How to Use Text Styles in BricsCAD

Quick answer: New text uses whatever the current text style defines: font, size, angle, orientation, and more. Every drawing starts with a default style called Standard, initially set to Arial, which can be modified but never renamed or deleted.

What Changing a Text Style Actually Affects

This is worth knowing before you edit a style: changing its font or orientation automatically updates every existing text entity that uses it. Changing any other property, though, has no effect on existing text at all, it only applies going forward to new text created with that style.

Annotative Text Styles

An annotative text style creates annotative text entities, where the Height property defines the text’s paper space height; its model space height instead depends on the current annotation scale, set by CANNOSCALE and CANNOSCALEVALUE.

Opening the Text Style Explorer

Choose Drawing Explorer > Text Styles… from the Tools menu, click the Style field in the Status Bar, or run STYLE.

Creating a Text Style

1. Open the Text Style Explorer.
2. Click New in the Details section, or right-click an existing style and choose New from the context menu; a style named “NewStyle” is created, inheriting the properties of whichever style you selected.
3. Type a name, replacing the “NewStyle” default.
4. Define the style’s properties.
5. Close the Text Style Explorer.

Editing a Text Style

1. Open the Text Style Explorer.
2. Select the style.
3. Define its properties.
4. Close the Text Style Explorer.

Setting a Text Style Current

Either right-click the Style field in the Status Bar and click the style you want, or open the Text Style Explorer (the current style is marked in the Current column) and click that column, or right-click the style and choose Set Current.

Deleting a Text Style

1. Open the Text Style Explorer.
2. Select the style.
3. Click Delete, or right-click and choose Delete. If the style isn’t currently used anywhere in the drawing or in a dimension style, it deletes immediately; otherwise, an alert appears.
4. In that alert, choose Delete to remove the style and every entity that uses it, Change… to remove the style while reassigning a different one to the entities that currently use it, or Cancel to back out entirely.

You can’t delete whichever text style is currently set as current.

Frequently Asked Questions

If I change a text style’s height, does existing text using that style resize? No, only changing the font or orientation updates existing text automatically. Height and other properties only apply to new text created afterward.

Can I delete the Standard text style? No, it can’t be renamed or deleted, though you can still modify it.

What happens if I try to delete a text style that’s currently in use? An alert appears, letting you either delete the style along with everything using it, or reassign those entities to a different style first.

How does an annotative text style’s height work differently from a regular one? Its Height property sets the paper space height specifically; the model space height is calculated from the current annotation scale instead, via CANNOSCALE and CANNOSCALEVALUE.