Using drawing types

By using drawing types in conjunction with area styles and line styles, you can display elements on screen and in printouts in a manner that reflects the selected drawing type. You can use drawing types both when working in document mode and when setting up your layouts. In document mode, you can select a drawing type by clicking in the status bar.

The status bar is the bottom line in the Allplan application window. Different types of information are displayed in the status bar.

You can use line styles to specify how elements are displayed depending on the reference scale and/or display type. Requirements: the format properties are taken from the layer (in a fixed manner) and the use of line styles is selected. The format properties (pen, line, color) you define for a layer can be saved in a named line style. Elements can then assume the format properties of this layer. When defining line styles, you specify whether they change according to the scale or display type. You can define different line styles for various scale ranges and/or display types so that the elements are displayed and printed differently, depending on the reference scale or display type set. Using line styles, you can work on a scale-independent basis.

Surface styles allow you to display architectural components with different surface settings depending on the reference scale or drawing type set. In contrast to line styles, this association is not based on the From Layer format property. Rather, the architectural elements’ component properties or the 2D surface element known as Area Style are used to establish this link. You can save hatching styles, patterns, fills or bitmaps for fixed scale ranges or drawing types as named area styles. Moreover, area styles can be used for architectural components as an alternative to hatching styles, patterns, fills or bitmap areas.

When creating a project, you can specify whether you want to use the drawing types in the office standard or project-specific drawing types. Layer structures, line styles and drawing types use the same setting.