Annotative Scale for Planting and Site Hatches
Issue
You want a site or planting hatch to have the same hatch scale across multiple viewports at different plot scales.
For example, you might want the boxes making up this hatch pattern to be the same size, regardless of the scale assigned to the viewport where it's visible.
Solution
You can scale your hatches in this way using Annotative Scaling, although we do not recommend it. We gave plans to integrate this hatch-scaling capability into future versions, however.
In most cases, our Plot Scale tool is sufficient for scaling your viewports. We recommend considering using this tool rather than choosing Annotative Scaling as an option. Annotative Scale is an intermediate to advanced CAD skill that is extremely error-prone. Our team is unable to support issues with Annotative Scale outside of paid training sessions.
More information:
- Why we do not recommend using Annotative Scale
- We also recommend reading up on linetype scale (LTSCALE) for important issues and settings you need to know before trying to use annotative scale.
Never use annotative hatches within details. They are not needed, and you will get undesirable results.
1. Place all hatches as smart planting or site hatches.
2. Use the status bar menu to enable and then turn on the Annotation Visibility and AutoScale buttons.
The status bar menu is available in the lower right corner of your AutoCAD interface. For information on how to enable and turn on these options, see our status bar toggles article.
3. Set your Annotative Scale.
If you don’t see your desired scale in the list, you can set the scale using our Plot Scale tool and it will add it to the bottom of the list.
4. Select all your hatches.
You can use our Highlight tool to help you select everything, or just right-click one of the selected hatches and choose the Select Similar option from the menu.
5. Open the Properties panel, and change the Annotative option to YES.
Do not press the ESC key or end the command at this point. The scale might be too large, and you need to keep everything selected.
6. Still in the Properties panel, change the scale to 1.
To see how Land F/X has scaled a hatch pattern, open our Hatch tool from the F/X Site ribbon, click the pattern, then click Edit to see the desired scale.
Cancel out, then apply the scale to the hatch.
7. Now change the Annotation Scale to see the hatch change scales.
In viewports, these hatches will now auto-scale to be the exact same size when printed on a sheet of paper. These hatches will maintain their Land F/X data, and you can still use our callout, Verify, Highlight, Match, and schedule tools, as well as all the other great tools you get with our data.
Potential issues:
• Does the hatch not change scale when you change the annotative scale or go between different scale viewports? You might not have AutoScale turned on to make sure annotation scale changes are added to the hatch objects. Turn this setting on, then change the annotation scale in the drawing with the hatches. You might experience a delay as the information is added to the hatches.
• Do you not see the annotative hatches through an Xref, through a viewport, or immediately after changing the hatch to be annotative? You might have Annotation Visibility turned off. Turn that setting on, along with making sure layers aren’t frozen or viewport frozen.
• Does the scale not look correct in your viewport? You might not have set up the units, size, or scale correctly on your layout. Check these settings with our Units and Scale documentation tips.
Contact
- Land F/X
Our software tailors AutoCAD® to the needs of landscape architects, irrigation designers, and other professionals. We automate your most tedious tasks and ensure accuracy, giving you more time to design.