Contour style help, I want an option of sign positive '+' instead of the sign neg

[MMACrypt]

First off, very new to Civil and autocad in general. I'm doing hydrographic surveying and our default standard is for numbers that are below sea level or MLLW we post values with no sign. so a "20" means 20' under water. For stuff above water, it would look like "+20". Well, we have styles for all out point files to make this work but for our contour lines, we do not. There is a default option of "sign negative '-'" which is completely the oppisite of what I want. I need a "sign positive '+'" option. There is also a "sign always (+-) option which is what we might be stuck with, however, USACE doesn't like that. Again, I'm really new to this. I played around with a few thing, tried changing to

hoping that n=negative and a p=positive might fix it. Nope, not the case. Again, please dummy down any possible solutions. I'm pretty sure we could just edit it but these values do change as they are building stuff and would like to keep the dynamic aspect of it still working.

 

Thanks guys and hope I didn't make it too hard to follow.

 

Brian

[BlackBox]

First, welcome to CADTutor!

 

As to your question of how to modify the Contour Label Style to format each elevation as "+", that's pretty simple.

 

Toolspace Palette, Settings tab, Surface node, Label Styles node, Contour node, Right Click the desired Style, and select "Edit..."

 

From the Label Style Composer dialog, select the Layout tab, then with the 'Surface Elevation' Component Name set current, select the ellipse "..." to the right of the Text Contents (to modify the Expression), and in the right pane (where the Expression is), simply Left Click at the front (the left) of the Expression, and enter a plus sign "+", then hit OK, and OK again.

 

Here's the original Expression you posted above:

 

<[surface Elevation(Uft|P0|RN|AP|Sn|OF)]>

... And here's the revised Expression:

 

[color=red][b]+[/b][/color]<[surface Elevation(Uft|P0|RN|AP|Sn|OF)]>

... Lemon squeezy.

 

HTH

[MMACrypt]

Thank you, giving it a try is just a second.

[MMACrypt]

That did give me a + in front of my positive elevations but it also added a + in front of my negative elevations.

 

I need the negatives which are to the right to have no sign. if you look at the red numbers, it needs to match that. No sign means it under water.

[MMACrypt]

I have found a solution but it's really not something we want to do. We could create 2 surfaces and just have a positive surface and a negative surface, then have 2 different label styles to each one. Again, this would work but it's really a lot more work than we want to do since we are doing lots of hydro surveys and we want this part of it to be as quick as possible.

[BlackBox]

I see now; in my limited test my data set filters out

 

The two surface model would work; but I get that you want for a single style to handle both conditions. I'll see what I can find and post back.

[SLW210]

I moved your thread to the Civil 3D & LDD forum.

[BlackBox]

Simple solution.

 

Edit your Contour Label Style... From the Label Style Composer dialog, Layout tab, 'Surface Elevation' Component, Edit the Text Contents... Select everything in the right pane (the Expression), and Delete. Then in the left pane, Properties tab, scroll down to Sign, and change from "sign negative (-)" to "sign always (+-)" and then hit the right arrow button to add the new Expression, and save your work.

 

The new Expression looks like this:

 

<[surface Elevation(Uft|P3|RN|AP|GC|UN|Sa|OF)]>

[MMACrypt]

Sorry but I actually need no sign for negatives. In the hydro world of things, no sign means negative. Don't ask me why, it's just backwards from the rest of the world. if you look at the red number from the pic above, you will see numbers with no sign, that's actually underwater or what we call MLLW for that area. It gets really confusing at times and clearly not the norm at all, if it was even close, they would have a Sign Positive (+) option in addition to the Sign Negative (-) option.

 

Example of what I want/need it to look like.

[MMACrypt]

I went ahead and submitted it with the neg before the under water stuff and no sign above. I told them I was still looking for a solution so if anybody has any other thoughts, please list them I'll give them a try. Thanks guys.

[Bill_Myron]

I have seen this done before.

 

We are going to disply the "+" sign using text. It sounds wild, but it does work.

 

Find out what text height would work. (The thickness of the + sign line.) It will be fairly small.

 

Creat an custom expression.

What we will use this for is to determine if the text that we use in the "plus sign" will be shown.

 

 [size=1]IF({Surface Elevation}<0,0.000000000000000000000000001,*TEXT HEIGHT*)[/size]

 

This expression basically says that if the surface elevation is less than zero, than it will produce that tiny number. If it is higher than 0, it will display the text that will make up the plus sign.

 

In the contour label editor, you will add 2 new text components. These will make your "plus sign". (I would use a series of "I"'s or something like that. In the text height box, select our expression we made.

 

Now go and test it out. The negative numbers will still ahve that "plus sign" but it will be soooooo smal that you will never notice it.

 

I hope all of that made sense!

[MMACrypt]

Thank you Bill, I will have to give this a shot.