Overview of Scaling Annotations (Concept)

Objects that are commonly used to annotate drawings have a property called Annotative. This property allows you to automate the process of scaling annotations so that they plot or display at the correct size on the paper.

Instead of creating multiple annotations at different sizes and on separate layers, you can turn on the annotative property by object or by style, and set the annotation scale for layout or model viewports. The annotation scale controls the size of the annotative objects relative to the model geometry in the drawing.

The following objects are commonly used to annotate drawings and contain an annotative property:

When the Annotative property for these objects is turned on (set to Yes), these objects are called annotative objects.

You define a paper size for annotative objects. The annotation scale you set for layout viewports and model space determines the size of the annotative objects in those spaces.

Save to Legacy Drawing File Format

Set the system variable SAVEFIDELITY to 1 when you save a drawing that contains annotative objects to a legacy drawing file format (AutoCAD 2007 or earlier). This preserves the visual fidelity of the drawing when it is opened in a release earlier than AutoCAD 2008 by saving individual representations of each scale of each annotative object. The individual objects are saved to layers that are used to organize objects of the same scale. Setting SAVEFIDELITY to 0, when opening the drawing in AutoCAD 2008 or later release, results in improved performance. For more information about saving a drawing to a previous release, see Save a Drawing.

Workflow for Annotating Drawings

The following steps represent a typical workflow for annotating a drawing so that your annotations will scale automatically.

If one or more annotative objects needs to be displayed at an additional scale, follow these steps.

Add the additional scale to the annotative objects.
Set the annotation scale to the new scale (the annotative objects that support the new scale will be resized based on the annotation scale).
Reposition the annotative objects as needed for the new scale

When you create your layouts, follow these steps.

Create a new layout or make a layout current.
Create viewports.
Set the annotation scale for each viewport. (For each viewport, the annotation scale and viewport scale should be the same).

For more information about setting visibility for annotative objects, see Display Annotative Objects. For more information about adding scales to annotative objects, see Add and Modify Scale Representations.