Arc4You Annotations & Graphics 1.1

Arc4You Annotations & Graphics 1.1 - General Information

What's new
Introduction
Additional functions for graphic objects
Hints for selecting graphics and annotations

New functions in the Graphics menu:	New functions in the Popup menu:

What's new in version 1.1.0.0:

Annotations Modify: The new option Alignement with nine possible text positions (top left, top center etc.) was added. When the annotation is modified (rotation, size, text, font or style) its position is adjusted accordingly.

Annotations Export:

DXF files are now fully AutoCAD-compatible. The previous files could not be loaded in most CAD programs as the annotations were not assigned to a layer.
The export of existing DXF files has been highly accelerated (the text lines are just copied now).
All unnecessary fields in the attribute table of new annotation themes are hidden and the Text field is displayed instead.
The export can't be stopped anymore while overwriting the source file (option Overwrite existing DXF file) as this file would get lost then.
When the export is canceled by clicking on the Stop button no error message is displayed anymore.
The error overwritting an existing DXF file was fixed (when the question All labels in the output file will get lost! Do you want to keep them all? was answered with ).

You can now use the Pointer Tool to edit DXF annotations if the annotation theme is active in the views table of contents.
Just double-click on an annotation with the left mouse key to perform the following operations:

Double-click: Edit the attributes of the annotation (see Edit Annotation).
Double-click with Shift key pressed: Add a new annotation (see New Annotation).
Double-click with Ctrl key pressed: Delete the annotation (with confirmation).
Double-click with Ctrl+Shift key pressed: Delete the annotation (without confirmation).
Double-click and drag (Drag & Drop): Move or copy the annotation (with confirmation).
Double-click and drag with Shift key pressed: Copy the annotation (without confirmation).
Double-click and drag with Ctrl key pressed: Move the annotation (without confirmation).

Note: Of yourse you can edit graphics as usual. If a graphic overlaps an annotation the graphic has priority (i.e. the normal Text Properties dialog appears). In favour you can double-click on annotations at any part of it (in contrary to the Select Tool not only at the baseline). If multiple annotations overlap at the point you are clicking, the one with the smalest font size is edited.

New functions in the Popup Menu (right mouse key) are available when an annotation theme is active in the views table of contents:

Edit Annotation: Right-click on an annotation in order to edit its attributes.
New Annotation: Right-click on a point in order to create a new annotation there.
Delete Annotations: Right-click on any position in order to delete the selected annotations (with confirmation).
Export Annotations: Right-click on any position in order to export the selected graphic labels into the active DXF file (with confirmation).

Warning: Changes on annotations are applied directly to the DXF files and can't be made undone. So you should be carefully when editing annotations (especially with the pointer tool). You should create backups of your annotation themes regularily!

The documentation was enhanced by numerous examples for creating layout graphics for text labels (see Graphics Convert).

What's new in version 1.0.0.2:

You can now open each dialog with its previous settings by just pressing the Shift key when calling the function from the menu. You can thereby repeat any command with the same settings as often as you like (but take care that you haven't removed any themes or graphics in the meanwhile).
Annotation themes now can be added to the view just by selecting or double-clicking them (you must not select the annotation layer anymore). This is achieved by automatically choosing the first layer in AutoCad themes and ARC/INFO coverages that contains features (for coverages you are asked the question Do you want to use the first layer containing features?).
When you copy graphic labels in ArcView (using Edit - Paste or key Ctrl+V) their font size, the size of the bounding box and therefore the corner handles of the new graphics are set wrong by Avenue. Such labels were therefore exported or saved incorrect.

These errors are now avoided by repairing the graphics automatically (the system scripts View.Paste and View.Undo were modified accordingly).
When you export or save graphic labels that were copied earlier, the incorrect graphics are now repaired too (Annotations Export or Graphics Save).
Graphics Repair: This new function has been added to check and repair all graphics of the current view (no dialog). In the status bar the number of repaired graphics is displayed.

Annotations Modify: Now you can use numeric functions to modify the label text (e.g. (X.AsNumber+20).AsString to increase numeric values by 20).
Graphics Report: Double-clicking on a view or layout now actually opens the document as described in the previous version. Double-clicking on a theme in a view that is not open does no longer cause an error.
In the previous version text lines in all dialogs lost the focus during input (e.g. at Annotations Modify). This error has been fixed.
The documentation has been improved.

Introduction:

This extension supplies functions for the comfortable processing of labels (selecting, exporting, importing, changing and formatting). All functions work as well with normal graphic labels (graphic elements of the view, that are stored in the project and therefore cause large and slow project files) as with Annotation Features respectively Annotation Themes (a more or less unused subclass of shapes already implemented in ArcView).

