Line Type/Dash Style/Line Style Scaling

[Gonda]

Hey All,

 

So, can anyone explain or point me somewhere that explains how Line Types currently work?  As far as I can tell, line types are defined in page inches.  How does this relate to document Units, Layer Scale, etc.  Also, is there a way to have a line type that has a constant screen scale? i.e. The line type always shows up with the same level of of detail regardless of zoom level?  It seems that this used to just work before they changed line type/style into resources.

 

Cheers,

-gonda

[michaelk]

Some of the default line types - like the ISO line types - are in page units.  Others are in "world units" so they scale with the drawing.  The great thing about the world unit line types is that they don't need to be made up of lines.  They can be combinations of geometry and text that is really useful.  I've made some that are profiles of roof tiles for dressing up elevations and others that have lines and text for marking locations of soft goods (in entertainment designs) or locations of gas lines in site plans.  And having them be resources makes it MUCH easier to move them from drawing to drawing.

 

If you try to make a new line type from the RB your first choice is page or world units.  For some reason the default ISO line types cannot be edited to use world units.  But if you create a new line type you can switch it back and forth from world to page.

[Andy Broomell]

14 minutes ago, michaelk said:

Some of the default line types - like the ISO line types - are in page units.  Others are in "world units" so they scale with the drawing.  The great thing about the world unit line types is that they don't need to be made up of lines.  They can be combinations of geometry and text that is really useful.  I've made some that are profiles of roof tiles for dressing up elevations and others that have lines and text for marking locations of soft goods (in entertainment designs) or locations of gas lines in site plans.  And having them be resources makes it MUCH easier to move them from drawing to drawing.

 

If you try to make a new line type from the RB your first choice is page or world units.  For some reason the default ISO line types cannot be edited to use world units.  But if you create a new line type you can switch it back and forth from world to page.

 

To clarify this a bit (because the "New Line Type" dialogue box is admittedly a little unclear) the two varieties of Line Types are "Simple" and "Complex."

• Simple: These are the old-fashioned ones, based on the line length and gap length. Most of the default linetypes are this variety, and distances can only be page-based.
• Complex: These are the ones that can be made up of other geometry, and can be page-based or world-based.

Looking at the dialogue box, it's either the upper portion or the lower portion. But at first glance it appears that "page-based" and "world-based" are just options related to creating lines with the upper visual interface. But in fact, you're either choosing Simple by using upper portion, or Complex by using the lower portion (along with pre-determining whether its page- or world-based before drawing the geometry in the subsequent interface).

 

All that being said, I don't know of any way to make a line-type be screen scale, unfortunately.

 

[michaelk]

2 minutes ago, Andy Broomell said:

 

 

All that being said, I don't know of any way to make a line-type be screen scale, unfortunately.

 

 

Much better explanation :-).  I think the only VW objects that are "screen" scaled are loci.