Line Types on a Server

[gotphish001]

I was messing around with the express tools line type maker. I got it figured out I think. If you want to put text in a line it has to be single line text. I couldn't get multiline to work. If you want to put say a circle in your line you need to make it a shape first. Typical ACA style making everything extra complicated. It obviously says nothing about any of this is the knowledge help. haha trial and error

My question is I made a line type with a bunch of things in it as a test. It is a line with a circle, ellipse, and a couple letters in it all in line with short lines in between. The line type works great. I then put it on the server to see if my counter part could put it in a drawing. When he tried to load the line type it said line 2 was bad. I opened it with notepad and on line 2 is the first shape(circle) that's in the line type. So do you need to have all the shapes in a drawing to use a line type with shapes in it? Seems logical and also dumb at the same time. If I wanted to put complex line types on our server for both of us to use how would I go about it? Where would I put the shapes?

I guess in short how would I accomplish this without having to insert each shape into a drawing manually and then load the line type? Because say I try and load a line type that he made a month or a year ago, how would I even know what shapes I need for it. At that point he probably wouldn't even remember which shapes either after you get more and more of them. I suppose you could make a folder in your line type file that had the line type and all the shapes that are needed for it in each file, but that seems ridiculous.

[gotphish001]

Other things I've tried and not had luck. 

1)    In the ADC drag the line type from the drawing I made it in to the current drawing. It half works. The line type goes in and can be added to a layer.       Only the text part of the line shows up though. There is a blank space where the 2 shapes should be in the line.

2)    Put the line type on a palette that's on the server. I was sure this would work. It does not work however.

 What I think will work is adding in the options where it looks for shapes to the location I'm storing the shapes, but I can't find anything that looks like it would be it.

[David_W_Koch · Accepted solution]

I assume that you created your shape in a shape file (plain text, with an SHP extension), and then compiled it into a compiled shape file, with an SHX extension.  That file is/should be what is referenced by the linetype definition.  [I have never used the Express Tool to create a complex linetype; I go old school and do it manually.]  That file then needs to be somewhere in the AutoCAD search path.  If you plan to share the linetype with others, one way to do so would be to set up a network-based folder for holding customizations and place that folder in everyone's search path.  You could put the LIN file here, too, although it is not necessary for the LIN file to be in the search path.

If you share files outside of the office, you will also want to share the SHX file as well.

[gotphish001]

That did it. I put where I had the shapes in the support file search path. 

[gotphish001]

I lied. haha it still doesn't work. I put the files in  the support path, but I didn't delete them from their original locations so it must have still been seeing them there. After I deleted the originals it broke the line type. 

[gotphish001 · Accepted solution]

Ok now it's fixed but it's typical ACA extra complexity to do something. What you need to do to get a line type to work with shapes is type "load" in the command line then pick the .shx files that are the shapes in the line. After that you can load the line type without getting a line 2 bad definition. You would need to do this in for each .dwg you wanted the line type in.  Even if you pull the linetype from the ADC and drop it in the drawing it won't work until you load the shx files in. So it's a pita but if a fancy line type is going to save me a couple hours then it's probably worth it doing the extra few steps.

[David_W_Koch]

If the original SHX file was in the same folder as the original drawing in which you created the linetype, for that drawing it would count as being in the AutoCAD search path (as AutoCAD will look in the folder of the current drawing file for stuff first, before it embarks on the balance of the search path spelled out on the Files tab of the Options dialog.

That would not hold true for other drawings, saved to other folders, however.  If the SHX file was in a "permanent" location and that location was added to the AutoCAD search path for a given AutoCAD profile, it should be available to all drawings opened while that AutoCAD profile is current.  It may be that if you already had drawings open and then you added the folder to the search path, the open drawings would not immediately read the SHX file; you may have to close (saving first, if appropriate) and then reopen the files for the SHX file to be seen.  You should not have to manually load the shapes into a drawing for them to work.  That presumes that the Express Tools MKLTYPE command creates the linetype definition the same way that a manually written definition would.  (I cannot imagine that it does not.)

For example, here is the out-of-the-box Zig zag linetype definition:

*ZIGZAG,Zig zag /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
A,.0001,-.2,[ZIG,ltypeshp.shx,x=-.2,s=.2],-.4,[ZIG,ltypeshp.shx,r=180,x=.2,s=.2],-.2

So long as ltypeshp.shx is somewhere in your search path (it should be in the AutoCAD Support folder under your user profile - C:\Users\USERNAMEHERE\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\ACA 2017\enu\Support is the default location for 2017 - then loading the linetype will bring in all of the shapes defined in that file for you.  No manual loading is required.

[gotphish001]

I'll have to test that out. I definitely was testing in already open drawings on the other machine, but I did try saving them. Not closing and opening though. My SHX file saves in my documents folder so the default save location wasn't even in the projects folder structure.