Annotations are stored in AutoCad DXF files, that are very small in size and can be added to views like normal themes (to add an annotation theme use the function View - Add Themes, click on the symbol in front of the theme to open the list of the AutoCad layers and choose the annotation layer ).
Annotation themes can be created from any source (e.g. other AutoCad Annotation Layers, ARC/INFO Annotation Coverages, normal graphic texts, spline texts and others). The source themes must only be added to the view first.
Colors, fonts and styles are stored in a legend file of the same name so that all exported annotations are displayed exactly as the original graphic labels. Therefore groups of similar annotations are created that are consecutively numbered in the field Color. These groups can easily be formatted with the legend editor of ArcView (apart from the font size that is stored directly in the DXF file).
Because AutoCad DXF files can't be modified in ArcView (only with a text editor) this extension includes functions for selecting and modifying annotations (that can also be used for normal graphic labels).
Annotation themes can be used in several projects at the same time. Changes will take effect in all projects when they are opened (in order to display changes in other opened projects immediately, just open the attribute table of the annotation theme and use the function Table - Refresh - this causes ArcView to reload the DXF file).
In opposite to graphic labels the priority of annotation themes in the view can be changed by moving them in the table of contents (i.e. labels can also be overlapped by point, line or polygon themes). Thereby you can also determine the priority between different annotation themes easily.
In comparison to other extensions all functions keep colors, fonts, styles, font size, rotation and alignment of the labels. For some types of ARC/INFO Annotation Coverages font size and alignment can't be calculated correctly (see also ArcView online help theme annotation sub theme Frequently asked Questions about Annotation). Additionally in ArcView sometimes the correlation between the text and its bounding box get lost when changing the text size with the corner handles (you may notice this when you hardly can't grab and resize a text because the handles aren't at the corners anymore). When exporting these erroneous labels, the annotation feature will get larger or smaller as the graphic text (corresponding to the size of its bounding box).
For each annotation theme ArcView creates a Text Attribute Table (tat.dbf) in the temporary directory $HOME. If ArcView isn't finished regularly, these files aren't deleted. Therefore it is recommended to clean this directory regularly after ArcView or system crashes.

Additional functions for graphic objects:

Saving and loading graphics in ODB text files (Object Data Base).
Importing and exporting graphics in shapefiles including a legend file (Convert Graphics to Shapes respectively Convert Shapes to Graphics maintaining colors and symbols).
Converting graphic elements (points - lines - polygons, single points, line segments, centroid etc.).
Creating graphics for the layout of labels: surrounding polygons to emphasize the whole text, surrounding lines to frame single text lines, points to emphasize single characters (with circles or other symbols), base lines to underline and cross out a text. Further a text can be split into single characters (single points with a matching font symbol) in order to give them different colors or vary their size afterwards.

Display hidden graphics or hide graphics (instead of deleting them).

Unite single graphics into groups that share a common symbol (so called Graphic Labels or Siblings - thereby the size of the project file can re reduced a lot) and vice versa (split these groups into single graphic texts with individual symbols that can be formatted separately from the others).

Compared to other extensions these functions maintain colors, symbols, symbol and line size and the bounding box in the view (including corner handles to change their size).

Hints for selecting graphics and annotations:

By default all functions work with the selected graphics respectively labels (option Selected) or with all graphics and labels (option All) if none are selected. The number of the selected and existing graphics is shown beneath the options Selected and All. Therefore you can check if there are some selected graphics by mistake or not. If you want to process all graphics, just activate the option All in case. The selection of graphics can additionally be limited to specific types (Point, Line, Polygon or Text).
Graphics can easily be chosen in the dialogs by selecting the themes they are attached to (when labeling a theme with the ArcView function Auto-Label the graphic labels are attached to this theme automatically). You can also attach labels to a theme using the ArcView command Graphics - Attach Graphics to make it easier to select them in the dialogs. These labels are only visible though if the theme is visible too. All graphic labels that are not attached can be selected with the option <Detached Graphics>.
Because the annotation functions work as well with graphic labels as with annotation features, the following should be considered: When opening a dialog at Graphic Labels all themes with attached graphic labels are pre-selected (and <Detached Graphics> if unattached texts were selected). Additionally those annotation themes that are active in the table of contents will be pre-selected at Annotation Features.
If you want a function to work only with the active annotation themes, check in the dialog if some graphic elements were selected by mistake (i.e. some themes are selected at Graphic Labels). To remove this selection, click on the button while pressing the Ctrl key.
If you want a function to work only with graphic labels, check in the dialog if some annotation themes were activated (i.e. some themes are selected at Annotation Features). To remove this selection, click on the button while pressing the Ctrl key.
So you can always check which themes have selected features respectively graphic labels, they are marked with a trailing star * behind the theme name.
Annotation features in annotation themes can be selected as usual with the Select Feature Tool , though the selection of a single element sometimes doesn't work properly. Try to select these features by draging a bigger selection rectangle with the mouse. Annotations that are only visible partially can often not be selected respectively are not displayed at all by ArcView!
To select labels by their attributes (font, size, color etc.) you can use the function Annotation Select. This functions creates an attribute table were you can select records with the mouse or the Query Builder as usual. When you finish the selection, the corresponding graphic labels or annotations will be selected. Besides the annotation themes, in which annotations features have been selected, will be activated in the table of contents (all other themes will be deactivated). This ensures that by calling any other Arc4You Annotation function automatically the selected labels - and only those - will be used. An appropriate verification (as mentioned above) is not necessary.