How to Create Custom Linetype

One of the commonly encountered problems is that the linetypes provided by CAD software can’t satisfy various demands in CAD Design. In order to make the design work easier, I will talk about how to create custom linetype in ZWCAD in today’sCAD topic,

To create the custom linetype, let’s start with the rules in customization.

In the ZWCAD, we can find a zwcad.lin file in C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\ZWSoft\ZWCAD\2012\en-US\Support . Open the file by Notepad, and the linetypes provided by CAD have been listed.

                          *BORDER,Border __ __ . __ __ . __ __ . __ __ . __ __ .

A, 12.700, -6.350, 12.700, -6.350, 0, -6.350

The linetype definition is composed of two parts. The first part is name and description for the particular line. Start the definition with “*”, then we could name the line. Leave a simple description after the comma. Specify the codes of lines in the second part. “A “ stands for alignment. The first parameter value should be equal to or more than “0”. The second parameter value should be less than “0”. Positive value means drawing a straight line with certain length. “0” means draw a point. Negative value means space. The punctuation after codes should be input with half-width.

Let’s take the center line as an example. The source code for which is A,1.250,-0.25,0.25,-0.25，According to the definition rules stated above, it means drawing a line with length of 1.25, ‘-0.25’ means a space with length of 0.25, ‘0.25’ means a line with length of 0.25.

If you are still not so clear about how to customize the linetype, you could draw the line first. Here is an example for double dot dash line. Let’s see how it’s defined.

Open the file zwcad.lin in ZWCAD installation path. And enter the name of this linetype as “double dots”. The source code for the line should be

 *DOUBLE_DOT,double_dot  ______..______..______

A,1.0,-0.1,0,-0.1,0,-0.1

Save the file after we add the source code.

With the same method, we could customize the linetype in design.

You may like more about “linetype” on CAD forum:

1.       Why the curved line break into straight line segments?

2.      Create Linetype with texts

3.       Linetype and linetype scale

4.      How to get the dot linetype spaced?

5.      Linetypes for dot drawings

6.      How do I create a linetype with shapes

CAD Insight:getting a product from screen to store

You have been playing about on ZW3D and have come up with an incredible product. How has no-one thought of this before? It’s going to be huge? But what next? It is a long, tough journey to get from this stage to the shelves of Wal-Mart, but these tips will be able to guide you on your way.

Prototyping

To be taken seriously by any investor, manufacturer or buyer you will need a physical representation of your product. Ideally this would be a fully functioning model but if not, something that you can use to help explain your vision.

The first step would be to construct a basic version of your product with cheap materials or things lying around the house. The aim of this would be to get a better idea of your product, and allow you to make small changes before you invest fully in pre-production prototyping. Moldable plastics, such as Instamorph, can be used to design and test any plastic products, and can be remolded over and over again until you have perfected the design.

The pre-production prototype will be a more professional version of your product and will be used to attract investors and buyers to your product before you enter in to manufacturing. If the product is based on plastics, you can use a 3D printer to cheaply and easily make a one off version. If you do not own a 3D printer, makexyz.com offers a directory of printers available to hire in your area. For metallic products, you may need to enlist the help of a prototype engineer, find-able through a Google search, however this could considerably increase costs. If you are aiming to keep costs low, you could enlist the help of a local tradesman.

Patenting

After working so hard on the design of your product, the last thing you want is for someone to come along and steal the idea. Patenting can stop this; however it can be a long and costly process.

Patenting laws are different for every country so you should research closely in to your own local laws. Generally, however, you can receive a provisional patent or a non-provisional patent. A provisional patent will be far cheaper but will only last one year, giving you time to decide whether your idea is worthy of your investment.

The patent application can be done individually or through a patent lawyer. Undertaking this task individually will involve submitting sketches of your idea and a brief description. Once this is done, you will be able to label your product as “patent pending’ and will spend the next year or so convincing the patent office that your idea is truly new and non-obvious.

Employing a patent lawyer to undertake this task for you will undoubtedly cost a significant amount more, however they will be able to create a much broader patent, making it harder for other firms to design around your product.

Having successfully gained a patent for your product, it will then be up to you to identify if any competitors are violating that patent. A tough task for a small company.

Licensing or Manufacturing

Once you have covered points one and two, it moves to the hardest but most rewarding stage, but first you must make the choice between manufacturing and selling the product yourself, or licensing your idea out to another company.

This choice is largely up to you. If you have the passion for your product, as well as the financial backing and business know-how to enter the market on your own, it could be one of the most rewarding things you could do. This, however, comes at a high risk and could result in major financial losses so is certainly not a decision that should be taken lightly.

Licensing is also hard to achieve. Large companies have a long waiting list of products to produce and will only accept products with great potential. They also lack the passion that you would have having followed the product from idea conception to this stage. Having said this, the financial risk is vastly reduced and if your product is taken on, the distribution channels and marketing budgets of larger businesses can result in royalties greater than any income you could have received on your own.

Within these stages, you will also have to construct business plans, conduct market research and locate financing along with a variety of other tasks. Bringing your product to market is certainly not an easy option, but it could be both financially and personally rewarding if it is done successfully.

