AutoCAD 2025: An Overview of Creating Annotative Objects

by John Flanagan

Introduction

Annotation objects provide information about a feature, such as the length of a wall, the diameter of a fastener, or a detail callout. Typically, annotation objects are scaled differently than the views of the drawing and depend on the scale of how they should appear when plotted.

You can control the method that an annotation object is scaled by defining the object either as non-annotative or annotative.

• Non-annotative objects, require a fixed size or scale that is calculated based on the scale used to plot the drawing.
  • Annotative objects automatically adjust to display uniformly at the same size or scale regardless of the scale of the view.

Creating Annotative Objects

Annotation scales can be associated with annotative objects in AutoCAD so that these objects can be sized properly for specific annotation scales in model space and displayed correctly in paper space.

The following objects can be annotative:

• Hatches
• Text (single-line and multiline)
• Dimensions
• Tolerances
• Leaders and multileaders (created with MLEADER)
• Blocks
• Attributes

Properties Dialogue Box

Many of the dialog boxes used to create these objects contain an Annotative check box where you can make the object annotative. You can also change existing objects to be annotative by changing the annotative property in the Properties palette.

When you hover the cursor over an annotative object that supports one annotation scale, the cursor displays an  icon. When the object supports more than one annotation scale, it displays an  icon.

 Conclusion

Text, dimension, and multileader styles can also be annotative. Annotative styles create annotative objects.