Text rotation

Hello, first time posting - yay!

I have several pieces of center justified text (contour lables) that are at various angles. We would like to make all the text read from the bottom of the page, regardless of contour angle or "correct practice". I've selected all the text, then using the element info box, changed all the text to zero rotation and it works - except the text rotates around the "left bottom" justification instead of the "center center" justification.

Can anyone shed some light on this and help me rotate the text globaly at once?  Thanks!

Parents
  • Corey,

    Welcome to the community!
    Are you new to just the community or MicroStation as well?

    What you are experiencing is a quirk of how text elements are handled.
    Text elements essentially have two origins. The "real" / true internal origin which is always lower left.
    Then there is the "user" / interactive origin which is what we users are familiar with and is calculated as needed; such as Center Center.

    What is happening is that when you are changing the angle, MicroStation is simply changing the angle of the text based upon it's true origin.
    For MicroStation to rotate about the user origin, it would need to perform a number of calculations to ensure that the text ends up where the user expected.
    By not doing this, even though the true origin hasn't moved, it actually results in the text element moving relative to where it is supposed to be and undesirable.
    I consider this to be quite an oversight in MicroStation and believe there is probably some agreement within Bentley.
    However, it has been this way for a very, very, long time and I haven't heard of any plans from the Bentley folks to change this in the near term.

    Sadly, for the time being the best way to handle this is via code where the developer takes it the extra steps and performs the math.
    Either you could do all the math and rotate "in-place" relative to the user origin, or you could extract the current user origin, set absolute angle, and then move the text element back to where it was.
    There are some third party tools out there that can do this, but cannot remember what their names are.
    We have our own tools that can do this, but not anything wrapped up for public consumption.
    Hopefully someone can point you to a simple tool, or most top notch consultants could solve this for you real quick.

    -G-

Reply
  • Corey,

    Welcome to the community!
    Are you new to just the community or MicroStation as well?

    What you are experiencing is a quirk of how text elements are handled.
    Text elements essentially have two origins. The "real" / true internal origin which is always lower left.
    Then there is the "user" / interactive origin which is what we users are familiar with and is calculated as needed; such as Center Center.

    What is happening is that when you are changing the angle, MicroStation is simply changing the angle of the text based upon it's true origin.
    For MicroStation to rotate about the user origin, it would need to perform a number of calculations to ensure that the text ends up where the user expected.
    By not doing this, even though the true origin hasn't moved, it actually results in the text element moving relative to where it is supposed to be and undesirable.
    I consider this to be quite an oversight in MicroStation and believe there is probably some agreement within Bentley.
    However, it has been this way for a very, very, long time and I haven't heard of any plans from the Bentley folks to change this in the near term.

    Sadly, for the time being the best way to handle this is via code where the developer takes it the extra steps and performs the math.
    Either you could do all the math and rotate "in-place" relative to the user origin, or you could extract the current user origin, set absolute angle, and then move the text element back to where it was.
    There are some third party tools out there that can do this, but cannot remember what their names are.
    We have our own tools that can do this, but not anything wrapped up for public consumption.
    Hopefully someone can point you to a simple tool, or most top notch consultants could solve this for you real quick.

    -G-

Children
  • Thank you Gerald,

    I'm only new to the community, I've used MicroStation from 4.x to J but never as heavilly as I am now.

    I was afraid that was going to be my answer. My solution was to export to "another major CAD package" and globally select and edit the rotation angle, then bring it back in.  All told it was still only a 2 minute deal.

    I'm very familiar with programing in "another major CAD package" but haven't gotten into programming MicroStation yet. This kinda deal-e-o would've been right up my alley, programming wise.

    Thanks again,

    Corey

  • Get the Active Angle Assistant from the Ask Inga Wiki area. It's a MVBA project (MicroStation VBA) that can be loaded and run, but also studied to learn about programming.


    Charles (Chuck) Rheault
    CADD Manager

    MDOT State Highway Administration

    • MicroStation user since IGDS, InRoads user since TDP.
    • AutoCAD, Land Desktop and Civil 3D, off and on since 1996