Style column to the right of Geometry Points. Select Perpendicular With Tick And Line – Offset and click OK.
4. Click OK to dismiss the Alignment Labels dialog box. The labels are now shown outside the right-of-way line (see Figure 6.5).

   Figure 6.5  Changing the style of the geometry point labels improves their appearance and readability by moving them outside the right-of-way line.


5. While holding your Ctrl key down, click the first PC label and then click Flip Label on the ribbon. The label is flipped to the opposite side of the road.
6. Zoom to the intersection of Madison Lane and Jordan Court. Note how the 0+00 (0+000) station label for Madison Lane is conflicting with the centerline of Jordan Court.
7. Click the 0+00 (0+000) station label of Madison Lane, and then click the square grip that appears above the label. Drag the grip to a clear area in the drawing. The station label is more readable in its new location, and a leader appears that indicates the actual location of the station.

Dragged State

In step 7, when you used a special grip on a label to drag it to a new location, a leader magically appeared. This happened because the leader was turned on within the dragged state configuration of the label style. The dragged state of a label can dramatically change the look of that label when it’s dragged to a new location. In addition to the appearance of a leader, you might see a change in text height or orientation, the appearance of a border around the text, and several other changes.

A Note about Units

Throughout this section, you’ll notice that two values are provided for units of measurement. The first value is provided for the imperial system that is used in the United States, and the second value, in parentheses, is provided for the metric system that is used in many other countries. These values most often represent imperial feet and metric meters. It is important to note that, generally, only the numeric values are entered in the software, not terms like feet or meters. Also, you should know that the two numbers provided are not necessarily equal. In most cases, they are similar values that are rounded to work efficiently in their respective measurement systems.

Applying Alignment Labels and Label Sets

• Applying Labels to Alignments
• Using Alignment Label Sets
• Editing Alignment Labels

Download Exercise File :

• Applying Alignment - Metric     --- ( 2.67 MB )
• Applying Alignment - Imperial  --- ( 3.15 MB )