Adding Text to Existing Custom Line Types

[MatTheDrafter]

I have been a task of designing new line-types by place text within existing line-types.  For example, they want to use the Phantom line type with W in it as a water line.  “____ _ _ ___ W ___ _ _ ___ W” does anyone know how I would do that that would allow it to bend and curve with polylines and splines?

Trying to figure out how to cost it in a .lin file but having some difficulty figuring how to code that. Any suggestion how the .line file should be could be helpful.

Also would using the make custom line-type under the express tools be an option.

[Kent1Cooper]

>>Help<< is your friend.  It will tell you all about it as well as anyone here can.

[MatTheDrafter]

Closes I got was 

*WATER,WATERLINE
A,1,-.04829,["W",UASITE,y=-.05,s=.1,u=0],-.180146,1,-.04829,["W",UASITE,y=-.05,s=.1,u=0],-.180146f

But that doesn't have the phantom-like line I wanted to include. 

This seems to be how I want it but don't know exactly how I got the W in the center

*WATER,___ _ _ __ w ___ _ _ ___ w
A,5.097639,-1.019528,1.019528,-1.019528,1.019528,-1.019528,5.097639,-1.099855,["W",UASITE,y=-.805136,s=1.75,u=0],-3.407324

If someone could point me to a source with a better descriptor of what the .lin coding mean that would be helpful 

[dgorsman]

Should be covered in the help documentation, there's not much to explain.

Positive number means "pen down", or draw a line.  Negative number means "pen up" or skip that distance (I'd recommend putting in leading zero's on numbers less-than-one, while it still reads without them it's oh-so-easy for a human to mistake ".18" for "18").  Try to keep the numbers rational i.e. you shouldn't need 6 decimal places, one or two is normally enough.

Brackets insert a reference shape or characters, with offset, s(cale), r(otation).

[Kent1Cooper]

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@MatTheDrafter wrote:

.... 

This seems to be how I want it but don't know exactly how I got the W in the center

*WATER,___ _ _ __ w ___ _ _ ___ w
A,5.097639,-1.019528,1.019528,-1.019528,1.019528,-1.019528,5.097639,-1.099855,["W",UASITE,y=-.805136,s=1.75,u=0],-3.407324

....

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If by that you mean how you got the W in the center of the gap around it, that is by the relationship between the negative [pen-up] specification before the text-element specification, the resultant width of the text character, and the negative specification following, which takes you to the beginning of the cycle again for the next pen-down specification.

Simplifying yours down to [mostly] whole-number values, this definition:

*WATER,___ _ _ __ w ___ _ _ ___ w
A,5,-1,1,-1,1,-1,5,-1,["W",STANDARD,y=-.8,s=1.6,u=0],-3

gives this result:

The two pen-up segments [toward the right] surrounding the text element make up the gap around it.  But note how the orientation of the W in the curve above is skewed [I used an exaggerated curvature to make it more obvious].  That's because the direction of the text element is the direction of the "path" at the point where the text element specification occurs, which in the straight-line example is the red dot.  Because of that, I always split the gap around a text element into two equal parts, and use a X=negative back-off value for the "start" point of the text element, so that the direction of the text is that of the path at the middle of the gap.  Like this:

*WATER,___ _ _ __ w ___ _ _ ___ w
A,5,-1,1,-1,1,-1,5,-2,["W",STANDARD,y=-.8,x=-1.03,s=1.6,u=0],-2

which gives a result like this, with a better orientation of the text in curves:

The -1.03 I used is appropriate only to W character in the font assigned to my STANDARD Text Style -- you'll need to experiment with what best suits the font in your assigned Style, and it would be different for different characters, in case you do this same kind of thing for other designations.