Annotation Settings in AutoCAD 2008

Posted August 8, 2008 * Comments(6)

Recently I made some recommendations for setting system variables relating to annotative objects in our standard drawing template (for AutoCAD 2008). Here they are with an explanation as to why.

Set SAVEFIDELITY to 0 (zero)
I mentioned this in a previous post: to address the problem with annotative objects becoming unselectable when you save, set SAVEFIDELITY to 0.

Set ANNOAUTOSCALE to 4
When you change the annotative scale in the drawing, all annotative objects will take on the new scale.

Set ANNOALLVISIBLE to 1
This allows you to see ghost images of all annotative scales associated with objects when they are selected. If this annoys you, set it back to zero.

6 Comments so far

  1. Matt J on August 10th, 2008

    Thank Jeebus! The ANNOALLVISIBLE variable is great. That ghosting’s been bugging me for over a year. I was always just too lazy to really dig into the issue. Thanks. – mj (Oh yeah, good job on the site, its pretty slick)

  2. Josh Jones on August 11th, 2008

    Thanks for commenting Matt!

  3. CadKicks.com on August 14th, 2008

    Annotation Settings in AutoCAD 2008…

    You’ve been kicked (a good thing) – Trackback from CadKicks.com…

  4. Brad on March 20th, 2009

    I have a drawing that I put all of the annotative text in at 1:6 but I need to plot at 1:10.  The text size is acceptable at 1:10 but when I try to set the vp scale to 1:10 ACAD 09 automatically changes the scale of the text.  I have tried to toggle ANNOAUTOSCALE between 4 and -4 and ACAD scales the text regardless of the setting.  It doesn’t seem as if ANNOAUTOSCALE even works!  I don’t want to have to relocate all of my text to accomodate the smaller scale!  Anyone know why ANNOAUTOSCALE isn’t working like it is suppose to?  Thanks

  5. Josh Jones on March 20th, 2009

    I feel your pain. Once you have your text set at 1:6, select all the text, go to properties, and set “Annotative” to “No”. Then when you switch to 1:10, the text will stay the same size.

  6. Josh Jones on March 20th, 2009

    Brad,
    You have to realize that if you had ANNOAUTOSCALE set to 4 and have applied the scales 1:6 and 1:10, all your text will have taken on the scales 1:6 and 1:10. So when you set ANNOAUTOSCALE to -4, the text already has the scales 1:6 and 1:10 assigned to it. You will need to type OBJECTSCALE, select all your text, delete the scale you don’t want (1:10 in this case), set ANNOAUTOSCALE to -4. Then it will work the way you want – however, the annotative text may not appear in a viewport of a different scale. I still recommend using the method I talked about in my previous comment.
    -Josh

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