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[Mentor Software FAQs]

How can I get vertical graticule labels in my AutoCAD drawing?

Recently, we have had several requests for this. I will be looking at adding some features to Hawkeye to enable this for both graticules and tic marks. Since there are so many different preferences in this area, it may be difficult to provide something which will keep everyone happy. The following describes a technique which can be used with the current Hawkeye for both graticules and tic marks. It should enable you to precisely label either in any way you desire.

Create a block which has two attributes in it, one for the latitude and one for the longitude. Obviously, you can have a single attribute, and include some graphics if you so choose.

Note that to use this with a polyline graticule, you will want to offset the location of the attributes so that the label will not appear directly on top of the graticule line.

When defining the attributes, activate the Preset option to disable the prompt for a value when the block is inserted.

When defining the attributes, arrange for the text styles to produce labels exactly as you want then to appear. In this specific case, for example, you would arrange for the latitude label to be vertical text and the longitude label to be horizontal text.

Use the Graticule | Block menu entry insert command to insert this block as desired. Be sure not to use the explode option, as this will essentially disable the attributes.

The Apply Convergence option can be used to obtain text rotated to match the orientation of latitude and longitude lines at each specific location. Try it, you might like it.

Use the Edit | Attribute Replace command to replace the actual text of each attribute with the latitude and longitude values of the insertion point of the block. Note, that the text inserted into the attribute by this command is controlled by your pictures. To get just a degree minute label, for example, you could set your latitude formatting picture to "DD MM" and your longitude picture to "^DDD MM"

This technique will also work with tic marks. In this case, however, there are some complications due to the fact that tics usually only label one dimension (i.e. latitude or longitude, but not both).

You will probably need to have two different tic mark blocks, one for latitude and one for longitude.

If your boundary is a single polyline, you will probably need to break it into separate segments. That is, segments which are to be tic’ed with the latitude block, and segments which are to be tic’ed with the longitude block. Of course, these segments could be just temporary additions deleted after the tic marks and labels have been placed.

 

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Mentor Software, Inc.
2221 East St. Suite 203
Golden, CO 80401
303-278-3534 X100
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