line type/weight/color 1

[bashabo]

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..

 

[Rookie2]

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.

 

[borgunit]

Here is one I've seen

http://www.pwgsc.gc.ca/realproperty/text/pubs_cadd/pubs_cadd_3-e.html

"Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects." — Will Rogers

 

[Spudnik]

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

 

[LHA]

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