Specify point parameters

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In this video, we're going to outline the different point parameters inside of the Point Creation toolbar,

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as well as dive into the points that we've already created and modify some of those point parameters.

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Specifically, we're going to talk about point identity, default layer, default style, and default name format.

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We'll first talk about the different point parameters inside of the Point Creation toolbar.

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We need to open the Point Creation toolbar, which is under the Create Ground Data, Points dropdown, point creation tools.

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In the Point Creation toolbar, on the far right hand side, there is an expanded arrow for more of the point parameters.

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So inside of these point parameters, these are defaults that we can change to modify how the points are displayed once we create them.

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If it's already created, these changes will not affect the points that are already in the drawing,

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it's only changes to points that are going to be created in the drawing.

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We're going to go down from the top-down and talk about these different parameters.

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So under default layer, you can choose what you want the default layer for your points to be.

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So the points that we've created already are on V-NODE.

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If you wanted to change the point layer, then you could hit the ellipses afterwards,

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and then choose the layer that you want to have your points created on moving forward.

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Underneath default layer is the points creation method and different parameters that are associated with how you create the points.

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So what the local coordinates you're going to need, northing/easting versus easting/northing or X and Y or Y and X.

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You have grid coordinates, it's just going to flock grid northing/easting, either northing/easting or easting/northing.

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Same thing with geographic coordinates, latitude/longitude or longitude/latitude.

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When you're creating a point, Civil 3D prompts you for certain entities.

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When we created our points, it prompted us for the elevation and the description.

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And the reason for that is because you had a prompt for elevation set as manual in these parameters.

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And we had a prompt for description set as manual.

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We had a none for point names, that's why we were never asked for a point name when we created our original points.

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Inside of this, you can have an automatic creation or a none selection.

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We'll go into what an automatic creation would do in another parameter further down on the list.

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So after you have your prompts, you have your defaults for your prompts, which are default elevation was set at 0.

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So when we select to create a point and it prompts us for an elevation, then the default elevation that is going to give us an option for 0.

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Our default description, we don't have anything put in and that's why we had to choose CALC,

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and then it retains what your last description was or what your last parameter was.

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Moving down from there, we have match on description parameters.

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Inside of a description, you can have certain parameters that are spaced out.

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After your initial description, you have your first parameter, your second parameter, and so on and so forth.

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If you have it set to true, then inside of description key sets, which we haven't discussed yet,

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but we will later in depth, you can have the parameters control how your point scale or how they're displayed.

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And this would choose whether or not you can match those description parameters or whether you choose to ignore those.

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And if you choose to ignore means set it to false.

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Disabling description keys, if you want to force some of the selections that we have down below,

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you would set your disable descriptions keys set to true and it would ignore any description keys that we have inside of this drawing.

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We haven't talked about description keys yet, but we will in future videos. So, for now, we're going to leave it as false.

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And then echo coordinates to the command line, after you create a point, you will see those coordinates,

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northings and eastings or whatever you have set as your local grid or geographic coordinates, will show up inside of the command line up here.

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So moving on from here, we have our default style.

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So if you had set your disable description keys to true, then when you create a point, then it would accept its point style and point label style.

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In here, these are set as grid out and that's because we have this set to false.

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If we had this set to true, you'll notice these become ungrid and you can choose them.

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Moving down from there, we have our default name for that.

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Since we had under the points creation method, prompt for point name as none, it ignored our point names.

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If we had chose automatic, then it would come down here and it would use these point name templates for how to create the name for those points.

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And you can go in here and you can modify these and choose what you want the name to be.

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And you can also set the counter, starting numbers and increment values.

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And then from there, you have your point identity.

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And your point identity is inside of these points, if you look at the set point, the point number over here is the point identity.

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And so what we have here is the point identity is telling us what the next point number is that we're going to create.

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So if we created a point, that point would be created as point number 5.

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You can choose to use sequential numbering, if you set it to false,

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then every time you create a point, it's going to ask you for what point number you want to use.

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If you leave it as true, it will use this point number offset to choose what the next point number is going to be.

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So if we create a point 5 and then point number offset of 1 will say that the next point after 5 should be 6.

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You can also do sequencing numbers from set number points.

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And if point numbers are supplied, say, you were doing an import, then it will choose to use those numbers that are supplied.

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So you can leave it as false and not force names, or you can set it to true and force names based on the imports.

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If point numbers already exist, what will happen?

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It will notify you, it will renumber them, it will merge the points, or it will overwrite points.

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Same thing if point names already exist, it will notify you, it will use a name template or it will use a counter.

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And then if point numbers need to be assigned, then it will use the next point number or it will sequence from,

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and that's when you use your sequence point numbers.

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When we created our points, we didn't set any of these parameters, so I know that I want to change these point parameters.

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I would have preferred to start my point identities because these are calc points,

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I don't want to have them on the lower numbers that would come in from a survey,

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I want to set them on a higher number that's something that I'm not going to have overwritten when I do a survey import.

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So what I'm going to go ahead and do is I'm going to jump into these points and I'm going to edit them.

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I'm going to go in here and I'm going to right click on the Point and I'm going to click on Edit Points.

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And inside of this Panorama window, you'll see we have our point identity, which is the number.

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We have our eastings, our northings, our elevations, our names, and our raw descriptions,

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which are all things that can be set when you're creating the points or can be forced from your point parameters.

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Same thing with style and point label style.

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We had it set as use description key sets, so it did not force a style or a point label style.

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And then we have our point layer.

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So I'm going to jump back over to the left hand side for our point numbers.

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I want to have my points be 1 through 4 actually be 3001 through 3004,

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so I'm going to go ahead and select 1 and click on it and change it to 3001 and do that for the rest of the points.