Annotation exported to CAD is moved to the wrong position

Description

Text position, font and color of geodatabase annotation when exported to CAD are issues that are brought up frequently by our customers. The instructions in this article will help resolve these issues.

Note:
The solution provided in this article applies to ArcMap, and has not been confirmed to work in ArcGIS Pro.

Cause

Annotation in the geodatabase has a different anchor point compared with the anchor point of the text in the output CAD file.  This issue has existed in all versions of Esri software.  The default anchor point for annotation in the geodatabase is Lower Left (LL), while the anchor point for test in AutoCAD (or Microstation) is CenterCenter (CC).  If annotation is to be exported to CAD, the output text will not be in the same position, and that adjustments may need to be made before running Export to CAD to produce better results.
 

Solution or Workaround

To adjust the position of the annotation before exporting the feature class to CAD, change the values in the HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment fields in the annotation attribute table, to compensate for the position difference.  These fields are both number fields, and the values displayed are Aliases for those numeric values.  Here are the values as they are related to the Aliases displayed in the attribute table:

HorizontalAlignment values:

• 0 displays as 'Left' in the field
• 1 displays as 'Center' in the field
• 2 displays as 'Right' in the field

VerticalAlignment values:

• 0 displays as 'Top' in the field
• 1 displays as 'Center' in the field
• 2 displays as 'Baseline' in the field
• 3 displays as 'Bottom' in the field

To adjust the output position of the exported annotation, calculate these numeric values in the appropriate field to move the geodatabase annotation down and to the left.  After exporting the annotation to CAD, recalculate the HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment values back to the original values.  This is not a perfect solution but will allow the user to get the output annotation closer the original position in the output CAD file.

To export the annotation to CAD with a specific font, add the field named 'TxtStyle' to the annotation feature class attribute table, defined as a Text or Character field, with a length long enough to contain the name of the font.  Populate the field with the name of the font.  WARNING:  the specified font has to be installed on the computer where the AutoCAD file will be opened, so be sure to verify that the specified font is actually available on that computer.

If the text is supposed to be a specific color, add the field named 'Color', defined as a Short Integer, to the attribute table, and populate the field with the desired CAD color number.  Some standard AutoCAD color numbers are as follows:

1 = Red
2 = Yellow
3 = Green
4 = Cyan
5 = Blue
6 = Magenta
7 = White/Black  determined by the color of the draw canvas in AutoCAD.

The "Color" option is also available for Microstation, but due to Microstation's use of custom symbol files, consistent color numbers are not available in Microstation.

Warning:
Geodatabase annotation created using Maplex will not export to CAD.  Maplex annotation supports properties like "spline" which are not supported in AutoCAD or Microstation.  For annotation that will be exported to CAD the annotation must be generated from labels created with the Esri Standard Label Engine.