Self taught and wondering if the following can be done.

[babak.zahedi7141]

So long story short im self taught using a student version of 2017 auto cad. so i drew a 2d drawing using default lineweights to be able to export it to our laser cutter/engraver. after getting done with it i realized it would look better with fatter lines (its 1940s cartoony style). I can change the lineweights and it shows up when i do a print preview to a normal ol printer but i dont actually see the line weights get any fatter on the autocad drawing screen. I know theres a way to do this but im unsure of how to do this. The idea is to make one pass with the laser cutter software (its really really dumb)to engrave everything (aka woodburn the fat lines and other shading details on) then load another auto cad drawing with only the outline shape to do the actual cutting but making the outline shape on the outside of the outline by scaling it up a hair. (not sure how to do this yet but i think i can figure this out.) AllSavers Login

so put in another way: lets say my dawing is an exact 2" square drawn with the default lineweight setting. I change the line weight to 0.060". I do not actually see the lineweight change on the drawing screen - how can i fix that? I also assume the centerline of the fat line is the 2" square correct? meaning if you were to split it its really 0.030" on either side of the line? I want to etch (woodburn) this fat line onto a piece of wood then cut it out. If so i would need to scale the square up by 0.030" so when i cut it out using the cut function im left with the square with 0.060" outline.

[leeminardi]

I suggest you forget about using lineweights.  Scaling does not give you a constant offset.  For example, picture a rectangle 2" x 1". Scaling it by 2X will give you a 4x2 rectangle and an offset of 1" on the short sides and 0.5" on the long sides.  Use line color to help distinguish geometry when working interactively in AutoCAD.

Use the offset command to create the outer profile that you will use to drive the cutter. 

[Kent1Cooper]

---

@babak.zahedi7141 wrote:

.... I change the line weight to 0.060". I do not actually see the lineweight change on the drawing screen - how can i fix that? I also assume the centerline of the fat line is the 2" square correct? ....

---

You can choose whether lineweights are displayed on-screen, in the status bar:

And yes, the center of the width is the actual drawing element's "path."

[Michiel.Valcke]

If you are sending your dwg (or dxf) to a laser cutter, then normally lineweight will not be read by the laser. So a thicker lineweight in AutoCAD will not have an impact on your lineweight from the laser. 

If you want to play with different laser settings I recommend using colors to diferentiate between which settings need to be used for which line. If you really want to do thick lines, multiple passes of the laser can create that effect. Or use offset to create multiple lines close to each other (closer than the burnpath)