Line Styles in CAD Drawings

Available line types

ProfiCAD offers seven basic line types that cover most needs of technical drawing:

• solid
• dashed
• dotted
• dash dot
• dash dash dot
• dash dot dot
• dash space evenly

Every type except the solid line is available in three sizes: normal, .5x and 2x.

How to change the line type

1. Select a line or wire.
2. In the Properties panel, find the item "Line type".
3. Click the button with 3 dots.
4. In the dialog, choose the line type you want.

The dialog for choosing the line style in the Properties panel looks like this:

Line scale

Need a finer or coarser pattern? The line scale changes the size of the dashes and gaps in the line pattern. You set it in the Properties panel.

Custom line types

If the built-in styles are not enough, you can create your own. ProfiCAD uses the LIN format known from other CAD systems. Line definitions are stored in files with the extension .lin in the _LIN folder of the symbol library. There can be several files – in that case the definitions from all files are merged.

LIN format

It is a simple text file. Each line definition has two lines:

The first line starts with the character *, followed by the style name, a comma and a description of the style.

The second line starts with the character A and contains a series of numbers separated by commas. A positive number = length of a dash, a negative number = length of a gap, zero = a dot. The units are centimeters.

Example:

*dash dot (2x), ____ . ____ . ____ . ___

A,1.0,-.5,0,-.5

What it means: a dash of 1 cm, a gap of 0.5 cm, a dot, a gap of 0.5 cm – and then the pattern repeats.

To understand it better, we recommend studying the file lines.lin in the _LIN folder.