Overview of Creating Annotative Objects (Concept)

When you add annotations to your drawing, you can turn on the Annotative property for those objects. These annotative objects are scaled based on the current annotation scale setting and are automatically displayed at the correct size

Annotative objects are defined at a paper height and display at the size determined by the annotation scale.

Many of the dialog boxes used to create these objects contain an Annotative check box where you can make the object annotative. You can also change existing objects to be annotative by changing the annotative property in the Properties palette.

When you hover the cursor over an annotative object that supports one annotation scale, the cursor displays a

icon. When the object supports more than one annotation scale, it displays a

icon.

Text, dimension, and multileader styles can also be annotative. Annotative styles create annotative objects.

Visual Fidelity for Annotative Objects

When working with annotative objects, this option allows you to maintain visual fidelity for these objects when they are viewed in AutoCAD 2007 and earlier releases. Visual fidelity is controlled by the SAVEFIDELITY system variable.

If you work primarily in model space, it is recommended that you turn off visual fidelity (set SAVEFIDELITY to 0). However, if you need to exchange drawings with other users, and layout fidelity is most important, then visual fidelity should be turned on (set SAVEFIDELITY to 1).

NoteThe SAVEFIDELITY system variable does not affect saving a drawing to the AutoCAD 2010 drawing or DXF file formats.

Annotative objects may have multiple scale representations. When visual fidelity is on, annotative objects are decomposed and scale representations are saved (in an anonymous block) to separate layers, which are named based on their original layer and appended with a number. If you explode the block in AutoCAD 2007 or earlier releases, and then open the drawing in AutoCAD 2008 or later releases, each scale representation becomes a separate annotative object, each with one annotation scale. It is not recommended that you edit or create objects on these layers when working with a drawing created in AutoCAD 2008 and later releases in AutoCAD 2007 and earlier releases.

When this option is not selected, a single model space representation is displayed on the Model tab. More annotation objects may be displayed on the Model tab depending on the ANNOALLVISIBLE setting. Also, more objects may be displayed in paper space viewports at different sizes than in AutoCAD 2008 and later releases.

For a procedure to set this option for annotative objects, see To maintain visual fidelity for annotative objects.