CAD - Drawing Leaders

A drawing leader consists of an arrow and a text. Leaders should have a uniform and consistent appearance at all drawings independently of the drawing scale. More specifically, the arrow size, arrow inclination, the text size, allow line weight, etc should all be the same for all leaders in a drawing.

Uniform leaders can be easily achieved in modern CAD software using annotative leaders. Annotative leaders adjust automatically to look the same in all drawing scales.

Annotative Leaders in AutoCAD

This section presents the configuration for annotative leaders in AutoCAD. You start be editing the Standard Multileader Style.
Form the main menu Select: Annotate-> Multileader style manager -> Modify
Style Name: Standard

Leader Style set-up in AutoCAD
Set-up the Standard Leader in AutoCAD

1. Leader Format

  • Type: Straight
  • Color: ByLayer
  • Linetype: Continuous
  • Lineweight: 0.15
  • Arrowhead
  • Symbol: Dot
  • Size:
  • Break size: 0.004
Leader Format - AutoCAD - leader format tab
Set-up Leaders in AutoCAD - Values for Leader Format Tab

2. Leader Structure

  • Maximum leader points: 2
  • First segment angle 60
  • Landing settings  
  • Automatically include landing: YES
  • Set landing distance: 0.005
  • Annotative: YES
Leader structure in AutoCAD - leader structure Tab
Set-up Leaders in AutoCAD - Values for Leader StructureTab

3. Content

  • Multileader type: Mtext
  • Text options  
  • Text style: Text 2.5 mm
  • Text angle: Keep horizontal
  • Text color: ByLayer
  • Text height: from Text style
  • Leader connection  
  • Horizontal attachment: YES
  • Left attachment: Middle of text
  • Right attachment: Middle of text
  • Landing gap: 0.001
AutoCAD - Leader Content Tab
Set-up Leaders in AutoCAD - Values for Leader Content Tab