Kate Morrical from LT Unlimited wrote a helpful blog post on managing annotation visibility. It can be confusing at first but annotation visibility is worth mastering. I use annotation scale visibility with dimensions, text and multileaders every day because it gives me even more control over how my drawings look. Here is what she said: Read more »

Here is how to change the way a fraction is stacked in MTEXT, Multileaders, and Dimensions: Read more »

At the request of Murph, I will show you how to create a block that will display the bearing in degrees, minutes, and seconds (DMS) using an AutoCAD Field.

It’s actually very simple. Let’s get started. Read more »

Recently I was asked to create a grid that labels the Northings & Eastings on a map. There are a couple of ways you could do this: 1) If you have Civil 3D, create a point style that labels the Northing & Easting. 2) If you have AutoCAD create a block that displays the Northing & Easting with fields.

If you have Civil 3D, the point-style method works the best but today I am going to show you how to use fields to make this happen. Read more »

There are three linetype settings to consider when setting up your drawings: LTSCALE, PSLTSCALE, & MSLTSCALE. Read more »

I like my text to always be left-justified. Call me strange but I think it looks odd when MLEADER text is right-justified like in this picture.

Read more »

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. Read more »

Multileaders (command: MLEADER) are so nice to work with. If you haven’t used them, you should play with them to get a feel for how they work. The AutoCAD User’s Guide has a lot of good information on them including pictures and animations.

I used to use Quick Leaders (command: QLEADER) in past versions of AutoCAD. In AutoCAD 2007/2008 they introduced annotative scaling for text, leaders, etc. I was excited about the possibilities of annotative scaling but was disappointed when I applied annotative scaling to Quick Leaders. When I would change the annotative scale in a drawing the text would either seperate from or overlap the leader. This was a problem! Read more »

I’ve noticed a bug in AutoCAD 2008 that causes annotative text to disappear or become unselectable. This is very annoying, but there is a temporary fix. Read more »