I have been struggling with AutoCAD Architecture 2010's Annotative Text since I started in a new office a few months ago. It behaves erratically and unpredictably, and makes it much harder to get the results I expect. Usually I just turn it off in paper space and kill off every annotative scale but the one I'm printing at - a big pain in the tail if there's a lot of text.
The point, near as I can tell, is to keep text at the same standard 3/32" height when you print, no matter how you scale the drawing. Thing is, I just can't visualize where you would want to have that functionality. You set your text up in Model Space for a particular scale - there's no way around it. You can't draw something not knowing what scale you're going to print it at (right?!) - otherwise you're going to over- or under-detail the drawing. If AutoCAD blows up the text to 2x its size for a half-scale set, suddenly the text is tripping over itself and covering up parts of your drawing. A half scale set needs half-sized text, not 2x text obscuring everything!
Is annotative text scaling part of the general movement to have One Giant Universal BIM Model from whence all drawings, details and schedules shall spring? Or is there another use that I'm missing?
It sounds like you are printing multiple scales from model space. That will not work with annotative scales. Here is what I do:
Lets say that I have 3/4", 1-1/2", and 3" details on one sheet. I draw the details in model space with their corresponding scale factors.
Go to paper space, set up viewports, and scale the viewport accordingly for each scale factor for the corresponding detail. This will automatically re-scale each detail with the proper text size.
So in this example, AutoCAD saves you from having to figure out what fractional size your text would otherwise have to be in Model Space. (and you switch your Model Space scale to see text & other marks at the correct scale while drafting.) That part makes sense.
What doesn't make sense is letting a text entity have multiple annotative scales attached to it. I've gone to print a quick and dirty copy of something to sketch or write on (always in Paper Space, of course) and had text just balloon to gigantic size, because some scale is on it that I didn't know about. I would think it's incredibly rare to want to print the same drawing at two different scales while wanting the text to print the same absolute size on both.
Part of my dissatisfaction is that it just seems to be a wonky, buggy system in general. I often get strange behaviors that can only be fixed by turning off Annotative Scaling for a text block. It might be driven by consultant/client drawings interacting poorly with our own standards and settings, but... a system that doesn't play nice with other systems, isn't a good system.
Jul 2, 14 3:03 pm ·
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AutoCAD Annotative Text Scale - Why?
I have been struggling with AutoCAD Architecture 2010's Annotative Text since I started in a new office a few months ago. It behaves erratically and unpredictably, and makes it much harder to get the results I expect. Usually I just turn it off in paper space and kill off every annotative scale but the one I'm printing at - a big pain in the tail if there's a lot of text.
The point, near as I can tell, is to keep text at the same standard 3/32" height when you print, no matter how you scale the drawing. Thing is, I just can't visualize where you would want to have that functionality. You set your text up in Model Space for a particular scale - there's no way around it. You can't draw something not knowing what scale you're going to print it at (right?!) - otherwise you're going to over- or under-detail the drawing. If AutoCAD blows up the text to 2x its size for a half-scale set, suddenly the text is tripping over itself and covering up parts of your drawing. A half scale set needs half-sized text, not 2x text obscuring everything!
Is annotative text scaling part of the general movement to have One Giant Universal BIM Model from whence all drawings, details and schedules shall spring? Or is there another use that I'm missing?
It sounds like you are printing multiple scales from model space. That will not work with annotative scales. Here is what I do:
Lets say that I have 3/4", 1-1/2", and 3" details on one sheet. I draw the details in model space with their corresponding scale factors.
Go to paper space, set up viewports, and scale the viewport accordingly for each scale factor for the corresponding detail. This will automatically re-scale each detail with the proper text size.
Print from paper space.
Hope that helps.
So in this example, AutoCAD saves you from having to figure out what fractional size your text would otherwise have to be in Model Space. (and you switch your Model Space scale to see text & other marks at the correct scale while drafting.) That part makes sense.
What doesn't make sense is letting a text entity have multiple annotative scales attached to it. I've gone to print a quick and dirty copy of something to sketch or write on (always in Paper Space, of course) and had text just balloon to gigantic size, because some scale is on it that I didn't know about. I would think it's incredibly rare to want to print the same drawing at two different scales while wanting the text to print the same absolute size on both.
Part of my dissatisfaction is that it just seems to be a wonky, buggy system in general. I often get strange behaviors that can only be fixed by turning off Annotative Scaling for a text block. It might be driven by consultant/client drawings interacting poorly with our own standards and settings, but... a system that doesn't play nice with other systems, isn't a good system.
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