Yet any change to the annotation itself, such as editing the text, appears in each viewport - no more creating it twice.Īnother long-time user frustration has been the need to create extra layers just to control the appearance of objects. In addition, when the same annotation is visible in multiple viewports with different scales, users can adjust the position of those annotations independently in each viewport. A new button makes it easy to lock or unlock a viewport and new drop-downs make it easy to change the scale of the viewport and to ensure that the annotative scale matches the scale of the viewport. Several new tools on AutoCAD’s status bar help users adjust the scale of any viewport. high regardless of the scale of the viewport. When the scale of a viewport is changed, all of the annotative objects automatically resize based on the new scale of the viewport. Any layers whose settings are overridden in this fashion are clearly visible in the enhanced Layer Properties manager dialog box. Any object with the new annotative property can then have one or more scales assigned to it, so that the same object can appear in different viewports with varying scale factors.įigure 2: Users can now control appearance of layers on a per-viewport basis. Any text, dimension, leader, hatch pattern, block, or attribute can now be defined as annotative, and any of these objects already present in existing drawings can easily be made annotative when that drawing is opened in AutoCAD 2008 by assigning it an annotative property. With AutoCAD 2008, Autodesk has solved this long-time frustration with a new concept called annotation scaling.
Some users solved this problem by creating many of their annotations in paper space, but this work-around was itself also problematic. And the same holds true for other annotation objects. If a note needed to appear in two different views at different scales, you had to create the note twice, with all the attendant hardships if you needed to edit that note. = 1 ft.-0 in., all of the text you previously added had to be manually resized in order to keep its printed size 1/8-in. If you later decided that the drawing should be printed at a scale of 1/4 in. = 1 ft.-0 in., you had to add text that was one foot high in order for the text to be 1/8-in. For example, if you’re drawing something that will later be plotted at a scale of 1/8 in. Pretty straightforward, right? But when it comes time to add text, dimensions, cross-hatching, and callout symbols - basically any type of annotation that needs to remain a specific size regardless of the scale at which the drawing will be plotted - users had to decide in advance what size to draw those objects. If an object is two feet long, you draw it two feet long. When you draw objects in AutoCAD, you typically draw full-size. Since its inception, one of the most difficult concepts for users has been the issue of scale. But for this, its 22nd release, the company has truly pulled a rabbit out of the proverbial hat - and customers are literally cheering when they witness the improvements in AutoCAD 2008. In AutoCAD 2007, programmers turned their attention to 3D modeling and conceptual design. In AutoCAD 2006, the major focus was on 2D drafting. For each of the past four annual releases, Autodesk has surprised its customers with new features that really do make AutoCAD better and easier to use. How do they do it? After nearly 25 years, Autodesk still finds ways to improve its flagship CAD program.
Any suitable object can be made annotative by simply activating its annotative property. Figure 1:With annotation scaling, the same text, dimension, or hatch pattern appears at the proper size in multiple viewports regardless of scale, yet the location of annotative objects can vary between viewports.