COGO Tools: Labeling Lines

Generally speaking when it comes to surveying, most exhibits are done in AutoCAD, but lets say you're using GIS and you want to provide an exhibit with all the same information such as the survey calls, bearings, distances etc. You could use a parcel fabric but if you're just trying to make one exhibit that may be too involved and you might not have the correct dataset. You can use a dimension feature class but they take a bit of work to get the styling right and even then you are only getting distances, not bearings (at least not without some interesting field calculations). The other solution is to add COGO attributes to your lines - this way you can set up label expressions to not only include distances but bearings as well.

I'm going to assume you know how to create a line feature class and that you've already done it. I'm also going to assume you know how to use COGO tools to create a traverse.

Add COGO Attributes

You have your line you want to label with survey calls. First we need to add COGO attributes.

• Open ArcCatalog
• Go to the top Customize toolbar and choose Customize Mode

• Click New and name it COGO
• Select the Commands tab and search for COGO
• Drag the Create COGO Fields to the COGO toolbar you created

• Navigate to your line feature class and click on it once to highlight it
• Click the Create COGO Fields button (Make sure that you are not in an open edit session and that your features aren't active!)
• If it is successful it will pop up with a message saying your fields have been created.

• You can verify this by checking the fields in your feature class, it will have Direction, Distance, Delta, Radius, Tangent, ArcLength, and Side.

Update COGO Attributes

Once you've added the COGO Fields to your feature class, you can update your fields with the COGO Tools toolbar.

• Select the Lines you want to add COGO attributes to
• Click the Update COGO Attributes button

• If you get the following warning it's a polyline or something else but you can use the Split Line at Vertices tool) or you can use the split into COGO line tool

This is what my drawing looks like now:

Label COGO Fields

• Open your Layer properties
• Select the label tab

• Check Label features in this layer
• Method Label all the features the same way
• Click Expression
• Choose the python parser and add [Direction] + "\n" + [Distance]

• In placement properties for the maplex engine I chose street address placement without stacking labels. You can play with the labeling to find out what will work best for the layout of your own map.