topic Re: AnnoSpecbreak text height in AutoCAD Plant 3D Forum

AnnoSpecbreak text height

DGRL — Mon, 20 Feb 2017 11:01:07 GMT

Hi Everyoine,

Well my question is,

After making an complete new house style to use in Plant 3D 2016 we ran into a small challenge.

The text height of the AnnoSpecBreaker is set to 1 in the text style editor ( done the way autodesk recommend you to do )
I changed it into 2 or 3 or any other height you can imaging.

For some strange reason the text height is forced to be 2.121320343559843 and we don't know where this is coming from.

The isoconfig.xml does not seems to be the file to alter these settings as they are removed in the 2016 version.
Back in to 2010 the isoconfig file was used for this as far as I remember correctly.

Can anybody point me to the correct file to alter the text height of this iso symbol?

Thanks in advance

Betreff: AnnoSpecbreak text height

h_eger — Mon, 20 Feb 2017 20:42:16 GMT

Hi @DGRL,

Can anybody point me to the correct file to alter the text height of this iso symbol?

AutoCAD Plant 3D scales the text style by 1: %% to force an appropriate representation of the text. As soon as you set the Spec Breaker to isometric display, the text is at the correct height.

Can not disturb but does not

Betreff: AnnoSpecbreak text height

dave.wolfe — Tue, 21 Feb 2017 02:24:09 GMT

An explanation of scaling text is here: http://docs.autodesk.com/PLNT3D/2015/ENU/pdf/Tailoring_AutoCAD_PnID_and_Plant_3D.pdf#page=140 It should still apply. I still see the same scaling options.

Betreff: AnnoSpecbreak text height

DGRL — Tue, 21 Feb 2017 07:50:15 GMT

Hi @h_eger

Thanks for the reply.

I know I am going to ask you an question that will make you doubt about my knowledge lol

What are you talking about and where do I change that?

I just took a look into the project setup ( p&id classes and p3d line group ) but I cant find the specbreaker symbol.

Since it is already present in P3D is it still needed to make a new non engineerings item and then referring to the specbreaker?

And can we manipulate this %% just to be sure that we always have text height of for example 3.5 units?

Thanks a lot 🙂

Betreff: AnnoSpecbreak text height

DGRL — Tue, 21 Feb 2017 08:07:04 GMT

HI @dave.wolfe

I should look better before saying things lol

I just collapsed all the levels and then the structure is almost the same

Just found the scalfactor and it was 3

Changed it to 10 and things are changing indeed

Now it is a matter of fine tuning my iso's

I still need to know where the 2.1213 height is coming from

It does not look nice at all now
some text heights are 10 some are 7.07
I need all the text to be for example be 5

But is it possible to just remove the scalefactor and get better results?

Coz all the text height is changing now.
I will figure this out myself for the most part ( learning experience )

Thanks a lot for your help

Hi @dave.wolfe

Thanks for your answer

Please open the document and see page 140 ( bottom)

Figure 221: Annotation Scale Factor showed there is not present in the isoconfig.xml that I have ( 2016 version )
Do you want to suggest that I have to program that line myself?

The whole scalefactor line is not present and the structure of my isoconfig.xml does not look the same at all

Kind regards

Re: AnnoSpecbreak text height

DGRL — Tue, 21 Feb 2017 08:37:42 GMT

General reply of myself

I played a little with the solutions giving by @dave.wolfe and @h_eger

though the text heights are changing it is not changing the way I requested

What I want to achieve is the text height of 1.76 to become the same as all the other text in the iso.

Is I change the scale factor EVERYTHING changes

Re: AnnoSpecbreak text height

DGRL — Tue, 21 Feb 2017 09:43:43 GMT

Found something else that might be interesting

See screenshot I made

I completely changed the Textstyle to be used in the isoconfig file

And still there is text on the iso that has its own text style

Where can we change this?

And don't get me wrong but as far as I understand now there are text heights and other things hardcoded by Autodesk?

Why in world would you do such?

Autodesk Please help us

Re: AnnoSpecbreak text height

dave.wolfe — Tue, 21 Feb 2017 14:11:37 GMT

FYI, for editing xml files, my personal favorite program is foxe: http://www.pdoteam.com/2012/08/editing-xml-files/

The behavior isn't hard coded, but I'll have to play around with it to see. Can you summarize what you are still trying to solve?

Re: AnnoSpecbreak text height

DGRL — Tue, 21 Feb 2017 15:11:24 GMT

@dave.wolfe

Is it possible to call?

That will be much faster

Using the foxe also now ( thanks for the push )

Anyway

As you can see on the screenshot there are 3 different text lines

What I want to see in properties is the same text height for all 3 text lines

Now it is different and stays different

I did exactly what you tolled me to do

Text is getting bigger or smaller
In the end all 3 text line changes according the scale factor

OPERATOR UP and F2 B4 G5 are bigger then 100HC01 and 10HC01

I WANT THEM ALL 3 TO BE SAME HEIGHT

not different heights like it is now

Like I mentioned before the text height in the iso.dwt file is set to 1 or whatsoever

Do this times the scale factor and you are getting the text height in the isometric.

