Personally I label my alignments as so:
Road 1 Ali
Road 1 Ali Lab
Road 2 Ali
Road 2 Ali Lab…
Road 123 Ali
Road 123 Ali Lab (yes I really do have jobs with this many alignments, but usually my jobs consist of 10-30 alignments)
I prefer to create a separate layer for my alignment labels because they aren’t really that useful to me at my computer but to the guys in the field using the data on a ‘site’ model they are invaluable. And with so many alignments it makes selecting a specific alignment’s labels for a design difficult without separating them by layer.
With the current TBC provided tool I have to enter the new layer up to 8 times, when there should be an option to auto populate the additional layer fields after the first selection. I suppose I could allow them to default to layer 0 and then use advance select to newly created labels and apply them to a new layer; however, if I did that way I wouldn’t be able to refresh the labels using the tool.
Agree! We had a job with 21+ phases and this was a pain. Some of the phases overlapped, so you couldn’t put everything on the same layer.
This could be implement better, even by just allowing for a prefix or suffix.
It is an every project item for me, and all it really has to be is a check box to apply same layer to other fields. Truthfully, Trimble should do it…
If they would had a turn off/on alignment label. That would work for me. Select alignment-properties and turn off/on label. I know this is not what your after. Making a project template with a long list of layers helps and setting top layer as the default layer for the alignment label.
For my usual 1-3-4 alignment, I have two layers for my labels. One for the main Hal and the other for side streets and now I’ve added one for driveways. I add alignment label and default already set to main Hal. And for the side street, layer is just a scroll down on layer list.
That is there Frank - project explorer - alignment - labels - properties - set to show empty - that already works. Each alignment ilabel set is controlled separately that way.
It was done this way to avoid having dozens of layers just for alignment labels
I put the alignment labels all on one layer so I can turn them on and off and then I turn off individual label sets using this switch.
Failing that , when you create the labels make a selection set out of them and then in the View Filter you can turn Selectionnsets on and off also as a third method eg if you want groups of labels for a set of alignments for example.
This is pretty flexible as an approach and saves having to have a lot of extra layers in a project.
I think that navigating labels this way is quicker overall than having all of them on different layers and or in different layer groups with the overhead that brings navigating long layer lists and long group lists got all the other working that goes on in a project.
I would look to have the label set be selectable graphically so I could faster get at the properties so I could faster turn them off- but like any object once they are off you have to have another way to get at them to turn them back on again - hence the Project Explorer need.
A label set manager that could be opened up that shows the alignment list and has a labels on and off function would I think be helpful here. Then layers are not necessary to separate them at all. This could also create them using the default project settings if they don’t exist yet.