Can't See Point Labels

[kayak]

I'm importing points from a file in Civil 3D 2010. My point marker symbols show up but there are no point number, elevation, or description labels. I've checked the point label style and everything looks OK. Visibility is true, layers are all on, regen does nothing, info is all there in the point listing. I've tried importing using other point label styles but still no labels. Does anyone have any other ideas?
Thanks

[jpaulsen]

Can you post a drawing with a few points in it? I will be willing to take a look.

[kayak]

Thanks Jeff, I appreciate it. Here's a drawing.

[sinc]

Your points are displaying that way because you have no Point Label Styles assigned to anything.

The Styles assigned to Cogo Points follow the following priority:

1. The Style in the Point Group, IF the Style Override is enabled on the "Overrides" tab in the Point Group properties
2. The Style assigned to the Cogo Point itself, IF one is assigned
3. The Style in the Point Group

In the above, when I say "The Style in the Point Group", I'm referring to the Style set in the top-level Point Group that contains the Cogo Point. You can have many Point Groups, and a Cogo Point can be in more than one Point Group at the same time. If it's in more than one Point Group, then Style is taken from the top-level group that contains the Cogo Point. You can change the priority of Point Groups by selecting the Point Group collection in Toolspace and right-click -> Properties.

In your drawing, you have only one Point Group, i.e. the default "_All Points" point group. In that Point Group, the Point Label Style is not set.

You also have not assigned any Point Label Styles to your Cogo Points. Since the Cogo Points have no Point Label Style assigned, they are using the Style set in the "_All Points" Point Group. However, in that Point Group, you have not selected a Point Label Style, so your Cogo Points do not have a label in the drawing.

To see the point labels, either assign Point Label Styles directly to the Cogo Points, or select a Point Label Style in the "_All Points" Point Group.

[jpaulsen]

Yeah. What Sinc said. And said very well I may add.

[sinc]

I've had lots of practice answering this question. It's probably a good one for the FAQ section.

[kayak]

Thanks guys, it worked
Wew! It's hard for me to get my head around the styles. I thought that since my style was the default point label style when I imported the points, the imported points would automatically use my point label style. How silly of me! (sorry for the sarcasm). It sounds like I need to asign a label style after I import the points. Is that correct?

[sinc]

Yes, that touches on an aspect of C3D that's always struck me as being a bit brain-dead (or at the very least, really confusing)...

The problem is that if you have "Disable Description Keys" set to "false" (see attached image), then C3D will try to get the Styles from your Description Key Set. That's all OK... The brain-dead part is that if it doesn't find a match in the Description Keys, then it assigns NO styles. It could be argued that C3D should assign the DEFAULT styles if it fails to find a DescKey match, but it doesn't. And since C3D has been like this since its first version, it appears that Autodesk has no intention of changing this behavior.

Since you have no Description Keys defined in your drawing, you're getting no Styles assigned to the points as you import them, which means the points are using the Styles set in your "_All Points" point group.

The upshot is that if you want the points to take on your default styles as they are imported, you have to set "Disable Description Keys" to "true" before you import the points. Either that, or set the Style in the Point Group to whatever you want, so that points that fail to match a DescKey will still be visible. We actually have Styles set for both Point Style and Point Label Style in the "_All Points" point group in our drawing template, for exactly this reason.