Problems with text overlapping

[Costinbos77]

Hi there,

 

When reporting in Autocad, a file with points of the form: name, north, east, height, code, ... etc.

if distances between points are small, texts name and height point, overlap. How to detect and how to avoid these overlaps.

 

Edited February 24, 2013 by Costinbos77

[notview]

Select all the text and change the text height into smaller..

[Costinbos77]

This is not a solution, I need to be writing with specific height.

Edited February 24, 2013 by Costinbos77

[MSasu]

You may try to write a routine to check for those overlaps and adjust the labels alignment accordingly - check the TEXTBOX function for this. Also, I know that Lee Mac had a nice assortment of functions for intersections between items, so may try to adapt one of those.

[Organic]

I've searched previously for solutions to this exact problem and was never able to find one that does even a half decent job. I find it just has to be done manually by someone (which might take 2 days if you have 3000 points with annotation etc). Make sure you try to configure your survey/civil software output as much as you can to reduce the workload of the drafter who has to tidy up the output so the text entities do not overlap.

[BIGAL]

This problem is not new I wont say how old I am but 30+ years doing this, if its out of CIV3d then you can only play with the limitation of the point styles do you really need to display all the info ? You can rotate a single points label this may help but is still manual I may write a change pt label angle by picking multi pts I figured out how on another post but the original author stopped asking for help so I stopped also.

[miha]

Hello,

has anyone already solved the problem?

[Costinbos77]

We can ask BigAl to share his starting idea and to continue from there .

 

My idea is to :

1. arrange the points list by E or N:  E1 < E2 < ... < En ;

2. calculate the distance between closest points and if it is smaller then text dimension , then rotate the last one with 180° , or change the justify of text .

But is maybe 50% right , after 1 iteration . 

 

Maybe after few iterations , will be better .

 

See what 'Organic' said .

 

I am using a manual tool to move / arrange the texts / attributes around the point  and if it is necessary , to make the attributes invisible .

 

Edited February 10, 2020 by Costinbos77

[BIGAL]

The term fuzzy logic comes into play, some software does this but not Civ3D, the problem is you move or rotate 1 then it hits another, so need idea 3 and go to leader moving away, like constinboss77 for years have just lived with it and played with the text when needed. It is not just points and hts etc but station control tbms etc set to readable and see what happens when between a layout and the next rotate ucs 90, so roads plotted horizontal on every sheet, had to find an average spot so could read on say 2 layouts.

[Costinbos77]

Yes , at the end is not really a problem . 

1. Leader solution can be considered if it is enough space around to play ;

 

2. or , if it is really to busy , hide the text and keep the point symbol ;

But , I am doing this only in manual way  (point by point ) . Unfortunately , not all the tasks can be solved automatically . 

 

The problem is the scale of points is not correlated with the density of survey , because usually , the distance on the paper at any scale between 2 point is  20 mm .

And in this example , this rule was omitted . 

 

But , i don't know if 'miha' is asking exactly for this problem or a general overlay  between texts on a drawing .

 

Edited February 11, 2020 by Costinbos77

[ronjonp]

@Costinbos77 Post a sample drawing.

[Costinbos77]

Hi  ronjonp ,

see the attached dwg file .

Points AutoCAD 2000.dwg

[hosneyalaa]

HI

Try this LISP

 

;;; https://www.cadtutor.net/forum/topic/69621-replace-user-specified-value-in-any-attribute-with-lisp/
(vl-load-com)

;; Get Attribute Values  -  Lee Mac
;; Returns an association list of attributes present in the supplied block.
;; blk - [ent] Block (Insert) Entity Name
;; Returns: [lst] Association list of ((<tag> . <value>) ... )
;; http://www.lee-mac.com/attributefunctions.html#algetattributevaluerc
(defun LM:getattributevalues ( blk / enx )
    (if (and (setq blk (entnext blk)) (= "ATTRIB" (cdr (assoc 0 (setq enx (entget blk))))))
        (cons
            (cons
                (cdr (assoc 2 enx))
                (cdr (assoc 1 (reverse enx)))
            )
            (LM:getattributevalues blk)
        )
    )
)

(defun c:test ( / from to ss i atts blk a tag val newval)
   ;;(setq from "AZERTY")
  ;;(setq to "QUERTY")
  (setq ss (ssget (list (cons 0 "INSERT") )))
  (setq i 0)
  (setq ix 0)
  (repeat (sslength ss)
    (setq blk (ssname ss i))
     (setq pt (cdr (assoc 10 (entget blk))))
    (setq atts (LM:getattributevalues blk))
    (foreach a atts
;;;      (setq A (car atts))
;;;      (setq tag (car a))
      (setq val (cdr a))
      
      (entmakex (list (cons 0 "TEXT")
                  (cons 10  (list (car pt) (- (cadr pt)  ix)))
          (cons 62 3)
                  (cons 40 0.05)
         (cons 8 "01-text")
                 (cons 1  val))

)
      (setq ix (+ ix 0.1))
    )
    (setq ix 0)
    (setq i (+ i 1))
  )
  (princ)
)
 

[BIGAL]

hosneyalaa the post is about overlapping text a common problem with field surveys for Civil design when displaying information about a point.

Edited February 14, 2020 by BIGAL

[Costinbos77]

Hi hosneyalaa ,

 

the post is not for extracting / converting Attributes to Texts , is to avoid this overlay of Attributes / Texts .

[rlx]

you all make it sound like its a bad thing not all things can be done automatically but think about this : who still needs you when everything can be done automatically

[Costinbos77]

Good point of view rlx , 

 

but my problem is , i need to work more to compensate this deficiency . This topic is just a faze on a task is not the final product .

 

Anyway , it is a lot of work even we are using this automatic processes (by AutoLisp / Visual Lisp / arx / .net) .

 

Thanks for encouragement !

[rlx]

I understand Costinbos77. I never worked with Civ3D so I'm not sure if you have any control how these points are placed. But maybe another approach could be to put all points back in a list , delete them and use a lisp routine to place them back , but this time the routine can check for a free parking spot before the point is placed. Just thinking aloud... good luck with finding a solution

[Costinbos77]

I am not working with Civil3D as well , but BigAl said :

 

On 2/11/2020 at 3:54 AM, BIGAL said:

The term fuzzy logic comes into play, some software does this but not Civ3D, the problem is you move or rotate 1 then it hits another, ....

 

So , back to work .

 

Edited February 14, 2020 by Costinbos77

[BIGAL]

Hi rlx "check for a free parking spot" one of the problems is that once you start moving the text it loses its relationship with the point, when its generated its say 1 right and 1 up from a point, so if you start moving the text around suddenly the value now seems to refer to another point, when working with z's this can have consequences. If moving need almost a leader approach.

 

My $0.05 turn them all off and what I did was to click critical points and write the Z next to it, this was mainly for road and surface gradings where you had to match an existing point level. So I would end up with very few labels. I have write a CIV3d COGO and a ACAD point as they are different method to get Z. I put on a layer so can turn off etc. Can post if wanted.

 

Lastly some software matches the decimal for the point location so over top of point.