I need alittle help creating a linetype please

Hello everyone:

I am currently using Autocad Land Desktop 3 and wish to create a linetype that represents a Property Line. A Property Line is basically a Phantom linetype with the letters "PL" occurring every so often along the line. The problem is that I don't want the letters to occur at every double dash. I'd like some space in-between the re-occurring text. Here's what I got so far:

*PROP2,PROP2
A,2.45311,-.292714,.60309,-.313404,.60309,-.3141,["~P",STANDARD,S=0.35,R=0.0,X=10,Y=-.18]

I made the x=10 thinking that the "~P" will occur every 10 units. This isn't the case. Using this linetype creates unequal spaced text that continues beyond the endpoint of the line. I have seen many examples on how to bring in text and shapes into linetype files. But they are all symmetrical and repeat often. I wish to draw a few series of the phantom linetype before bringing in the text but there seems to be a limit on the number of line segments in the code. Can someone point me in the right direction? Can I get the linetype I want?

Thanks in advance,
Daniel...

 

Can't do that. All linetypes are repeating patterns. If you have a long
segment (or multiple segments) before your first text element, you will have
the same pattern before *all* text elements.
___

text

 

Daniel:

The X-offset element isn't a spacing, it's a starting-point offset distance
(times linetype scale) from the end of the last defined element, so your
setting it to 10 sent the text way the heck away from right the position in
the linetype cycle.

You're right that there's a limit to the number of dash/dot/gap/insert
specifications in a linetype definition, but it doesn't seem to be in the
documentation; you have to find out by exceeding it that it's 12. That
doesn't give enough for what I picture you're looking for as I first tried
it with ordinary dashes and spaces, but I FOUND A TRICK!!

With the X-offset option, you can effectively COMBINE a gap in the linetype
right INTO a text element. I first tried doing " _ _ " (two underscores
with three spaces around them), but at least in the TXT font (if that's in
your "Standard" text style) the spaces are too wide in relation to the
underscores. Besides, it takes a lot of tweaking to get the Y-offset right
so the underscores line up with the rest of the line.

But the so-called pipe character "|" (uppercase of the backslash on my
keyboard) comes out (again, in TXT font) at exactly the length of the text
height, so it's easier to control its relationship to the rest of the line,
gap sizes, etc. I put a couple of them in, rotated down flat, with
X-offsets to define the gaps before them, and got this to fit within the
12-element limit:

*PROP2,----- - - ----- - - ----- PL ----- - -
A,2.5,["|",STANDARD,S=0.5,R=-90,X=.25],-.75,["|",STANDARD,S=0.5,R=-90,X=.25],-1,2.5,["|",STANDARD,S=0.5,R=-90,X=.25],-.75,["|",STANDARD,S=0.5,R=-90,X=.25],-1,2.5,["PL",STANDARD,S=0.36,R=0.0,X=0.2,Y=-.18],-1

(Patch that back together onto one line from the A onward, when you put it
into a .LIN file.)

[I changed your "~P" to "PL" as in your description, partly because I
thought I'd have more use for it that way sometimes. I also simplified the
lengths of dashes and spaces, but you can change those back to your 5- and
6-place decimals if you need particular lengths. If you use some font other
than TXT in your "Standard" text style, you might want to adjust the -1 at
the very end to fit the gap around the "PL" appropriately.]

I tested it in A2K, and it seems to work well -- I hope it does what you
want.

Kent Cooper, AIA

 

Kent,

Nice trick. I like it.

One question I have with it, however, is what happens if you're dealing with
short line segments. Without testing, I am imagining that they will default
to a continuous line appearance until some length to ltscale ratio is met.
True? At least, this seems to be one of the main problems I've had with any
type of 'fancy' linetype creation - the pattern doesn't start until a
certain length is reached, which become ever more problematic the longer the
definition is...

But, thanks for sharing the idea/technique!

Best regards,
David Kozina

 

It just occurred to me, and I checked and found that it is the case, that
with such a long definition cycle, there is a "problem" with shorter lines.
Unless a line is long enough for the ENTIRE cycle, it comes out as
Continuous. You can't have SOME of the dashing sequence without getting to
the text part and completing the whole cycle.

PhantomX2 is really close, and you could substitute PhantomX2 lines for such
shorter ones, so you'd get SOME dashes. But you'd probably want to redefine
PhantomX2 or PROP2 to get the sizes of the gaps to match (they're .25 in my
PROP2, but .5 in PhantomX2).

Kent Cooper, AIA


...

 

We crossed in the mail....

Kent Cooper, AIA


...

 

You could minimize the problem by making property boundaries closed
polylines with linetype generation enabled. Even there, you have the
possibility of some quirky-looking effects if the text part happens to fall
very close to a corner.

Kent Cooper, AIA

.....

 

i use shapes instead of text, for this very reason.

on short lines that can't fit the full definition, i can at least insert the
shape manually on the line.

 

Thanks for linetype Kent! I see how it works and it should work.... but of course when I loaded into my Acad2000i... it didn't. I mean the linetype loaded but when I went to draw it, it was just a continous linetype with no skips, dashes, or text. I played with the ltscale and it did nothing. Not sure how to fix that.

Of course this is at my home computer. I'll try it at work tomorrow. I have Acad 2002, LDT3 there.

As for a short line segment NOT showing dashes or text... I'm not worried about it. Little jogs in a Property Line on a set of plans can be just a continuous linetype. It's the longer runs that I want to identify that it is a Property Line. Just not text at every 2 dashes.

Thanks again. I'll try this at work and let you know how it goes.

Daniel...

 

Bah... it's late...

Ok, It DOES work and it's perfect for what I want to do! I needed to draw lines that were 5 or 6 units... not 10000 like I was doing. Of course it'll look like a continuous linetype...

I do notice that line segments that are LESS than the sum of all the spaces and such will show up as a continuous linetype. But this is ok! It still works for what I am looking for.

Thanks Again,
Daniel...

 

Happy to help, especially when it turns out to involve a
think-outside-the-box notion that I expect I'll use again.

Kent Cooper, AIA


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