ACA: Assigning Display Configurations to Drawing Scales (or Not)

If you have experienced having the way your Walls and Doors (and other AEC objects) display change when selecting a different drawing scale, the most likely reason is that you have Display Configurations assigned to one or more drawing scales. When you select a drawing scale with an assigned Display Configuration, the assigned Display Configuration is set current. Depending on what Display Configuration was previously current, the change may be subtle (out-of-the-box Medium Detail to out-of-the-box High Detail, for example) or dramatic (out-of-the-box Reflected Screened to out-of-the-box Low Detail - where did my ceiling grids go?).

If you are using the out-of-the-box template files (or template files that are based on those), then you will have the following Display Configurations assigned:

• Low Detail: 1:200 (metric) or 3/32" = 1'-0" (imperial) or smaller scales.
• Medium Detail: 1:150 (metric) or 1/8" = 1'-0" (imperial) through 1:25 (metric) or 3/8" = 1'-0" (imperial), inclusive.
• High Detail: 1:20 (metric) or 1/2" = 1'-0" (imperial) or larger scales.

(The above is based on content distributed in the United States. Localized content in other areas may have different settings in the out-of-the-box templates.)

After choosing the scale, you can then change the Display Configuration (back to what it was, or to some other Display Configuration), but you probably do not want to have to do that on a regular basis. So, how can you edit the Display Configuration assigned to a specific scale, or disable this feature? Use the AECDWGSETUP command to open the Drawing Setup dialog and select the Scale tab, if it is not current. (Or, go straight to the Scale tab of that dialog with the AECDWGSCALESETUP command.)

Select a scale in the Scale list box at the upper left of the Scale tab. The Display Configuration drop-down list just below the Scale list box will show the Display Configuration assigned to that scale. Select the Display Configurations drop-down list to see a list of available Display Configurations in the current drawing and, if desired, choose a different Display Configuration or select *None* to not have the Display Configuration change when selecting that scale.

Do that for each scale where you desire to make a change. Note that this will only affect that particular drawing. If you want to make changes that affect all future drawings, then make these changes in your template file(s).

We set them all to *None*, to avoid confusing casual users. If you find the feature useful, you could set up multiple templates, one for each drawing type (floor plan, reflected ceiling plan, etc.) to avoid having to reset the Display Configuration when changing the scale in a non-floor plan file. We have customized the Display System and use one Display Configuration for most contract document floor plans, so there was insufficient benefit to us to make using this feature desirable.

ACA: Custom Drawing Scales, The Movie

I was trying out the new version of Project Chronicle and decided to base my first video on my previous blog article. So if you prefer watching video to reading text with the occasional screen shot, take a look at the video below. You may notice a "jump" in the video after the first custom scale is added. I figured that after seeing one scale added, there would be little interest in watching me type in the five other scales, so I cut that part out of the video.

ACA: Custom Drawing Scales

The easiest way to add drawing scales that you want available for all drawings is is to use the SCALELISTEDIT command (on the Annotate ribbon tab, Annotation Scaling panel, Scale List tool; or on the Drawing Window Status Bar, use the Annotation Scale control and select the Custom item on the popup list) to add these scales to your drawing template files. This will not, of course, affect any existing drawing files that you have.

"Vanilla" AutoCAD^® offers the ability to customize the default scale list, with separate lists for Metric- and Imperial-unit drawings, by selecting the Default Scale List button in the Options dialog, on the User Preferences tab.

These lists are stored in the registry and are used by the Reset button in the Edit Drawing Scales dialog. If you use this feature to put additional scales in the default list(s), you can then use the Reset button to get these scales in an existing drawing using the SCALELISTEDIT command.

AutoCAD^®Architecture, on the other hand, does not offer the ability to edit a default scale list,

and even if you run ACA as AutoCAD, changes made to the default lists then will not be honored when later running ACA as ACA. You can still use the SCALELISTEDIT command to add drawing scales to your template file(s), so that new files created with that(those) template file(s) will have them.

In order to avoid having to add the additional scale(s) manually to existing files, you can start a new file from your edited template file. Set one of the added scales current, and add an annotative MText object. If you have more than one added scale, select the MText object, right click, and choose Annotative Object Scale > Add/Delete Scales from the context menu.

Use the Add button in the Annotation Object Scale dialog, and select the additional scales in the Add Scales to Object dialog.

Select OK twice to add the scales to the MText object. You can now either save this file or use the WBLOCK command to create a file that containes the MText object. Use the INSERT command to insert this file into any other file in which you wish to add the custom scales, and the scales will come along for the ride. You can even cancel the INSERT command when prompted for the insertion point for the block, and then purge the block definition from the file - the added scales will remain.