3. LABELING TIPS

[jovivier]

Last week we talked about automatically labeling items on your IRRICAD plan. To help with that process here are some tips to help make using Labels easier and quicker.

• When adding keywords on different lines, you must click in the text box with the mouse before pressing the <Enter> key as <Enter> will also add the currently selected keyword if the cursor is still in the drop-down box. A quick way to add many keywords is to select them all from the drop-down box and then click in the text box and insert all required spaces, carriage returns and extra text.

• The #NAME# keyword inserts the names of valves, water supplies, areas and mainline outlets e.g. “Zone No. 1”. #DESC# is used to label items with their database description e.g. “50mm Gate Valve” while #LABEL# uses the short description from the “Label” field in the database.

• Based on the “Length Allowance”, if the label for a pipe is too long for the pipe segment and “Check Label Length” is enabled, the label will not display.

Label Options.PNG

• If you are labeling pipes with flow or velocity, uncheck “Combine Pipe Labels” since each pipe segment can potentially have a different flow and velocity.

• Pipes can only have a combined label if the angle of the pipe segments is less than the “Angle Tolerance” setting.

• Zone submains can have a combined label, where each pipe size is only labeled once. Submains are defined as zone pipes which feed spraylines or tapes. Mainline pipes can only have a combined label if there are no branches coming off the pipe segments.

• If you change a setting that will affect the format of existing labels, e.g. the font size, then simply use Tools|Update Labels to make the changes. Note this will reapply settings to all labels of the types that are checked in Settings|Labels. Items only need to be selected/highlighted if you are creating new labels for those items.

• Once labels are in the format that you commonly use, you can click [Save as Defaults] and then every new design will initially use these settings.

• Label settings are however Design Specific – any changes to the default set of label settings is retained with each individual design.

• The On-line help Technical Reference Appendix I contains the full list of the keywords, their description and if the keywords can be used generally or only for Irrigation Block Entities.

CROP WIDTH USAGE
The crop width is the actual width of the crop itself not the row spacing. For example the row spacing may be 2m but the crop width is actually only 1m wide on each row. If you wish to label the area with the crop coverage rather than the total area encompassed by the block, you can do so using a “Crop Width” value in conjunction with the #IRRAREA# label keyword.

Label Options2.PNG

“Crop width” affects the calculation of the area for Irrigation Blocks,(specified by the #IRRAREA# label keyword) in the follow ways:

• If “Crop Width” is unchecked (the default) then the area is calculated using:-
Total Lateral Length * Lateral Spacing.

• When “Crop Width” is enabled then the area specified by #IRRAREA# is calculated using:-
- With Lateral Groups: Total Lateral Length / Num Laterals per Group * Crop Width.
- Without Lateral Groups: Total Lateral Length * Crop Width.

• Note that if “Crop Width” is greater than the Group Spacing + (Number of Laterals per Group – 1) * Lateral Spacing, or the Lateral Spacing (with no groups) then the normal method is used to calculate the area.

• #IRRAREA# is used for Irrigation Block Entities only, where as #AREA# can be used for the area of other objects.

LABEL ROUNDING & ROLL LENGTHS
• It is possible to round numeric values in labels to a ‘nearest value’.

• The format for rounding is keyword-semicolon-number:
e.g #KEYWORD;0.1# - meaning: round the value of ‘keyword’ to the nearest 0.1. This would give one decimal place of accuracy; similarly 0.01 would give two decimal places etc.

• Keywords which can be rounded are:
#LENGTH#
#LENGTH3D#
#ROLLS#
#ROLLS3D#
#AREA#
#IRRAREA#

• Two keywords, #ROLLS# and #ROLLS3D#, are available, such that pipe lengths can be displayed as a number of ‘rolls’ (based on the roll length of the pipe type in the database – see the Pipe Fitting Matching Table).


We hope you have found this helpful. If you have a tip you would like to share, please email your tip to Support@IRRICAD.com