How to make custom linetypes in AutoCAD - Part 1 of 2

hello and welcome to source card in this two-part video series I'll talk everything about creating line type modifying them and using them in different drawings so we learn about basic line types as well as line types with complex shapes text and other things so let's get started [Music] so first I'll talk about creating line tights with the help of text and symbols so I've got this completely blank drawing okay and I'll start with the standard text style so we'll start with the multi-line text here you can see that we have this multi-line text and I'll use the standard text style which is already present in our drawing so I'm not going to make any kind of modifications now I'll click here and I will select multi-line text all right let's make the text box and let's type a just a sample text here all right we are done now let's add a couple of symbols here so again I'm gonna go to this multi-line text and I'll just make a box and I'll go to this symbol option other and now from the character map I'll select arrow head type symbol which is somewhere over here so that's the symbol I'm gonna select and I'll click on select and copy and right click and paste we're done let's make one more symbol here so again this time the same arrow but pointing to the other side so again symbol other and from the character map select the similar kind of symbol which is pointing to other side select copy close and paste and we are done so now we have three different symbols let's use them but before using them we need to make the line also so let's make a line and I'm gonna make a line of length one unit so one and enter okay now first we need to make the shape of our single segment of the line type and before doing that I'll convert all of these M text objects into simple text because the command which we use for making line type only it recognizes the single line text not the multi line so we need to ensure that these objects are single line text not multi lines so I'll select them all and I'll type X and enter and that will explode this and it's now single line text not a multi-line text if you have your cursor you'll notice that this is the text also all of these are text now I'll select them all and I'll change the justification so properties and from this palette I'll go to justify and I'll change it to middle Center so that will help us in properly aligning this text on this line so again we have this middle center point I'll select this I'll move this one to the midpoint here I'll select this one I'll move it somewhere over here along this line maybe here and this one again I'll track this and close to this point maybe here and there we have it so it's not very precise you can see that it's kind of not very precise but you can change its position a little bit using move command to further modify this thing okay and that's much better now I'll trim this part here so let's make a rectangle first so I'll just make a rectangle which is approximately like this then trim enter I'll trim this this this part also and this part also now we can delete this rectangle and our segment for the line type is ready now we can use this single segment and we can make our line type now let's start making line type and for that I'll use mkl type Express tool so let's type that and press Enter alright so now this will open the Select line type file window here I'm gonna go to this index top and I'll save this line' file so this will create the dot line' file or the line type file and i'll save it on the desktop as first line all right there we have it and save now you need to name this line type so let's name it as text arrow line okay it's a TA line now in the description I'll type text and arrow line type and enter now starting point let's select this one as the starting point and this one as the end point and select all of these objects these are the objects that will be converted to the line type enter we are done so now our line type is created as you can see here line type ta line is created and it's loaded as well inside this drawing so let's check it so I'll make a circle and I'll make a line just inside this one all right now let's select this and go to this properties the drop-down and here we have the ta line look at that so now it's applied here you can change the scale here so right now you can obviously see that this thing is kind of very cramped here so I'll just increase the size maybe a little bit like this okay and there we have it we can also delete this this is no longer needed and that's our line type let's try that on this line so maybe we'll just move this line outside here and I'll increase the length a little bit like this and from this drop-down I'll change it to this and look at that so it's not applied here so this is how you can change your line types and you can make your own line types and you can apply them on different drawings alright so in this case we've made line type using text and symbol now let's talk about making line types using shape so when you want to make complex line type you need to involve some other shapes other than line for example arcs if you want to involve them then you need to convert that into a shape and then you can use those shapes to make the line type just to make things clear I'll make a shape a very simple one so I just go to rectangle and I'm going to look at a point and I'll make a rectangle of approximately this size all right now circle and I'll make a circle here and another circle here okay then trim enter I'll trim this part all right and I'm going to explore this one so I'll select it all ex enter that's exploded okay so exploded everything is now exploded all right now let's add a couple of segments I'm gonna go to this midpoint and here I'll add a distance of point two like this now this distance is kind of very small so I will change the size of this complete segment except this one so I'll just delete this instead I'll select it all this one and I change its size so I'll go to scale any point and I'll change the scale to maybe 0.3 now that looks good alright again I'll go to line this midpoint and now the distance is well 0.25 let's make it 0.25 in this case and that looks much better again to this side 0.25 0.25 and ENTER there we have it now we need to make a line type with this kind of repeating pattern now in this case you can obviously see that we have different objects if you want to include text inside this you can do that that's obviously something you can do you can add symbols as well in this trying to make it complex but in this case I'll simply make our line type using this single segment and the repeating pattern of this now to begin with we need to make the shape file and to do that you need to use MK shape express tool so let's use that that's for make shape and enter again we have select save file option here this window you need to specify the location where you want to save the SHP file in this case it will create this shape file so let's name it as pill shape it's kind of pill shaped object so we'll just name it like that and save once again we need to name it so let's name this a pill all right and enter now the resolution value I'll keep that default 128 and base point this is the base point now select objects all of these and enter we are done the shape with name pill is now created let's insert that shape so to insert that you need to use command shape and press Enter now you need to type the name of that shape so I'll type e i ll that's pill enter and look at that here we have it now you can clearly see that the arcs on the top and bottom of this pill shape are not quite clearly visible they're kind of jagged in shape if you want to enhance its resolution then at the time of making this shape you can increase the resolution value which we set as 128 so you can obviously enhance the resolution value but that will slow the performance so you can make a compromise between performance as well as the display quality in this case I think that this kind of resolution is fine with me because at a zoomed-out scale that will obviously look good so that's fine with me so I just place it exactly overlapping the original object and I'm doing this on purpose because if you place it somewhere else then you won't be able to take reference of this shape because in case of shape you won't be able to snap to midpoint endpoint or any other snap points so those points won't be visible so we need to ensure that this overlaps the original shape so here it is now height well 1 enter the rotation angle 0 and enter there we have it so now we have original drawing and another overlapping shape over that so where shape is prepared and now we can convert this shape into a line type so again to make this to convert this into a line type will use mkl type express tool and enter now in the previous case we used this first line line type in this case let's name it as shape line ok that's a different line you can clearly see that it's on the desktop and save it now we need to add enter the name of this so bill LM okay maybe bill and okay an enter now the description pillow type line type and enter now starting point and that's where you'll find this thing really very helpful because now we have overlapped this shape over the existing drawing it will actually recognize the points of that underlying object not the shape so we have this endpoint of that underlying object so here we have it the starting point and let's click here now ending point which is over here alright now we need to select the objects so to select the objects you need to just click here and this will open this kind of window in this case I have this kind of window which is allowing me to select overlapping objects well this is called selection cycling and using this I am able to select shape or the line we need to select the shape so I'll select shape if you don't have this selection cycling box then go to this customization and activate selection cycling once it is active go to the status bar and select this selection cycling so this should be active if you want that selection cycling dialog box all right so that's not selected press Enter there we have it so pill n line type is now created and loaded let's use that line type as well so we can just delete the segment it's no longer needed and let's make a circle maybe a line as well there we have it now select go to the properties ill and look at that so that's our line type with custom shape here also so that's how you can create line types with symbols texts and custom shapes so in the next video we'll discuss everything about creating the line type using the line' files directly so these are the Len files we'll learn about them and will also learn about exporting these line types into different drawings and modifying these line types and shape files so as always thanks for watching don't forget to share this video 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Channel: SourceCAD

Views: 99,723

Rating: 4.8838172 out of 5

Keywords: custom linetype autocad, linetypes using shape, linetype using text

Id: ptFkR1sIMWw

Length: 13min 37sec (817 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 12 2018