Annotations are drawing tools, allowing you to add a note, explanation, picture or dimensions to your drawing.

Label 

This command lets you place text into a job/drawing. You can select text size, font and so on, simply...

1. Right click on 'Label' to get menu.
2. To enable you to customise select Format Label Tool from the popup menu.
3. On the Label Property Sheet , enter the appropriate text and select the font style, alignment, angle, and other effects as needed.
   The label tool only has a Label tab, but when placed on the drawing, it also has a Position tab.

Text Box  

This command lets you insert text inside a rectangular box into a drawing. The text auto-wraps to fit inside the box, and if there is too much text, it is clipped to the box. To do this follow the instructions above for Label. To place a text box on a drawing, you need to specify two points which are opposing corners of the rectangle. Just select the text box tool, click on the drawing while holding the button down, then drag the mouse to form a rectangle. You can then move the text box and resize it exactly to your needs.

Picture  

This command lets you insert a picture directly into a drawing. Bitmaps are picture files with an extension of "bmp". You can create, view, and edit these in 'Paint', which comes with a standard install of Windows. Almost every other image program will let you view bitmaps as well. The Bitmap tool can be used to place one of these images on a drawing, for example, you may place your company logo on a drawing template. As well as regular bitmaps, the tool also supports DIB (device independent bitmap) and compressed RLE (run length encoded) images.

Dimension 

Dimension tools are used for measuring different parts of your shape and the following associated dimensioning commands allow you to easily insert and place dimension lines.

Angular Dimension 

The Angular Dimension tool allows you to dimension...

• between sides with a common vertex - the nearest pair of adjacent sides are auto selected when you are outside snap distance.
• and sides without a common vertex - if you move the mouse closer, you can click on one side and then the other i.e. you select sides that are not adjacent using two clicks.

Then after the first one or two clicks (depending on where you click) there is a rubberband movement of the arc dimension line until you click to place.

Tape Measure

Allows you to draw a line between two points while displaying the horizontal offset, vertical offset and total distance between them.

First, select/turn on the Tape Measure and then...

1. click on the beginning (first point) of where you wish to measure from; and
2. hold down mouse button and drag to the end point (second point which can be anywhere on the page);
3. continue to hold down mouse button to read the measurement (e.g. 600)
   • as soon as you release the mouse button, the measurement line and details will disappear.

Video

Dimensions and Annotations

In ShapeMaster V12, you can create and display dimensions and annotations to parts via the breadcrumb bar. 

After adding your shape to the list [press F12], you can select your part in the breadcrumb bar. You can then add horizontal, vertical and angular dimensions to your part, as well as text labels and text boxes. These details will be included in reports that display images, such as our ShapeList reports.