Landscape Exercise 05 – Proposed Plant Labelling

When you’re happy with the plants in your design it will be time to label them.

Select the Label proposed Plant icon to reveal a very powerful tool

With this tool you have two methods of labelling your plants.

One is to select each plant or group of plants and physically position an automatically generated label on the drawing for them.
The other is to have the software automatically generate a unique ID for each species onto each plant. You then cross reference that ID to a legend on your drawing.

The latter method is particularly popular when you have too many plants in your drawing for easy placement of labels or when the size of the job leaves little space on the drawing for textural labelling around the outside.

Smaller jobs will mostly use the first method. Remember to use the Reference Manual and your own testing of the different option to get the look you desire from the labelling tool.

Set the dialog as shown on the previous page. You will see the preview change as you make various selections.
Select the Label button and follow the prompts
Select a plant to label, and then select a position for the arrow/pointer, and then a position for the elbow of the leader line and finally where you would like the text to be placed.
The command will be ready to repeat for the next plant label so select another plant and insert its label.
Now quit the command and this time preselect a group of plants that are the same species before again using the same command and selecting the Label button again.

This time all the plants selected will be labelled and quantified in the label. A dotted line (actually a curve) is inserted from the centre of each plant to indicate they are grouped.

Exit the labelling command and select one of the plants in the newly labelled grouping and then delete it by pressing delete on the keyboard. Note that the quantity value on the label has automatically updated.
Now reselect the labelling command and this time set the Leader Type to Multiple Leader and select the label
Follow the prompt as you label 3 or 4 new plants of the same species in your drawing. This time you’ll be inserting one label but multiple leader lines and arrows.
Again, see what happens when you delete one of the plants.
Now label the region you defined earlier as Ground Cover. Notice that the label displays area rather than quantity.
Try labelling the region that you placed randomised plants onto. You should receive an error message letting you know that you need to select the plant Components themselves or a region plane that does not have ‘Actual’ plant Components on it.
If you do get this message, then quit the labelling command, double-click the plane and select the Hide Actual Plants Then try labelling the region plane again.

Whilst you can’t actually see the Components, the software still knows how many plants belong to that plane and reports them when you label the plane.

You won’t always place the labels in the ideal position at first. Don’t worry as you can simply select the labels and modify them as desired or delete and reinsert.

The best way to modify label positions is to select the curve and drag the nodes. The text and the arrows will be repositioned automatically.

Most plant labelling is done in the Top view rather than in a Layout view because you need to select the plant when labelling!

Alternatively you could switch between views or have both top and layout views open at the same time. For most landscape plans, placing the labels in the top view is easier.

Tip

Select Find unlabelled and the software will automatically find plants in your drawing that you’ve missed.
Continue labelling all the proposed plants in your drawing.

Your drawing should resemble this one below although you may not have changed the planes to the styles you see here. That’s ok. We’ve changed this one for clarity.

File, Save.

Now let’s use the Auto-numbering method of labelling.

Delete all the labels you’ve inserted. The best method is to select the text and press delete. The leader and terminator will be deleted at the same time.
Select Options, Text and set the text options to include a halo of colour 255

Select the label command and set the options as follows

Then click the Auto Label button. All the Proposed plants in your drawing will be tagged with a unique number for each plant species. Easy!