Deleted Anno Scales Keep Reappearing

[Anonymous]

Individual annotative objects keep re-adding unwanted annotative scales to themselves.  I've repeatedly selected sets of dims and tags that I only want to carry annoscale of 3" = 1'.  I delete all other anno scales from their properties, and everything looks and works fine.  Some time later, I return to the drawing to find that these anno objects have regained one or more unwanted anno scales.  What action causes this, and is there a setvar that will prevent it?

[pendean]

Can you give more concrete examples, so that others can replicate?

[Anonymous]

I've attached a screen capture.  The top is just before changing the Annotation Scale dropdown list from 3" = 1'-0" to 1/2" = 1'-0".  The bottom is just after.  Changing the displayed anno scale automatically added 1/2" = 1'-0" to my annotative objects.  The culprit was ANNOAUTOSCALE, which was set to 1.  I set it back to 0 (I assume it was at 0 for a long time, since this was not a problem in the past, and something caused it to get set to 1).  I'm guessing that this functionality is common knowledge, but I've not run across it before.

Does ANNOAUTOSCALE have a GUI presence somewhere in the Options tabs?

[pendean]

You have to set ANNOAUTOSCALE to zero first before you INSERT annotaitve blocks or create annotative text/dimensions: this stops the new scale from being added. It doesn't do what you want after the fact.

Could this be your issue? I can;t replicate it any other way here: can you share a DWG file snippit with the problem?

[David_W_Koch]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Does ANNOAUTOSCALE have a GUI presence somewhere in the Options tabs?

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There is a toggle for it on the Drawing Window Status bar, to the right of the scale control.  It is the one with the icon that looks like the end of a three-sided architect's scale with the lightning bolt (not the light bulb), so it is the second one to the right of the scale control.  If this is turned on, every time you change your drawing scale, the new scale is added to all annotative objects.  While there may be rare occasions when that is desireable, I generally keep this turned off.  In the images you posted, it is toggled on, which is why the new drawing scale selected was added to your annotative object.  There does not appear to be a place to set this value in the Options dialog.

The ANNOAUTOSCALE variable can carry any of the following values, per the 2013 Online Help.  It can also be the negative of these values; when negative, it is turned off, but "remembering" the previous value which is restored when toggled back on by the Drawing Window Status Bar tool.  This value is stored in the registry, not the drawing, so the setting applies to all drawings opened by a particular user for a particular profile, until changed by that user.

0 = Newly set annotation scale is not added to annotative objects.
1 = Adds the newly set annotation scale to annotative objects that support the current scale except for those on layers that are turned off, frozen, locked or that are set to Viewport > Freeze.
2 = Adds the newly set annotation scale to annotative objects that support the current scale except for those on layers that are turned off, frozen, or that are set to Viewport > Freeze.
3 = Adds the newly set annotation scale to annotative objects that support the current scale except for those on layers that are locked.
4 = Adds the newly set annotation scale to all annotative objects that support the current scale.

[pendean]

Worth noting in all that description: Newly set annotation scale means a lot.

[Anonymous]

Thanks to you both for the replies.  I've never seen a setting with negative values as choices.  The Help does not list 0 (zero) as a choice, but before I read the Help, I set it to zero, and it accepted that choice.  I wonder what setting it to zero actually does.  Probably the same as setting it to -4.

[David_W_Koch]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Thanks to you both for the replies.  I've never seen a setting with negative values as choices.  The Help does not list 0 (zero) as a choice, but before I read the Help, I set it to zero, and it accepted that choice.  I wonder what setting it to zero actually does.  Probably the same as setting it to -4.

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Setting it to 0 turns the feature off and clears any memory of what was set previously.  If you later toggle the feature on via the Drawing Window Status Bar tool, it will turn in on, with a value of 1.  If you set it to -2, 2, -3, 3, -4 or 4 and then toggle the value using the tool, the value will be changed to the inverse of the current value.

I believe that there are other system variables which have multiple possible values that use this same concept of setting the value to a negative number to temporarily turn the feature off without losing the previous setting, but most do not.