Non annotative entity in an annotative block

[matthew.221135]

I have a block symbol for a fire hydrant, this is annotative and will change size dependent on the scale of the drawing, pretty simple so far.
I would like to add a circle to the block at 40m radius to indicate fire hydrant coverage and separation.
Does anyone know of any way to include this circle in the block and have is remain at 40m radius, ie not scale with the scale of the drawing?

also I have linetypes created at the approx correct spacing for road linemarking.
Does anyone know of a way to stop this linetype from scaling with the drawing scale. ie remain say a 3m line at 12m spacing.

Thanks in advance.

[JamCAD]

Hello Matthew,

You can do this by nesting your existing annotative block inside a new block that is not annotative. You go into the block editor you can select the nested block and change the annotation scale as you normally would. When you close and save the new block (with your 40m radius and old annotative block) it will only change the annotative scale of the old block. You can also bypass the block editor to change the annotative scales by making sure that ANNOAUTOSCALE is on when you change the annotative scale (this is the button with an annotation scale symbol and lightning bolt, usually in the bottom right of the screen). I'm assuming you know how to create a new block so let me know if I'm confusing you and explain in more detail. Or post your block if you need help. Personally I passionately hate ANNOAUTOSCALE and always have it switched, if you're working in a large drawing with heaps annotative objects and xrefs with annotative objects it can easily cause nightmares. I have always changed annotation scales manually using the properties panel or the AIOBJECTSCALEADD command (allows you to change multiple entity types at the same time), however this command doesn't work for nested objects.

With regards to the linetype scale. There are potentially two ways that I can think of. One way is to have a seperate layer and linetype for each scale you use. I noticed you are in Toowoomba? I think that the main roads AutoCAD customisation has all the different types of road markings at different scales. Try searching google for Transport and Main Roads AutoCAD customisation, you may need to talk with your CAD manager to have it installed on your pc. Alternatively you could manually overide the linetype scale for each object in the properties. Use the CANNOSCALEVALUE system variable to find out the decimal value of the current annotation scale and use that value for the objects linetype scale.

Hopefully I'm making sense.

Jonathan

[dgorsman]

I wouldn't count on linetypes to represent physically sized objects like road markings or fence post locations. I know, it *seems* like it would be a good idea but they are really for schematic representation. For physical representations, dynamic blocks and/or arrays are your best bet.

Annotative blocks requires a lot of up front planning. Not everything needs to be annotative; for example, symbols benefit greatly from this but physically accurate objects (like that service radius) don't. You could do this in a number of ways e.g. have an annotative block with symbol, a dynamic block with the service radius (with radius value input), and use constraints to keep them together.

[matthew.221135]

Big thanks for the response. Anno block within a non-anno block is exactly what i was looking for and it works great. thanks.
I really dislike the ANNOAUTOSCALE variable as well and encourage all in my office not to use it.
as for the linetypes, that question was less of an issue, we have linetypes created that are about right that we use for planning and design, but final documentation we break it into individual segments.
I have seen the MR Customisation a few years ago, maybe i need to revisit it and look at the available tools again.