Work Areas: Multiple Scales Within Work Area
By roband on Tuesday, 18 July 2023
Posted in Feature Requests
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I'm a big fan of work areas. I use them a lot to run materials schedules for separate areas within overall plans. In almost all cases, I put the work areas in a separate dwg file and xref them into each drawing needing work areas.

Currently I'm working on a grading design for which there will be one overall plan at 1"=20' and two enlargements (encompassing the whole area shown on the overall plan), each at 1"=10'. I am wanting to show some key spot elevations and other scale dependent objects on the 1"=20' plan, but show other spot elevations at 1"=10'. I would like to do this within the same drawing file. The work areas are in an xref and are working correctly.

I have two work areas set up with 1"=10' scale set. The overall drawing scale is set to 1"=20'. Is there a way to temporarily disable the scaling within the work areas so that I can place scale dependent objects at 1"=20' within those work areas?

Here are the workarounds that I've tried:


  1. Freeze work area layer: this does not seem to have any effect on the scale; whatever the scale set for the now frozen work area still rules.



  1. Unload work area using XREF manager: this has the desired effect. When the work areas are unloaded, any spot elevations placed are inserted at the overall drawing scale.


My unloading workaround works well, but I'm wondering if there is a built-in feature or process that I am missing.

Thanks for any help.
Roband,
Glad you are using those Work Areas as an xref! As for your workflow, yes, it would be suggested to simply set those spots in their own file so you can simply place them at the scale set to the drawing (not needing to worry about the xref'd Work Areas), but if you insist on keeping things in the same drawing, your second work around is your best bet.
At the end of the day, Unloading the xref vs. setting spots in a different file are achieving the same thing, just trading pros and cons around slightly per scenario.
Jake Lott
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1 year ago
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Jake thank you for the response,

We have done similar workarounds for enlargements because scales can vary depending on the level of detail. One issue or question I have with these enlargements includes the scale bars. LandFX uses the overall drawing scale, not the viewport scale when you insert the scale bar. How would you recommend inserting different scale bars? It would be helpful if it is based on viewport or if we could select the scale rather than going off the drawing scale.
Amanda Holtman
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10 months ago
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Amanda,
Yes, you are right, that is a bit of a pain, and we definitely have that noted so thanks for the suggestion. Currently still on the wishlist to have the system do this automatically, but I can try and revisit to see what effort it would take to get implemented. You are always welcome to simply use your own scale block that is dynamic and has multiple scale visibility states to toggle between.
Jake Lott
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10 months ago
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Amanda,
One last workflow that was brought to my attention that might work well for you. Double click into your viewport (making sure it is locked so you don't accidentally shift things) and place the scale block into modelspace, within the proper Work Area and the scale will show properly. If you then want the scale block to be in paperspace, just use the CHSPACE command and bring that block back into paperspace.
Jake Lott
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10 months ago
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