Scale issue

[gotphish001]

I thought I had a grasp on annotative, but I can't get this to work right. I have a drawing from a surveyor that I attached minus some stuff I got rid of to lighten it up. What happens is when I reference this dwg into my other plans on a few sheet all the text is crazy big. I don't want numbers 1.5 inches tall on a cover sheet. HaHa What I'm trying to do is change the text to annotative and change the sizes to a couple of our standard sizes (3/32",1/8"). I need the drawing to reference into 2 places one will be 1"=30' and the other 1"=10', but I want the text to stay the same sizes as I just mentioned. The original they sent me was 1"=50' in model space. I know that doesn't have much to do with how it shows up in a viewport but I included it as I think the drawing I uploaded I made a 1/8"TEST size in model space to try something. The black square is a leader that I've been trying to get to do what I want, but I'll eventually want to do it to more leaders and some other text. When I do what I thought was right you get what you see in that black square. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. I set up a layout for test purposes with the two scales I need the reference to be, so I don't need to keep saving the reference and flipping drawings. Plus that was easier to upload here anyway.

I'm using ACA17 and I have no idea what the drawing was made in. I'm pretty sure it was AutoCad Civil. I'm also guessing it is 2018 because when I try and bring up _units I get a message saying I can't because of objects in a newer version. I thought maybe the units where set to something else and that was what was making me have trouble, but I can't get into them.

On a side note when I add annotative scales is there a way to only show the current scale when I click on it instead of all 3 scales? Like I click on text and I get 3 copies of it different sizes if it has 3 scales.

[David_W_Koch]

The issue may have to do with the units in the Civil file being feet and your units being inches.  Mixing 2018 and previous versions files may not be helping, either.  If no one else jumps in, I will try to take a look at this tonight, when I have access to 2018.

As for the multiple scales ghosting in:

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Turnin...

(Set SELECTIONANNODISPLAY to 0.)

[leothebuilder]

I will start with your last question as that is the easiest to answer.

Try ANNOALLVISIBLE and set it to 0 (zero) to display only the current annotation scale of the text.

Setting this variable to 1 makes all the different scales visible when the text is selected. (great for if you need to move the text)

As for the other question, my guess is that the surveyor's drawing is drawn using feet as the unit.

If you bring this into an architectural drawing using inches that will make the text 12 times the size you would want.

Not being sure what text you need in your architectural site plan, you should fist of all reduce the scale of this text to 1/12th.

Then you can make the text annotative and add the two scales you need for your two viewports.

Any other text from the survey drawing just freeze.

[gotphish001]

I thought that the survey was probably in feet. That is why I tried to get into units but it won't let me. I tried scaling the whole survey down 1/12, but that doesn't help (figured it would cause more problems than it solved which it did), I tried scaling the text size I want of 1/8" times 12 to 1-1/2" but it doesn't seem to work either. Some times when I try and put in a new text size it changes back to the original size and sometimes 9.000 for some reason. I tried changing the actual leader style. It won't let me change the standard style, so I made of copy of standard and that let me change it. Didn't work either. The EPM leader style is our standard, but it's not annotative so that didn't help. I only put notes in paperspace with that style so doesn't need to be anno. I also reset all the scales back to default imperial to see if they were screwed up. No luck so far.

@leothebuilder As to what text I want from the survey in my architectural plan: The plan will be cropped to just a little bit around the building so I really only need to get a few pieces of text to work. I wanted to include a few contour line elevations and the notes that are on the poles and maybe street sign notes if they are in a place that might be in view from a deck.

In reality I could have just hid everything text wise in the survey and then just added the notes back in on paperspace since there is only probably a dozen or 2 at the most that I wanted. I definitely wasted more time trying to solve this than it would have taken to just do that, but at this point I'd like to figure it out because I know it will come up again. 

[leothebuilder]

A lot of survey plans have text in attributes and blocks so it becomes difficult to manipulate.

I usually just freeze all the surveyors text and add my own.

Takes too much time to manipulate their files. Specially if you receive updates for the civil/survey because you have to start all over again.

[David_W_Koch · Accepted solution]

Inserting 2018 content in a 2013-format file (or having the provider do a SAVEAS to 2013 format) is making life more difficult than it needs to be.

I opened your file in ACA 2018, and, as expected, the drawing unit is set to feet.  If you are hoping to use this in a file where the base linear unit is an inch (as it is when using Architectural units), this would have to be scaled up 12 times, if automatic scaling for differences in units is not in play.  I externally referenced your file into a file started with an out-of-the-box ACA template, and it appears to have scaled itself properly.

If you are going to be working in this file directly, keep in mind that even in files where the base unit is in feet, paper space in a layout is measured in inches.  The future objects seem to be doing a number on the annotation scales - in 2018, 1" = 50' is listed as 1 paper inch = 50 drawing feet; in 2016, it is listed as 1 paper inch = 50 drawing inches.  If it is really interpreting the scale that way in 2016, that is going to mess with annotative content.

If I were doing this, for the purposes you stated, I would not be working in the site drawing file at all.  I would externally reference it into my file, clipping it to the area I need to see.  If the text in the site file works out when that is done, great.  If not, I would freeze those layers and add my own text in the host file, which has the familiar base linear unit of one inch and your usual content should work as expected.

I did look at the leader in the rectangle - that was a multileader, and it was not annotative.  The text height is set to 0.0938, which may explain why it is so small (no annotation scaling factor will be applied, as it is not annotative).

[gotphish001]

That's what I figured, it would be easier to renote the file in my paperspace. I tried changing the multileader to annotative and adding the scales but that seemed to have no effect. Even making a new multileader style didn't seem to work.

I originally had the file referenced in. I just set it up the way it was as it was easier to just upload the one file to the forum. The referenced file did scale right referenced, but I still had to go into the reference to try and make changes to the text size so it was still the same issue.