Global Mapper v25.0

orientation of elevations labels

TeeGee
TeeGee Global Mapper UserTrusted User
edited September 2014 in Elevation Data
Hello Mike,

1) In topographic maps, the baseline of the contours labels looks conventionally towards the down of the slope.

2) In some cases and some parts of a map, it may be convenient to align the elevation labels on a straight line.

Is it possible to get these results with GM ?

Thanks,

TeeGee

Comments

  • global_mapper
    global_mapper Administrator
    edited October 2009
    TeeGee,

    It's not generally possible in Global Mapper to position labels along line features, although you can of course remove or turn off the line labels and add point features with the label you want and exactly position and angle those. The automatic label placer in Global Mapper will try and always keep labels so the text is not flipped upside down. When preventing collisions labels that are on straight horizontal or vertical segments are preferred over angled ones, although this primarily makes a difference for gridded city streets.

    Thanks,

    Mike
    Global Mapper Support
    support@globalmapper.com
  • TeeGee
    TeeGee Global Mapper User Trusted User
    edited October 2009
    Wow ! It will be a pretty long job, because if I remove or turn off the elevation labels, I will have to place manually a reasonable density of points along the contour lines to keep the map readable. Updating the elevation data of the new point features should be fast and easy (with a DEM or creating a new one from the contour lines), but rotating each label so that its direction fits with the slope, and with the direction of the underlying segment, will take some time...

    So I suggest, for a future version, to give the possibility of a conventional labelling of contour lines.

    Thanks,

    TeeGee
  • Henrik
    Henrik Global Mapper User Trusted User
    edited September 2014
    Hi,

    What happened with this request/suggestion?
    I see great use to be able to add contour labels at specified distance when generating the contours. Also I think that the labels should face upwards the top of the peak! Also could the label get the elevation from it´s feature name?

    Thanks,

    /Henrik
  • Josie_BMG
    Josie_BMG Global Mapper User
    edited September 2014
    Hello Henrik, The label for the contour lines currently follows the line, and there is not a method of rotating the angle of the label display, other than to add point features as described above. I will add an enhancement request for our development team to consider including an option to rotate the labels towards the peak for contours.

    The contours are created with the Elevation in the Feature Name. In the Contour Generations Options dialog, you can choose to add the unit of measurement to the labels.

    Thanks!
    Josie
  • dteyres
    dteyres Global Mapper User
    edited September 2014
    Hi there,

    I have a map with many point features. I'd like to set the position of the those point feature labels but I'm not sure how to do it? Tx D
  • Henrik
    Henrik Global Mapper User Trusted User
    edited September 2014
    Hi Josie,

    Thank you for your reply. What I meant with the last sentence is that I want the to be able to put labels on the contours with an even distans and the contour label should also have an actual elevation when exporting it to an dwg for instance. Now they have an elevation of 0 when exporting attribute as text. I see your "point" using points to add extra point along the contour to get more labels but the problem is the rotation of the texts, they do not follow the contours.

    Thanks,

    /Henrik
  • Henrik
    Henrik Global Mapper User Trusted User
    edited September 2014
    Hi,

    What I understand the labels are only an visual object that is displayed based on zoomlevel etc. As they are not an actual object they can not be moved. Perhaps to export the point into a dwg and make sure that you set "Include Display Labels as Separate Text layer" and then load it in GM again and split based on feature typ. Then you would have texts to manually move using the move tool(CTRL+SHFT+M)

    /Henrik
  • DMcKittrick
    DMcKittrick Global Mapper Trainer Trusted User
    edited September 2014
    Here are a couple of suggestions that might help with the contour labeling questions that have been asked in this thread:

    If you want to generate contour labels that are assigned to a point and that can be manually moved and/or rotated, follow these steps:

    1. In the Overlay Control Center, right-click on the contour layer and choose Select All Features...
    2. Right-click anywhere on the map and choose Advanced Feature Creation Options > Create New Point Features Spaced Along Selected Feature(s)
    3. In the resulting dialog box, select Sample Features at Fixed Distance Interval and enter a point spacing value that is appropriate to your map scale
    4. Uncheck the box next to 'Keep All Original Vertices' and click the OK button
    5. With the new points selected, right-click on the map and choose EDIT - Edit Selected Feature(s)
    6. From the Feature Type drop down list, choose 'Text' and click the OK button
    7. In the Overlay Control Center, select the User Created Features layer and click the Options button
    8. Under Setup Feature Label Display, select Use Selected Attribute Value for Name and choose LINE_NAME from the drop down list
    9. Click the OK button and the Yes button to confirm the change.
    10. To disable the existing contour line labels, select the contours (lines) layer in the Overlay Control Center, click the Options button and uncheck the 'Display Labels for Layer if Any Shown' box

    If you want to specify the label spacing along your contour lines, follow these steps:

    1. In the Overlay Control Center, right-click on the contour layer and choose Select All Features...
    2. Right-click anywhere on the map and choose Crop/Combine/Split Functions > Resample/Split Selected Feature(s) at Specified Spacing
    3. In the resulting dialog box, select Sample Features at Fixed Distance Interval and enter a distance value that is appropriate to your map scale
    4. Check the boxes next to 'Keep All Original Vertices' and 'Split into New Features at New Vertices'
    5. Click the OK button

    - David McKittrick
    Senior Applications Specialist
    Blue Marble Geographics
  • OshnDoc
    OshnDoc Global Mapper User
    David,

    Well that is a nice and useful write up - for small data sets. It really does not help very much with the conventional naming of elevation contours where all labels are pointing with their base to the lower elevation in larger data sets.  If a rather large elevation set is contoured your point by point approach is rather time consuming not very productive.  Since you are calculating the lines already in your script it should be easy enough to keep the angles of the lines in storage to use them for label placement.
    Any chances GM will incorporate something as common as this in a future version?

    Thanks,
    Arne