Text Styles and Multiline Text AUTOCAD Text Styles and Multiline Text

Terms Annotation is textual information presented in notes, specifications, comments, and symbols. Text is lettering on a CADD drawing. Font is the face design of a letter or number.

Text Standards and Composition Consistent text type, format, height, and spacing are critical to legibility and drawing clarity. A drawing should use the same text font and format throughout

The ASME Y14.2 standard, Line Conventions and Lettering, applies to the process of hand lettering each character using one or more single straight or curved elements. Text composition is the spacing, layout, and appearance of text.

Text Presentation Plan your drawing using rough sketches to allow room for text and notes. Arrange text to avoid crowding. Place related notes in groups to make the drawing easier to read. Place all general notes in a common location. Review all text and use the spell checker.

Drawing Scale and Text Height To adjust text height manually, you must calculate the drawing scale factor. A 1:2 scale has a scale factor of 2. A ¼”=1’-0” scale has a scale factor of 48. To find the scaled text height, multiply the scale factor by the plotted (or paper) text height.

Annotative text offers advantages over manually scaled text, including the ability to control text appearance based on the drawing scale and paper text height, while reducing the need to focus on the scale factor. The annotation scale is typically the same as the drawing scale.

Text Styles A saved collection of settings for text height, width, oblique angle (slant), and other text effects. Create, modify, and delete text styles using the Text Style dialog box. The default text height is 0, which provides flexibility when creating single-line text and when you define dimension, multileader, and table styles.

The Effects area of the Text Style dialog box offers text format options, including settings for drawing text upside-down, backwards, and vertically.

Use the Width Factor: text box to specify the text character width relative to its height. A width factor of 1 is default and is recommended for most drawing applications. A width factor greater than 1 expands characters, and a factor less than 1 compresses characters.

To set a text style current without opening the Text Style dialog box, use the Text Style drop-down list on the expanded Annotation panel of the Home ribbon tab or on the Text panel of the Annotate ribbon tab.

Multiline Text The MTEXT command draws a single multiline, or mtext, object that can include extensive paragraph formatting, lists, symbols, and columns.

When you select the opposite corner of the text boundary, the Text Editor contextual ribbon tab and the text editor appear. To change the width of the text editor, drag the far end of the ruler or the far vertical edge of the text boundary.

The AutoStacking feature is active by default and automatically stacks numerical characters when you type a specific character sequence. To create a stacked fraction with a horizontal fraction bar, type a forward slash(/) between characters. To create a stacked fraction with a diagonal fraction bar, type a number sign (#) between characters.

Use the Stack option to manually stack selected characters using the MTEXT command. Use the Symbol option to insert a common drafting symbol or other unique character not found on a typical keyboard.

The Tracking option for mtext determines the spacing between characters. A background mask hides a portion of objects behind and around text so that the text is unobstructed.

Dynamic columns are columns calculated automatically by AutoCAD according to the amount of text and the specified height and width of the columns. Static columns are columns in which you divide the text into a specified number of columns.

The Import Text option allows you to import text from an existing text file directly into the text editor. The text file can be either a standard ASCII text file (TXT) or a rich text format (RTF) file.