Thanks to all who responded to my problem.  My question was as follows:

I would like to pull the annotation from an autocad annotation theme into a
polygon shapefile.  There is one annotation per polygon.  The annotation
represents and old id number that we could use to access historic data.
Does anyone have any ideas on how this could be accomplished?

Here are some of the responses:

-Convert annotation theme to a shapefile--See the ArcScripts page.
-Add a record number to the new anno shapefile.
-Used spatial join and attribute join to get the anno text into the polygon
attribute table.

My suggestion for annotation in ArcView is either use the annotation from
the DWG layer, all you would have to do is add in the CAD reader extension.
Another option that works well is you can convert the Anno into an ArcInfo
Coverage and use that anno.  From past experience with anno it is not one of
AV strong points.  Hope that helps.

When you add the annotation layer from the drawing into ArcView it comes in
as a text theme. The method that we have used is to take all or a subset of
the layers of this text theme and convert them into a shape file. this will
either create a line theme or a point theme depending on the insertion point
from the drawing. The table of this theme will contain all of the text
attributes from the drawing including your old ID. To associate these
attributes with your polygon theme, you will need to run an intersect or
identity operation either with the ArcView Geoprocessing wizard or directly
in Arc 8.0. This operation depends on all lines (Text insertion points)
being within the appropriate polygon. You will need to verify this against
your polygon set.

On the ESRI support site, under downloads, there is a set of Cad Tools to
be used as an extension with ArcView.  I think one of them has something to
do with text/annotation.

AutoCad annotation theme' do you mean you have an
AutoCad file (dwg/dxf) having layers and one is a layer of annotation? If
that is the case, and you have AutoCad, you can turn all layers off except
for the annotation. Then you Export...selecting annotation as the feature
type, draw a box selecting all annotation and select the file type as
shapefile. Hopefully, the CAD file is in the same units of measurement or
distance as the shapefiles you have. If not you can set them in AutoCad ie
sometimes a drawing comes in mm and your shapefile is in UTM, you can then
change the mm to m in the AutoCad file. I use AutoCad Map 2000 and exporting

annotation to a shapefile is pretty straight forward and works well.

I mostly use this awesome software called FME by Safe Software. There is a
free eval copy at www.safe.com. I bought it and use it almost everyday for
all kinds of GIS editing and translation. It translates whatever layer in
the AutoCad file you select to a shapefile in seconds. Check it out and I'm
sure you will be impressed. It translates between all kinds of formats too
as well as allows batch feature editing.

Also, have you checked out the ESRI ArcScripts page? I haven't had a chance
to check for you, but there is a dxf2shp script there that you could use. I
believe there is such a script in your ArcView/Samples directory also that
translates dxf files to shape.


David Wilburn, GIS Specialist
City of Ann Arbor
Water Utililites Department
2000 S. Industrial Highway
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104-6120

734-997-1172
Fax 734-994-0742
E-Mail dwilburn@ci.ann-arbor.mi.us