How to set up layout to make plotting easier

Aren’t you a little curious about Layout in CAD? Layout is a basic but powerful tool in design. With Layout, CAD users can better control their drawing scale and represent the drawing with several viewports, showing different area of the model. Also, layout has made plot setting up easier than ever.

In ZWCAD+, users can view and display the drawings with one or several models by setting up viewports in Layout. By default, there will be 2 layouts for 1 graphic, layout 1 and layout 2. Users can set up multiple layouts as they want. Each layout is with different plot setting up and paper size.

Let us show you how Layout works in the following steps.

l  In the model space, draw object with 1:1 scale, the same size as actual.

You can draw in full scale regardless of different scales in one sheet.

l  Switch to Layout 1 space, input the PAGESETUP command and Enter to the page set up dialog box, click on the Modify button. Complete the setting up for the printer, paper size, plot scale and drawing orientation, etc. And click on OK to complete set up.

l  Switch to layout space and this is the plotting area, make sure that all the graphics are within the printable range.

l  Insert the title block, you can copy or draw a title block in the Layout 1. Please be sure that the dimension of the title block should match with the paper size. The plotting area of the title block should be moved in the area of the dotted lines.

l  Input VPORTS and enter to the viewport dialog box, choose to create a single viewport. In the viewport, you can see the graphics in the models. Double click on the inside part of viewport and enter the model space. In the model space, you can edit and set up the viewport showing area of the graphics. Double click on the outside part of viewport to go back to the Layout.

l  Select viewport and input the command PROPERTIES, enter to open the property bar, set up a suitable Standard Scale and make the object present  appropriately within the viewport.

l  Annotate drawing with 1:1 annotation scale in the Layout.

l  Create a new viewport, set the viewport scale as two times to the last viewport scale. Dimensioning the objects in this viewport using the same dimension style. The dimension value will not change regardless of the viewport scale.

l  Select viewport, change its layer to Defpoints.

This way, the line boundary of the viewport will not be plotted as you plot out the drawing.

l  Now, the page setup is finished. If you plot drawing in this layout, the printer, paper size and other settings will be the same to the page setup, no need to setup the layout in model space again by manually, it will save you a lot of time to plot drawing.

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How to Make the Most of Polar Tracking and Object Snap to Boost Design Accuracy

Designers often need to move the cursor coordinates to define a specific point when drawing a line, a circle or any other graphics. Without an Auto tracking tool, you would have a lot of trouble doing even the simplest dimension accurately. In ZWCAD+, the polar tracking and the object snap command can help pinpoint a specific point.

Polar tracking

Polar Tracking will guide the movement of your pointer along specified angles. When polar tracking is turned on, guides will display on the screen automatically at the polar angle increment that you specify. For example, if you draw a line with polar tracking turned on and the angle increment set at 45 degrees, the rubber-banding line displays at 45 degree increments.   

l  Enabling polar tracking

To toggle polar tracking on and off at any time, simply make sure the Polar Tracking button on the status line is activated, or you can press F10. Right click on the Polar Tracking radio button, and select Settings to display the settings dialog box.

l  Polar tracking setting

CAD users can choose among different increment angles. To track using all angles, click the Track using all polar angle settings button. Click the OK button when finished.

Object Snap

Object Snap enables you to quickly select exact geometric points on existing entities without having to know the exact coordinates of those points. With Object Snap, you can select the endpoint of a line or arc, the center point of a circle, the intersection of any two entities, or any other geometrically significant position. You can also use object snaps to draw entities that are tangential or perpendicular to an existing entity.

l  Object snap setting

To turn on Object Snap, you can press F3 or activate the Object Snap radio button on the status line. Right click on the OSNAP button on the ribbon to prompt the setting dialog box.

Taking Midpoint as an example, when the Midpoint is selected, the cursor will move to the center of a circle or an arc.

Please take note that to use OSNAP effectively, you must know what points an object has that you are able to snap to. A line for example has 3 points that you can snap to: a midpoint and two endpoints. A circle has 5 points: a center and 4 quadrants.

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How to quickly manage multiple layers with Layer State

Normally, CAD users need to batch turn off multiple layers that are not needed in a drawing. How to simultaneously turn off these layers quickly? Should you turn layers off and on one by one? No! Instead, the LAYERSTATE command can do the trick.

LAYERSTATE command is used for saving, restoring and managing the state of the named layers. By saving the layers as a named layer state, users can recover, edit, import and export the named layer state of certain layers in one drawing for reusing in another drawing.

Step by step, here’s how to use LAYERSTATE.

l  Firstly, turn on or off the layers

l  Input LAYERSTATE in the command line, press enter to pull up the Layer State Manager dialog box.

l  In the prompt dialog box, click on new to create a new name for the layer state you set up for the layers needed then close the dialog box.

l  Repeat the above steps.

l  Double click on the layer state to perform the layers, exit the dialog box, you can see the layers you needed are displayed in your current drawing.

l  When enter the model space in viewport, you can as well save the layer state of the current viewport. To restore the layer state, you need to double click within the viewport to enter the model space.

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