Custom Drawing Labels

[Taproot]

I saw Danny H's recent query on the Drawing Label and while I didn't know enough to answer the question, it got me thinking about this tool.

I realized that after years of struggling with this tool I've finally found a workable solution.

 

For me, the issue has been that for virtually all of my drawing titles I want to include a scale bar.  And for plans, I want to include a north arrow.

Prior to "object styles", I found that grouping the label, north arrow and scale bar created weirdness.  Often the label wouldn't update in the OIP when selecting the viewport.  If the viewport was rescaled, then the 3 objects would move around irregularly.  Sometimes the North arrow would be incorrect on a (seldom used) plan.  It was a chore to keep up.

 

Solution

 

We have created an object style for each scale that we commonly use in the drawing set:  1:240 (site), 1:96 & 1:48 (Primary Drawings)  1:12 (Details), etc...

We have one style with a north arrow (plans) and one without (elevations, sections).

 

Here's a visual example.

 

 

Within the style, we can rotate the north arrow and it will change it's orientation for all similarly styled Drawing Labels.

For the scale bar, we found that embedding a 'graphic scale' wouldn't work, so we exploded (ungrouped) one and then joined its geometry into a continuous polygon by adding a thin rectangle horizontally aligned to the line of the Drawing Label.  If you have multiple objects, they will misbehave.  The zig-zag style was selected because it works with both even and odd increments - like 1' = 50' or 1" = 30'. 

 

Below the scale text, we've included a "note" field (not shown) in the style which allows us to list overall comments like:  "All objects are existing UON"

 

Attached is an example (v.2023)  if you want to reverse engineer this solution.  Like many things in VW - what looks simple and straightforward actually takes a fair bit of persistence to pull off, but then it is immensely satisfying to have it work correctly.

 

Drawing Title.vwx

 

 

 

 

[Tom W.]

55 minutes ago, Taproot said:

We have created an object style for each scale that we commonly use in the drawing set:  1:240 (site), 1:96 & 1:48 (Primary Drawings)  1:12 (Details), etc..

 

This is what I do too but it would be great if you could include a Scale Bar object in a Drawing Label + it scaled automatically based on the VP scale. This has been discussed previously but not sure if there's a Wishlist item on it... Dynamic text within Drawing Labels can return the scale of the VP they are placed within so you'd think it wouldn't be impossible for a Scale Bar to do the same...?

[rDesign]

Here’s a wishlist request created for this functionality back in 2016:

And another one from 2019:

 

[bob cleaver]

@Taprootthank you for sharing the drawing label - I noticed your class started with 00 - care to share the class strategy 

[Taproot]

Hello Bob

21 minutes ago, bob cleaver said:

I noticed your class started with 00 - care to share the class strategy 

 

Sure - Here's a link to the Custom Class thread I shared awhile back: