Text Styles with Height specified

[paul.burgener]

I NEVER specify a text height in a text style. I always leave it 0. I explain to students that the problems with non-zero height are more than the advantages, and mention the Dimension style looses control if the referenced text style has a specific height assigned in it.

Does anyone ever define a specific height within the settings for the Text Style?

If so, when and why?

-Paul Burgener www.evaug.com Newport News, VA 23602

[stilesj]

I think you're right on, both with your practice and your reasoning.

[Maverick91]

I do specify text hights in my styles. I do so for consistancy across the drawing. You're right about the dimension styles and text, and it's something that I set up my dmistyles for.

[Glenn Pope]

I use both ways. I set a height for text that will be used in notes. Then I don't have to worry about the height. Text styles that will be used for dimensions, tables, etc... I don't. So that I can control the height with with the dimension or table dialog.

[sinc]

I use text styles with heights for almost everything, except I tend to use text styles with no height for text in paper space. But in general, I do all of my labelling in model space, placing only notes, borders, and other items not directly associated to model objects in paper space. There are many reasons for this. The main reason is that I tend to use AutoCAD as a calculation tool a lot. For this usage, having dimensions in paper space while everything else is in model space is frequently annoying. I also suspect it's easier to rescale drawings (which I do semi-regularly) when the annotations are in model space, so you don't now have to worry about dimensions being on the wrong page of a multipage layout. And I definitely prefer text styles with heights to figuring out the actual height every time I use a piece of text, since I work at a lot of different scales.

I use height in text styles for dims, because it seemed to work best. I have only four dimension styles that I use in my drawings, for items of varying levels of importance. Each of these has a specific height text that should be used with it. However, I use a lot of different plot scales, and I view having four dimension styles for each plot scale unacceptable. I also find creating plot-scale specific styles causes undue headache when rescaling a drawing; having a plot style for each type of dimension results in nearly-effortless rescaling.

Instead of having a slew of dim scales for each plot scale, I override the dimension scale (in the "fit" tab of the dimension style dialogue) so that it is equal to the scale the dimension will be printed at. Unfortunately, since AutoCAD resets style overrides every time you switch dim styles, I have to reset this override every time I change my dim style. (I'll probably write something to fix problem this when I get time.) I notice that the Civil/Survey labelling commands all automatically set this override (from the drawing scale in the drawing setup), though, so now I've started simply hitting my "Label Settings..." button and immediately closing it right after I switch dim styles. This is faster than hitting Override, finding the fit tab, and remembering or figuring out the scale of my drawing and typing it in manually.

[sinc]

After doing some experimentation, I've discovered it works much better to use a text style with 0 height in my dim styles, and specify the text height there. I still override the dimension scale on the "fit" tab to match the scale of the viewport I'm working in, but now I can set this to 1 and place dimensions correctly in paper space as well as model space.

So, I suppose I'll revise my dim styles to use 0-height text styles, and specify the height in the dim style. I still use text styles with heights for all my other model-space labelling, though.