Create a Northing & Easting Block With Fields
Comments(9)Recently I was asked to create a grid that labels the Northings & Eastings on a map. There are a couple of ways you could do this: 1) If you have Civil 3D, create a point style that labels the Northing & Easting. 2) If you have AutoCAD create a block that displays the Northing & Easting with fields.
If you have Civil 3D, the point-style method works the best but today I am going to show you how to use fields to make this happen.
This is our goal:
This block contains a point, an X position field, and a Y position field.
THE POINT
First type POINT on the command line and place the point anywhere in your drawing. Type DDPTYPE to modify the size and style of the point if you’d like. I set mine to a plus sign and set the size to 0.125 in absolute units.
THE NORTHING
Next we are going to create the Northing field. To do this, type ATTDEF. Take a look at the picture to see how I setup the attribute definition.
Your standard text settings may look different than mine, but you get the idea. Make sure “Annotative” is unchecked.
Click the Field button to add a field to the Default attribute:
In the Field dialog box, click the “Select Object” button:
…and select the point object. You will then get something like this:
Select the “Position” property. Set the Format and Precision properties and uncheck the X and Z check-boxes. We are choosing only the Y coordinate because Y equals Northing. Hit OK.
This is the final result in the Attribute Definition dialog box for the Northing attribute.
Hit OK.
THE EASTING
Then follow the same steps for the Easting field by typing ATTDEF…
When creating the Easting field, be sure to check the X check-box and uncheck the Y check-box.
The Attribute Definition dialog box should look something like this:
Notice I checked the box that says, “Align below previous attribute definition”. This will place the EASTING directly under the NORTHING attribute:
FINAL STEPS
Finally WBLOCK the point and attribute definitions. Make sure your insertion point is set to the NODE of the point.
Insert your newly-created block and it should display the Northing and Easting wherever you insert it. Copy it around if you like or array it on a grid.
If you have more time, add even more functionality to your block by turning it into a dynamic block.
So how can that be done with DMS instead of just decimal degrees?
Are you referring to a bearing (rotation) label using DMS? I’ll post a blog entry about that today.
i tried the N, E block and it works fine. However, I use a specific dimension style to apply coordinates in the form of feet and decimal of a foot. I set the units to decimal and use a scale factor of 1/12 with a suffix of ‘. This gives me a direct correlation to surveying equipment which generally returns the same format for distances. I know civil dwgs are usually in "units" but I can draw fullscale structures, etc. and place them on a "fullsize" model and then pick points for coordinates that no one has to manulate. they can use them directly.My question then is how do I make this coordinate label return feet and decimals of a foot? 1200.0000′
I really enjoy your tips, many of which are useful to most of us.Thanks for any help.Tim Morgan
My labels do exactly that. They are in feet and you can add the ‘ suffix by clicking the “Additional Format…” button inside the FIELD dialog box. Does this answer your question?
Create a Northing …
You’ve been kicked (a good thing) – Trackback from CadKicks.com…
Josh, your post is timely as I have been wrestling with creating a dynamic block to do exactly this, and with fields. It works great, except for one thing – I can’t get the field to display the thousandths separator in my coordinates! It’s greyed out in the dialog and simply unavailable. When working in something like UTM, there’s nothing worse than trying to read a coordinate and continually having to parse the the numbers in your head. 7,563,200 is so much nicer than 7563200!Any idea how to get at the separator option?
Using Point is a bad idea, two crossing lines would be a better idea. The point style and size can be changed too easily, and many times they need to be turned off because so many are displayed as the points are used by others and included in their blocks.
thanks for this, I followed your easy instructions and it works! I agree with COJOnes, and used a circle instead of a point. Thanks!
Josh, great post! Just what I was looking for. One problem though, when xref-ing a model file which contains the NE blocks into a separate drawing sheet file, the NE values default to zero………! Is there any way round this?