customizing annotation tool

[marcus]

I was using the OOTB cutline tool from the document palette and I noticed that when you right-click the tool to see it's properties there is no place to customize either the size of the "Z" or the thickness of the polyline it creates.  Is there anyway to do this?

Thanks

Marcus

[David_W_Koch]

Assuming that you are referring to the AutoCAD Architecture Cut Line (1) tool (the Cut Line (2) tool is similar), the tool's properties include a place to specify the Symbol to be used and the path/file from which the Symbol is to be obtained if it does not already exist in the current file (Symbol location property). If you want a different Symbol, you should examine how the out-of-the-box Aec6_Anno_Break_Single (or, for Cut Line (2), the Aec6_Anno_Break_Double) symbol is defined, as well as understanding the other property setting options (Symbol behavior - stretched vs. scaled; Break mark behavior - mask vs. trim) and the effect that different drawing scales have. Then you should be able to create a Symbol that works for you, and a tool palette tool to have it work the way you want.

Note that while the end result is a polyline (with a masking AEC Polygon, if you choose the Mask break mark behavior), the template for the break mark is a Block Definition specified in the Symbol and Symbol location properties.

[marcus]

Thanks for your reply.

I guess I didn't make myself clear, I understand how the right-click properties work.  There are two things missing from those properties how to size the "Z" and the thickness of the pline itself.  I went ahead and created a new block at approx. 1/2 size to take care of the "Z" size, easy enough. The thickness of the polyline is another matter.  There is no variable w/in the tool properties to set the width of the pline and I've had it show up with a thickness that is non-zero AND in another drawing it IS zero.  I don't know where this is coming from plinewid seems to make no difference.  Any ideas?  We want the lineweight to be controlled by color (therefore scaleable @ plot time) not as an actual width.

Thanks

[David_W_Koch]

There does not appear to be a way to control the global width of the generated polyline.  For the imperial content, the width is set to 3/3200" times the current drawing scale factor.  So for 1/8" = 1'-0", the width is 0.09".  Perhaps in the drawing where the width was reported to be 0 had a relatively large scale and a relatively low linear units precision, so that the small width displayed as 0.

If you want the polyline to have a zero width so that the width assigned via a plot style takes effect, you will have to manually set the width after using the break tool (unless you have the skills and desire to create a reactor program that would do so automatically).