Managing Object Coding, Lineweights, And Plotstyles In AutoCAD 2000

By Barrie Mathews

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TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES

In AutoCAD 2000, lineweight has been made another property tied directly to your drawing entities in the same manner as color and linetype. In addition, Plotstyles have been introduced, but I’ll talk more about that later.

Now, the added complexity of having linewidth always tied to color has been removed. Color can be used more freely and effectively to communicate much more information. I have long been a strong advocate in using colors, and CAD management systems such as S-MAN have always used color extensively for both visual and computer coding for objects, with appropriate linewidths attached. With the new lineweight property in AutoCAD 2000 you can now do this more easily, and it presents a major change in thinking about how your CAD system needs to run.

Consider that the purpose of linewidth is to provide contrast between components on paper in order to convey what the designer is intending to tell the person reading the print. Since no other person knows this better than the original designer, I recommend that the linewidth property always be used whenever a new entity is drawn. It will seldom need to be changed and in house productivity tools can be implemented to automate its use.

While getting used to new software, the pressure to get things done to meet deadlines has caused the focus to be on using the tools to perform traditional drafting functions but do them faster. Consequently, classification of drawing elements was focused around drafting functions. For example, drawing elements were grouped on layers for center lines, hidden lines, hatching, linewidth, and text height. Outside of hatching where causing regens used to be a problem, it is remote that any of these elements need to be turned on or off individually. It is much more useful to classify the elements by the rela life object and the object’s components. The following is an example for a typical detail drawing of a concrete footing with a masonry wall on top of it. The classification for detail drawings can be the object itself and its material components that are of interest to different trades.



Think real world objects! It’s a concrete footing for a masonry wall composed of concrete, masonry, and steel reinforcing. It is not 0.50 mm lines, 0.25 mm lines, 2.5 mm text, or dims. Such characteristics do not describe the object and are of no importance for classification.

It is a concrete footing with a concrete face, a concrete joint, earth or gravel in contact with it, text describing the concrete assembly, and it may have concrete dims delineating its size. It has other objects which are component objects contained in it or attached to it that define its makeup. These are masonry units with masonry grout lines, and reinforcing steel. It might also have anchor bolts made of steel. What is important is that it is composed of or associated with 3 or 4 different materials or sub-systems, some of which may already exist, and some which (in design work) are "Proposed" for modification.

To be able to identify the components instantly, the heavy concrete is blue (150), the masonry is blue-grey (152), the reinforcing steel is red (10), and the earth is burnt auburn (224). The thin concrete joint is blue-grey (153) and if wood plates were attached, they would be represented in the color range of #30-39 (yellow-orange).

Layers for grouping these objects can be Proposed Concrete (PCON), Proposed Masonry (PMAS), Proposed Reinforcing (PREI), and Earth (EART). The text annotation layers can be Proposed Concrete Text in various formats depending upon the standards you prefer (PCON_N, CONC-PT, or ANNO-TEXT-CONC-NEWW). The dims annotation layers can be also be PCON_N or be separated as CONC-PD, or ANNO-DIMS-CONC-NEWW.

With this type of classification, it is a simple matter to recognize components, and to display or not display various materials and their annotations. In the plan drawing, the same color coding is used but the layering is classified for the component objects rather than the materials. For existing works you would use ECON or CONC-EXIST for details, and E1WAL or WALL-CONC-EXIST for plans, going from generic to specific, depending upon how you use it. These are examples of the concepts.

The direction the industry is going for classifying detail blocks is to use the Uniform Construction Index, Divisions 1000 to 16000 for storing details in your block library. In this format, the detail above would be stored under a Div. 3 - Concrete folder in a 3100 - Cast in Place sub-folder, and the masonry components would be stored under another hierachy for Div. 4 - Masonry.

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Contents:

• Concepts
• Technological Advances
• Plotstyles in AutoCAD 2000
• So here is how all of this shakes out!

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