Engineering Technician Hayden Clarke sends us a time-saving tip about working with the scale settings for annotative objects in AutoCAD.

"To quickly change, remove, or add annotative scales to objects in your drawing, select the area of concern with a selection window or similar tool. Then in your Properties box, click on the pull-down list stating 'xxx objects selected.' In the list, choose an object type likely to have annotative scaling, such as text or dimensions. Next, scroll down the properties list until you see Annotative Scale, and click on it. From here you can add or remove scales, and it will change all objects with annotative properties in the selection."
 
Notes from Cadalyst Tip Patrol: This is a fantastic tip because it edits your drawing quickly. In AutoCAD, annotative objects retain a display size based on how you want them to look on paper. For example, you can set a text label to be 1/8" on paper regardless of the drawing scale — very useful!

These objects will only be displayed if the viewport scale they are displayed in is assigned to the object. This can be annoying. You don't want to automatically assign every possible scale factor to all of your objects, because that would make it difficult to manage. Assign only the ones you are using, or at least keep the list small. If you need to change the text (or dimensions, hatch patterns, and blocks), just follow the steps given in this tip. Select everything if you want to, then sort them out through the Properties Manager. Once the proper list of object types is provided, scroll down the manager until you get to the Annotative Scale field. Click the ellipsis to open a window, and edit the list all you need to.