Scale Dimstyle Model for Viewport

[blesseddayever]

I moved to this brand new architectural company and 3 different co-workers taught me these 3 different things in setting up Dimstyle. Do we do it right?

1. I use scale 1:1 on my model but when it comes to set up the Dimstyle first I have to figure out what scale I am going to use on my viewport. For instance, if I choose to use scale 3/8" = 1'-0 on my viewport then on the Text tab I have to create 3" height on text style.

Sometimes when I miss my judgment on choosing the scale for my viewport window I have to create a new style on the dimstyle with different text style to serve its text height.

Is there a way to set one style on the dimstyle that works for all viewport scales?

2. I use the 'Use overall scale of' on Fit tab by in putting 32 for the scale factor & leave the text style on 0'-0" but this way does not help me of avoiding to create too many different styles on the Dimstyle either.

3. I check the 'Annotative' on Fit tab & create several scale in Annotative Object Scale. This way I only need to have one style on the dimstyle.

[dbroad · Accepted solution]

Ultimately you'll have to come to an agreement with your coworkers. There are two basic approaches for annotating in model space.
OLD STYLE: (More work to manage but fewer visibility surprises.  Lot's of effort to change scales.)

• Dimensions: Set up all sizes for plotting and use DIMSCALE for factoring.  This means a single dimension style is associated with a single scale.  Avoid annotative text styles in dimension and those with fixed text heights.
• Text:  Calculate heights by multiplying the plotted size by the scale factor: E.G. 1/4"=1'-0" means it gets scaled down by a factor of 48 to plot so you scale up plotted text size by a factor of 48 in model space.
• Hatch: Uses calculated scale factors per view.
• Mleaders:  Single-scale per style. Must calculate proper model sizes.  
• Tags (scaled by using scale factors)

NEW STYLE  (Less calculating and possibly reuse of annotations. Can cause visibility surprises when model annotation scale and paper viewport annotation scale vary.)

• Dimensions: Setup all sizes for plotting and check use annotative scaling.
• Text:  Style should have 0 height and be marked annotative.  Textsize should be set for paper space heights.
• Mleaders: Marked annotative and set plot size.
• Tags:  Drawn paper size and marked annotative.  Insert scale = 1.  ACA tags are automatically marked annotative and annotation size must use 1" instead of text size when creating tags.

There are lots of other awful dimstyle hacks like keeping dimscale set to 1 and calculating the size of every other feature by multiplying model scale factor by the plotted height.  I'd rather let those people go rather than deal with their mess.

Some users like to do all annotation in paper space but I don't think that is feasible with AutoCAD Architecture.

I use annotative scaling and keep a sharp eye out for missing annotation and annotation that is an incorrect size.