Schedule Tag increases in size when created

[BristolCAD]

Hi All,

The time has come to make some minor updates to one of my Schedule Tags. I've been using the one I created  successfully for a few years now, they work well enough - but there are some curiosities which I've never quite got my head around which I would like to eliminate for the new version.

(see this thread here for the tag creation process: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/autocad-architecture-forum/schedule-tags-and-polyline-areas/td-p/8070...)

So, the main issue I have is when I create the tag it instantly trebles in size - so for example I create a text object and a bounding rectangle that will form the graphic 'look' of my tag; the rectangle is at 3000 units wide. I choose the rectangle and text elements, create the tag using my property definitions etc, choose the insert point for the tag and BAM! It instantly expands to 9525 units wide. The tag is perfectly functional, it can be dragged into all other drawings from a tool palette and it comes in at a consistent 9525 - but I want them to come in at the smaller 3000 size I originally wanted!

Now, I've been working on the assumption this is something to do with Annotation scaling? But the text object that forms the tag is set to non annotative, the annotation scale of the model is set at 1:1 so I'm not quite sure.

Any help appreciated!

Thanks

[dbroad]

If you're using the create tag tool, you draw text at 1" height and the other geometry relative to that size.  The final tag size when inserted will be based on your annotation size and your annotation scale. So 3/32" text in settings will modify your tag by shrinking the tag elements by 3/32 and then enlarging it when inserted to the scale (so 3/32" * 48" for 1/4"=1'-0") will make the tag text about 4.5" H. When the annotation scale changes, it will become bigger or smaller based on the annotation scale. It will plot so that the text is as set in your settings. For my example, it would be 3/32".

[David_W_Koch · Accepted solution]

Schedule Tags use annotation scaling and also scale according to the Annotation Plot Size.

Here is the process I use when creating a Schedule Tag from scratch.

If you are just tweaking the View Block of an existing Schedule Tag, you should be able to insert an instance and edit that block in place.  Size any changes or additions relative to the size of the elements in the REFEDITed block.

[BristolCAD]

Hi both, thanks for the response. OK, based on that link and googling around to find out where the 'annotation plot size' setting was hidden, I've got it - it was in the Drawing Setup dialogue (accessed by typing UNITS into the command line), scale was set to 1:1 but annotation plot size was set to 3.17500000. Not sure why. I've changed that to 1 and the tags now stay at the size I make them.

Many thanks!

[BristolCAD]

Ok, resurrecting this topic again - so the tags have all been working perfectly since May 2023, coming in at the correct size. Lovely.

The other day I changed the name of the folder they were stored in on my laptop, forgetting it would break the tags and of course when I went to use the tags AutoCAD couldn't find the property definitions etc because the folder no long exists - so no issue, I relinked through the properties for each tag, pointing back to the tag source file in the newly named folder - and now the schedule tags are coming in 2.5x larger than they should despite the annotation plot size being set to 1 as above. 

What's happened?! The source file hasn't changed, my templates haven't changed, the only thing I did was relink the tags. 

[BristolCAD]

Don't suppose anyone has an solution for this one?

[David_W_Koch]

Any chance your source files are being seen as Metric with cm units and your target file has units set to inches?  Or vice versa (my 5 o'clock brain refuses to think hard enough to sort out which way results in things being 2.54 times bigger than expected)?

Is your annotation plot size set to 1 in the file where you are placing the tags?  If so, that may be an issue.  The method I referenced sets the annotation plot size to 1 when creating the tags, so that I can avoid doing math and just make anything I want to plot at the final drawing's annotation plot size one unit.  But in the file where they are placed, it is set to 3/32" (our standard text height).  Setting it to 1 would make the tags too big (but by more than 2.5 times).

[BristolCAD]

Hi David,

Its a good thought, but no, all files are correct - it was all working absolutely fine until the other week when I renamed the tag location file and relinked the tags.

Worth mentioning that this is on my laptop - the exact same templates and tag source files are still working absolutely fine on my Desktop.

Very weird! For now I'm going to assume its some sort of odd bug and I'll just have to manually reduce the tag sizes each time. At some stage I'll purge all the tags from the template file and set it up new, see if that fixes things.

[David_W_Koch]

If it works on one computer, but not the other, then I would suspect the problem lies with the installation or settings on the non-working computer, rather than the content itself.

One thing to compare between the active profiles being used on the two machines:  in the Options dialog, on the User Preferences tab, compare the settings in the Insertion scale area.  These govern the default settings that are used for files that are set to unitless.  One governs unitless source files; the other unitless target files.

If the laptop has different settings, perhaps matching the settings on the desktop will help.  If not, then the solution to the mystery lies elsewhere.

[BristolCAD]

Hi David, thought I would update - all insertion settings match between the desktop and the laptop. The issue remains, so indeed the solution to the mystery remains!

All said, its a mild annoyance rather than anything crucial. I just scale the blocks down by 0.4 when working on the laptop.