×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

line type/weight/color

line type/weight/color

line type/weight/color

(OP)
I am new in autocad and trying to set up my standard.  Wondering what others are using in the industry when it comes to line type/weight/color for proposed (say, property line, curb and gutter, new building, dimension, dimension test, leaders, etc.) and existing features in general.  Highly appreciate your feed back.  Thanks..   

RE: line type/weight/color

I would recommend that you find a set of drawings that you think look good, and try to duplicate it. Not having the benefit of someone before you creating the standards means that you will need to experiment to find what suits you. Our lineweights are color dependant. Using autocad's default plot settings will create plots where all the lineweights are the same. Adust your lineweights by color to acheive the result you are looking for. You can also adjust the screening of a particular color to make that color plot subdued. We typically try to make existing structures (curb, buildings, storm drain, etc) plot somewhat subdued and proposed structures a little darker. Our existing structures colors are typically darker (greys, browns), and proposed brighter. This makes it easier to distinguish between the two when editing the drawing.

As far as text; The text height is more important than font. 1/10th of the drawing scale is our standard (0.1 if in paperspace). We usually increase this for text we want to stand out (road names, building numbers, etc).

The bottom line is making a drawing that is easily readable and presents all of the pertinent information in a way that a contractor can read. This is not easy to do in civil drawing, with all the information required.

Hope this helps.

RE: line type/weight/color

My first step would be to obtain a set of pen size standards from your state dept of transportation (DOT) or from an engineering dept at a city.

They almost always have a list of standard symbols along with "pen" sizes listed.

Rocky

RE: line type/weight/color

Several years ago, the US military got together with AIA, CSI, the United States Coast Guard, GSA, NIBS and others to try to work on a standard.  It is free, and available here:

https://tsc.wes.army.mil/products/standards/aec/aecstdweb.asp

I like it, too many layers, but I don't use them all.  We use it in my firm, but we do a lot of Dept of Defense work...I wouldn't bank on how "standard" it is.


If you are in PA, USA, using PennDOT's standards as a template will be OK...with the following exceptions:

PennDOT uses 1" = 25' as their standard plan and profile viewport scale.  Noone else does, and I have only ever seen one scale with those increments on it, and it was very old.

PennDOT uses Microstation.  So make sure your standard hatches, linetypes, fonts and symbols jive with the software you, your consultants and the review agencies use.  If that software is AutoCAD, I will tell you from experience that they often do not.

Remember: The Chinese ideogram for “crisis” is comprised of the characters for “danger” and “opportunity.”
-Steve

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources