Manual Balloons

InsertBalloonManual

The Manual Balloon command enables you to manually associate balloon call-outs with the components to which Part Properties have been assigned.

In a layout, after you start the command, the program highlights the views that contain components or the groups (parts) to which you are enabled to associate a balloon. In order to insert the balloon, select the component (the program opens the view automatically) or the part, select the reference point and drag the balloon in place.

Since the position information of the part is updated in the reference model, it is necessary to save the model after inserting the balloons. The application takes care of this task automatically provided that you check the AutoSave model after drawing saving option in the Drawing category of the System Options.

The command selection list features the following options:

Reference Point

Point

Start from Reference Point

Max. No. of Points

Reference for Alignment

Stack balloons

Enables you to stack the balloons in the order of their component selection. On selecting the check box, the drop-down list with following stacking alignment possibilities is activated.

Horizontally	Enables you to stack the balloons horizontally. Depending on the slope of the leader line, the direction (left or right) will be determined.
Vertically up	Enables you to stack the balloons in the vertically upward direction.
Vertically down	Enables you to stack the balloons in the vertically downward direction.

Click here for more details on stacking.

AutoOrder When selected, the leader line will start from the component having least RELPOS number (item position) and the balloons will be stacked in ascending order of the RELPOS.
When cleared, the balloons are stacked in the order of the component selection.
Note that this check box is available only when the Stack balloons check box is selected.

Balloon Format

Text above
Text below

Frame

Arrowhead

Entity Properties Displays the Dimension-Text-Specialized category dialog box that enables you to edit the balloon properties.

Angle

Hierarchy level

If the document has a hierarchy structure, allows to choose the level of components to work on.

Top — only the selected components are considered.
Leaf — the leaf level components of the selected components are considered.

Skip components without part number

For Top level hierarchy, balloons are related to top components with a part number. In case of BOM transparent components at the top level, the balloons are related to their first descendants with a part number.
For Leaf level hierarchy, balloons are related to leaf components with a part number. For each leaf entity, all ascendant components must be BOM transparent or have a part number.

This option has been added also to the Automatic Balloon and Item Position commands.
The Skip components without part number option is also in the Part List category in the Part List Options dialog box.

The following are the various stacking functionalities.

When only one component is selected, it is mandatory to select an existing balloon for alignment reference. Once the reference balloon for the alignment is selected, the stacked balloon preview will be displayed as per the selected stacking direction. If the selected reference balloon belongs to already stacked balloons, then the balloon:
- direction will be same as the reference stack direction, and
- will be placed at the end of the stacked balloons.
When more than one component is selected, the stacking starts automatically and a preview will be displayed with the leader line starting from the origin of the first selected component in the array of components.
When the frame type is Frame type: None, both the horizontally and vertically stacked balloons will be separated by the "—" symbol. The symbol size attributes can be defined by using the Text and Frame Offset parameters from the Entity Properties - Text - Font & Frame category.
The modifications that can be done on a balloon stack include appending and deletion of a balloon. The Insert New Balloon command has been added to the context menu, enabling you to append a balloon to the existing balloon stack. If the reference balloon is from a balloon stack, the new balloon will be appended at the end of the same balloon stack. If not it will be added after the reference balloon itself.
You can delete a balloon and a balloon with leader line from a stack by using the generic Delete command.

You can edit the balloon properties (such as height, text, layer, color) from the Entity Properties dialog box, displayed when you start the Edit Properties command from the balloon context menu.

You can control the balloon tooltip contents (such as sequence number, quantity, part number, description) by selecting the specific options in the Output - Tooltip category of the System Options.

If you wish to drive the numbering in balloons with some specific sort criteria, you can use the Item Position Property command. You should execute this command before Manual Balloon.

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Insert Balloons Manually

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