[fdo-internals] Multiple geometries per table

[Mike Toews]

On 11 May 2010 05:48, Brent Robinson <brent.robinson at autodesk.com> wrote:
> For the "feature and manual label placement geometries" example, I'm not familiar enough with stylization to know if it can be done. Choosing the feature geometry can be done by one of the above solutions but I don't know if labels can be placed based on the other geometries. Does anyone else on the list know?

You just add any point layer and remove the symbology (or make it
invisible), and set the label to allow overlapping. My AutoCAD
technician wanted consistent label placements across documents and she
didn't like the auto-placement, so we have two pairs of tables, e.g.,
my_feature (point or polygon) and my_feature_label (point), each with
matched integer primary keys and text labels, and several triggers to
coordinate INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE events between the two tables
(particularly making them consistent and ensuring the text label is
the same). The labels are brought into AutoCAD as a separate layer
with empty symbology, and if the labels conflict, then the points are
manually edited and arranged to look nice. In the context of this
situation, it would be nice to remove the need to synchronize between
two tables, and simplify the trigger to create a centroid label
geometry from the feature ON INSERT. The manual label placement seems
a bit of a hack, but it seems to work.

> One workaround would be to create a view for each geometry column where each view has all of the table columns but only one of the geometry columns. I believe you also have to add a row to geometry_columns table for each view geometry column.

This is what I was thinking. I'm yet to test if I can use rules on
views to make them editable (we just received our copies of Map 2011
.. I am very impressed with the quality of the new PostgreSQL Provider
so far).

-Mike