Attached a dwg
Please see yourself

Thanks for all the effort and time

Kind regards

Re: AnnoSpecbreak text height

dave.wolfe — Tue, 21 Feb 2017 19:03:10 GMT

Did you try creating a skewed annotationstyle per page 142? http://docs.autodesk.com/PLNT3D/2015/ENU/pdf/Tailoring_AutoCAD_PnID_and_Plant_3D.pdf#page=142

That page gives the formula for calculating the size to match.

Re: AnnoSpecbreak text height

DGRL — Tue, 21 Feb 2017 20:35:53 GMT

Dear All

I found the solution that works for me the best, as i wanted the text height to be the same for the specbreaker.

Maybe i already read this somewhere i dont know.

What i did is opening the iso symbol dwg using the project setup.

Opened from there the annospecbreaker and went to format text.

there i changed the text height into a higher number and boom The height became the same.

kind regards

Re: AnnoSpecbreak text height

dave.wolfe — Tue, 21 Feb 2017 20:52:11 GMT

Yes, that works, but you'll have the same issue with any annotations that are shown skewed. (Hence the previous post).

Re: AnnoSpecbreak text height

DGRL — Wed, 22 Feb 2017 07:44:26 GMT

Hi @dave.wolfe

Thanks for the reply

Can you please help me out with this?

I did exactly what you wrote in your answers and nothing is working properly.

Even send an dwg for you to check

As far as I can see now all the text is linked to each other.

This will make it impossible to get them at the same text height

Altering the blocks one by one gives me exactly what I want ( if you know a better solution that will work, I'm open to hear that )
until now with the given solutions, I am not getting the result we want to get.

So either i am doing something wrong or the system p3D works on is corrupt.

Please let me know

Kind regards

Re: AnnoSpecbreak text height

dave.wolfe — Wed, 22 Feb 2017 13:46:24 GMT

All right. I am able to duplicate the issue even up to the 2018 beta. Bottom line: you're not supposed to have to modify the blocks in the isosymbolstyles.dwg, because the themes are supposed to control everything. Unfortunately, something at sometime broke, and the spec break block isn't reading any of the settings defined in the theme. I think it's a block-based issue, because the flange,bolt,gasket block doesn't work either. The text styles/size are defined/changed only in the isosymbolstyles.dwg. I've attached a zip of the fixed style that *should* work but isn't.

Re: AnnoSpecbreak text height

DGRL — Thu, 23 Feb 2017 11:47:08 GMT

Hi @dave.wolfe

Thanks for all the effort your doing to help us out.

If i understand you correctly this is an bug that was in Plant 3D in the past and is still not fixed properly by Autodesk?

Or do you mean that something broke on our side ( i.e. database error or other corruption )?

I tried the iso zip file you sent in 2016 and it does not generate an iso at all LOL

Kind regards

Re: AnnoSpecbreak text height

dave.wolfe — Thu, 23 Feb 2017 13:39:21 GMT

On second thought, I think the isos have always worked this way. It looks like the spec break in the Tailoring PDF is still the wrong size even with the skewed style setup. The iso style I attached was for 2018.

Re: AnnoSpecbreak text height

DGRL — Thu, 23 Feb 2017 15:18:23 GMT

@dave.wolfe

Well that is also something I thought

Back in 2010 it was not working even in the stella alfa beta trial of Plant 3D 2010.
In the end we can conclude that Autodesk never fixed this?

Can you please let me know how you think about this?

If this is the case then I consider my fix as temp. solution

how about that?

Re: AnnoSpecbreak text height

dave.wolfe — Thu, 23 Feb 2017 15:44:00 GMT

In 2010, Plant didn't have their own isometrics engine, that was introduced in 2012. I think it's one of the under the hood things that was designed to work a certain way, but the implementation didn't get finished. The xml is all there for us to control it, but it just doesn't work.

Re: AnnoSpecbreak text height

DGRL — Fri, 24 Feb 2017 11:29:43 GMT

Maybe I am confused because of the beta testing

See here a video from 2010 generating an iso with op3d 2010 or 2011

A demonstration of Isogen Spooling Isometric generation export in AutoCAD Plant 3D.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2EqIc-FXlc

uploaded op 18 apr. 2010

Diseño, modelo, y las plantas de proceso con el documento de AutoCAD Plant 3D 2011

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RPa3Y2rORs

Also Autodesk lincensed Intergraph for that back in 2009

http://blogs.intergraph.com/getsmart/2009/11/autodesk-licenses-isogen-technology-from-intergraph.html

Thanks for all the info and help

Really appreciate it.
Hopefully Autodesk will finish there work sometimes or will come with a good fix

I will use mines for the moment

Kind regards

Re: AnnoSpecbreak text height

dave.wolfe — Fri, 24 Feb 2017 14:27:55 GMT

RIght my point is that Plant 3d used Isogen for the beta, and up to Plant 3d 2011. In Plant 3d 2012 and higher they are using a isometric engine that Autodesk wrote (and has been updating since then), not Isogen.