Creating Dynamic Viewport Scale Labels in AutoCAD 2018

The AutoCAD 2018.1 update makes it easier than ever to change the scale of a viewport, but how do you ensure that change reflects across your view scale annotations? The process of managing viewport scales and view scale annotations inside AutoCAD are typically separate workflows, and ripe for falling into an asynchronous state. The good news is these two tasks do not have to remain siloed.

Leveraging AutoCAD Fields

Fields are an often overlooked but powerful function inside AutoCAD. You can insert a Field into any text in your drawing including multi-line text, block attributes, and table cells, The purpose of inserting a field into your drawing is to display a real-time string of data. That data can be anything from the current filename, the length of an entity, or as we’re interested in this example – the scale of a viewport.

Dynamic Viewport Scale Label

Leveraging AutoCAD Fields, you can associate a string of text with a viewport in your drawing. The power of this association is anytime the properties of your viewport changes, so too will the text labeling it. Translated, that means you can have a piece of text that automatically displays the current viewport scale.

The process of adding Fields to your drawing isn’t terribly difficult. Check out the video above to see the entire workflow in action. Do you use Fields in your drawings? Offer your suggestions for the creative ways you use Fields in the comments below.