Introduction

Managing annotative styles in AutoCAD plays a key role in keeping text, blocks, hatches, and lines properly scaled and consistent across multiple viewports. When you apply annotative styles correctly, these elements automatically adjust their size and appearance to match the active drawing scale. In this blog, we focus on practical methods for managing annotative styles—especially for blocks, hatches, and lines—using a sample floor plan drawing.

Getting Started: Preparing the Drawing

Let us start with the Model space and open Floor Plan Sample.dwg. You can find this drawing at C:\Program Files\Autodesk\AutoCAD 2026\Sample\Database Connectivity.

I recommend creating a copy of the file that you will modify during this exercise.

Setting the Drawing Units

First, we will change the units to centimeters using the UNITS command.

Img 1. Drawing units 

Select the values as shown in Figure 1. Make sure to keep the annotative scale set to 1:1, as indicated by the arrow. We will return to this parameter later and explain it in more detail. 

Scaling the Original Drawing

Since the original drawing was created in inches and is now set to centimeters, it is necessary to scale the entire drawing by a factor of 2.54. Apply the SCALE command, use 0,0 as the base point, and enter 2.54 as the scale factor.  

All blocks that were present in the drawing now have scale factors of 2.54 in their properties under Scale X, Scale Y, and Scale Z.  The only block we will modify is the room tag, named RMNUM. Type the QSELECT command and select the values in the fields as shown in Figure 2. 

Img. 2. Quick Selection of all blocks named RMNUM 

After clicking OK, 99 blocks will be selected, and you need to change their Scale X parameter to 1.  After entering the new value, the properties list should look like this. 

Img. 3. RMNUM properties 

Editing the Room Tag Block

We will focus only on the lower-right part of the drawing, specifically the area containing furniture and the room tags 6150, 6151, 6153, and 6170. 

Select the block  6170 in the Gary Burgess office, right-click to open the menu, and choose Block Editor. 

Img. 4. Edit block 

Modify the block-related properties to match those shown in Figure 5. because we are working with annotative styles and using centimeters for units. 

Img. 5. Block properties. 

Scale the entire block by a factor of 2.67, using 0,0 as the base point. Save the block when closing the Block Editor. The changes you have made to the block must be updated using the ATTSYNC command.  We will create another block that looks like the one shown in Figure. 

Img. 6. Switch block 

Close the Block Editor and save the block upon closing. Place the switch block next to the entrance doors of rooms 6170, 6153, 6151, and 6150.  Modify the properties of the text that indicate the room owners, as shown in Figure 7. (For more details about creation of Annotate text reference the blog post.

Img. 7. Multiline text 

Adding Annotative Hatches and Lines

Let’s add a hatch (1,2,4) and a few dashed lines (3) to the Model space drawing, as shown in Figure 8. 

Img. 8. New elements with annotative property 

The hatch 1 data are: 

• Pattern: INSUL 

• Angle: 45 

• Hatch pattern scale: 20 

• Options: Annotative: selected 

The hatch 2 data are: 

• Pattern: USER 

• Angle: 45 

• Hatch pattern scale: 5 

• Options: Annotative: selected 

Line 3 is of type CENTER.
The hatch 4 data are: 

• Pattern: AR-CONC 

• Angle: 45 

• Hatch pattern scale: 5 

• Options: Annotative: selected 

Why Only Certain Elements Are Annotative

Why did we make only the room tag and the light switch block annotative, while we left the furniture non-annotative? When we create viewports in the Layout, we apply different scales so each viewport shows exactly what we need. Furniture must always scale with the room’s size and position as we zoom in or out. However, texts, hatches, dashed lines, and blocks with attributes must keep the same visual size in every view, regardless of scale. Their appearance should never change because of viewport scaling. In some cases, we may even avoid applying a hatch when intersecting elements become too small, since the hatch would no longer display clearly. Let’s now look at the actual display to see how it appears.

Img. 9. Viewport at 1:2 scale 

Understanding Viewport Scales

Notice that the selected viewport uses a 1:2 scale, which is extremely unusual for this type of drawing (architecture), even though the drawing is on A0 format, as in our case. It is simply impossible to represent anything at a 1:2 scale on a 1200 mm wide sheet of paper. 

This, definitely, is not a mistake, and here is the explanation. The sheet in the Layout uses millimeters as the unit of measurement. At the beginning, we set the Model space units to centimeters, so a 1:2 scale actually means 1 mm : 2 cm, which is equivalent to 1 mm : 20 mm, making much more sense. Since the sheet units are in millimeters, the sizes of elements using annotative styles are also specified in millimeters. Practically, this means that the text height was set to 3 mm, and the hatches to 7.5 mm and 5 mm. 

Explaining the 7.5 mm Hatch Spacing

You may wonder where the 7.5 mm value comes from, since we never entered it directly. The INSUL pattern used to represent wall insulation follows the ANSI standard, and its base spacing at a scale factor of 1 is 3/8″. When we apply scaling to the hatch, AutoCAD multiplies our desired scale by the initial line spacing, regardless of the standard. In our case, 20 × 3/8 = 7.5 mm. This initial spacing between lines is the reason we used the USER hatch type (initial spacing = 1) instead of ANSI31 (initial spacing = 1/8). 

As you can see in Figure 9, no hatch is visible. The intersections are too small for the hatch to be clearly seen. In the next viewport using a 1:1 scale, it becomes visible. 

Img. 10. Viewport at 1:1 scale 

Annotative Behavior at Larger Scales

The next viewport, at a 2:1 scale, demonstrates a very interesting capability of annotative elements. 

Img. 11. Viewport at 2:1 scale 

The room tag and the owner’s name do not always have to be in the same position, but they must always maintain the same size. This is how visibility and different positions are achieved in viewports with varying scales. 

Img. 12 Dislocation of blocks and texts 

When you select an annotative block or text in Model space, you first assign to it the scales at which it can be displayed (it will be invisible in the others). Setting the scales is done by selecting the element and in the Properties palette under the Misc group, locate the Annotative Scale field (see Figure 13). 

Img. 13. Assigning annotative scales 

Click the circled icon and add the desired scale, as explained in the blog dedicated only to annotative texts

The working principle is exactly the same.  

Conclusion

Finally, we need to analyze the behavior of dashed (non-continuous) lines. In our example, a CENTER type line is used. Lines are not annotative objects, but they retain the sizes defined when creating them using the MKLTYPE command. If you specified a line segment of 5 mm followed by a gap of 3 mm, the line on the sheet will be displayed as a 5 mm dash, a 3 mm gap, another 5 mm dash, and so on, regardless of the scale used. This is completely logical because dashed line types are always drawn the same way at any scale. 

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Nedeljko Šovljanski

Software developer at CADonist

He has over twenty years of experience with Autodesk software and in training users to work correctly and efficiently.
He is a certified AutoCAD Professional, Inventor Professional, and Autodesk Certified Instructor.
His specialty is automating AutoCAD and Inventor software through custom add-ins.

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