Another Elusive Annotative Text Exercise

Hey Everyone!

It’s been quite a while since my last recent, but breathe easy ;) I am still around.

Fortunatley (or unfortnatley depending on perspective) the last project I was on I had less to do with the set up.  I still had to delve into some of the drawings of course and this was one of the many issues that caused me great headaches.  This next post was something that I believe to be a systemic approach with respect to drawings setup, but the post explains a work around after the drawing setup is a fail.

***I CANNOT STRESS DRAWING COLLABORATION SETUP ENOUGH.  THE DESIGN TEAM NEEDS TO CONSIDER WHAT SHOULD BE IN FILES AND HOW THEY WILL EFFECT THE END USER, ESPECIALLY DURING THE CONSTRUCTION SERVICES PORTION.  DRAWING NEED TO BE FLEXIBLE AND EFFICIENT LATER IN THE PROJECT (PARTICULARLY FOR DESIGN-BUILD PROJECTS)

In this post, I am going to walk the reader (hopefully you) what do in the case when there is text in design files. 

NOTE:  THIS IS SOMETHING I ATTEMPT TO PROTEST DURING FILE SETUP.  NO DESIGN TEXT IN THE XREF (topography is fine).  THIS IS A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT TOPIC AND CAN BE DISCUSSED AS A SIDEBAR CONVERSION.

Ok….let me paint the picture.  A design file with storm/sanitary  sewer is created and referenced in a package for a Construction Package.  Civil 3D text of pipe sizes  are dynamic and included in the design file.  The Construction sheet is to plot at 1:500.  A realization was made, that the proposed works which will go under a set of rail tracks, will require permit.  The drawing must be recreated and as luck would have it the scale is to be 1:250.  Not only will you have to ensure the leaders’ positions are scaled correctly, you’ll also notice that all your text may not have been Civil 3D annotative text.  The Civil 3D labels scales but the additional notes don’t.  What a mess!

Image 1 below shows the drawings at the 1:250 scale.  Notice that most of the text is scaled to a professional level, but the “TRACK LOAD INFLUENCE ZONE”, “MIN 0.3…” and “XXX STM” sizes appears as though a Jeff Foxworthy fifth grader added them.  Now, if text wasn’t in the design files you wouldn’t have this problem, but it’s too late for that so let’s look at a duct tape fix.

Image 2 shows how are the labels appear the same size in the design file, prior to any viewports being added.

 

Now in the design file.  If you select the text (“TRACK…” text).  You’ll note that the text is not Annotative.

 

Image 4 shows you how to give that text a flexibility to show annotatively in future viewports.  In our case we need to set up to be shown at 1:250.  Follow the red marking below to add your desired scale(s).

When you get back into the design file, you can select the text and see a faint second writing of the same text – Image 5.  If you see this, you’re on the right track.

Intuitively, you think you be finished here, but that`s not the case.  You`ll have to actually select into the text box, select the text and see that the text highlighted is being marked as Annotative – Image 6 and 7.

This last process it quite convoluted and sometimes the text box states that it is already annotative, but when you actually highlight the text it doesn’t show the Annotative option.  Be sure this selected. 

Now save your design file, go back to your sheetfile and regenerate.  You may have to work on justification and other things pertaining to a location, but understand this is a last resort when you’re trying to recreate things without making too many changes to a drawing.

Hope that helps.