Annotations provide a way to label drawing objects, based on data associated with the objects. The associated data can come from various places, such as object data, linked databases, or object properties. For example, if a drawing contains parcels, and the parcels have object data with the name of the parcel owner or the most recent sale price of the parcel, then these values could be added to the map as part of an annotation.
Each annotation is based on an annotation template, which is a special block in the drawing. The template describes the annotation, and usually contains annotation text defining the variable content.
A new annotation is created by inserting a reference to the annotation template. This creates a reference to the annotation block, substituting the proper values in the expression fields.
The classes for handling annotations are mostly within the Annotation namespace. Code in this chapter assumes the following:
Imports Autodesk.Gis.Map.Annotation