Subtitles of the Movie

We're now going to look at Line Weights in AutoCAD, again these have been in AutoCAD for a long time and Line Weights allow you to distinguish specific objects on a drawing. So you might want to distinguish the partitions on this drawing, the furniture, the windows, the walls, any particular object can have a Line Weight assign to it. The most common way of assigning a Line Weight is in the Layer Properties, so if I go to the Layer Properties Manager and just expand the Line Weight field there you can see that certain layers have different Line Weights. So for example if I look at walls there they have a .50 millimeter Line Weight and if I look there at the partitions layer, the first one, I-PARTITIONS, it has a .35 millimeter Line Weight. If I close the Layer Properties Manager there while those Line Weights have been displayed at the moment, that's because down on the Status Bar here the Line Weight icon is not activated. If I right click and show you Line Weight Settings, I can go in there and right click and go to settings as I would with Object Snaps. I can go in and set the settings at any time. If I right click though and use buttons instead of icons you'll notice there the old DWT button is not highlighted, its not activated. I'm going to go back to Icon Settings now and look at the icons again in the default AutoCAD 2009 set up there. If I switch on Line Weight as you can see the Partition Line Weight appears and also the Walls Line Weight appears. Now that Walls Line Weight is very unwieldy at the moment, now everything drawn on that Walls Layer will actually have that Line Weight. So we don't want that anymore so what we want to do is we want to take that Line Weight off and maybe make it thinner or set it back to the default Line Weight in AutoCAD. So we go to our Layer Properties Manager and there's our Walls Layer and what we can do is we can click on the Line Weight in the layer there and select the Line Weight we require. The default Line Weight there is a thin line for clarity, I can have a zero Line Weight which is again the thinnest line you can get or I can go for something slightly thinner like a .15, If I click on .15 there and apply it and then Close the Layer Properties Manager you'll notice now the Line Weight has changed. Now what I can do here, let's zoom in close and you'll see that there's hardly a difference there compared to the default Line Weight which the windows are drawn on. Let's zoom back out again so that we can see what we're doing with our office. Now obviously the partitions still stand out because their on that .35 millimeter Line Weight. Now that's setting it per layer or to use a phrase in autocad the buy layer option. Now the properties what I can do here is I can actually an object and give its own individual Line Weight. Now what I can do here, this is in the Properties Panel here on the Ribbon in AutoCAD 2009. I'm going to select this right hand desk here and at the moment notice its on Layer I-FURNITURE, this is the Quick Properties option which is down here on the Status Bar. So this is new to AutoCAD 2009 and what it does is it quickly gives you the properties. If I go to Close that what'll happen is I'll be prompted that it'll be turned off on the Status Bar. So if I Close the panel notice down at the bottom of the screen here now Quick properties is off. So I can click on it again switch it on again and notice the selected object is again in the Quick Properties box. I'm going to Close it again, purely for clear screen while we're working. Now that object there has been selected, now if I look at the Properties Panel here, if I look here I've got Select the Line Weight, so let's go and see whether I can apply Line Weight to that desk. When I click on it no Line Weights appears, that is because that is an AutoCAD Block. AutoCAD blocks you cannot apply Line Weights to them, the Line Weight needs to be individually applied to the objects that make up that block when the block is created. So what I'll do there is I'll quickly set that back to ByLayer instead. Let's deselect that object by pressing the escape key. What I can do though is these objects here are individual lines; notice the partitions are individual lines. What I can do there is I can go in and I can change their properties individually. So let's say that I click on this partition here, notice Quick Properties is off so it purely selects the object this time. If I click here notice it's ByLayer which means its .35, let's increase that to .7 and you'll notice when I hit Escape there that is now a much thicker line, because a thicker Line Weight has been applied to it. I'm just going to pop up to Undo there and change that and what I'm going to do is switch it back to the .35 Line Weights. Now you can apply this to any object in AutoCAD, so to give you an example here I'm going to place circle on the internal furniture layer at the end of this corridor here by the window and its going to represent a plant pot perhaps for some planting in the office to give it a more calming effect in the office. So I'm going to place the circle just [00:04:54 ] purely using Sensor Radius and I'm just going to place it roughly there in the center of the corridor, I'm not going to worry too much about an exact positioning as this is an example at the moment. Now what I'll do there, I'll give it say 300 diameter by putting in a radius of 150 and there's my plant pot on the furniture layer. Notice when I hover over it there it is a circle, if I just hover there and hold for a second it tells it's a circle on the layout I-FURNITURE and the Line Type there is ByLayer. It doesn't tell me the Line Weight, however if I click on that object and again go up here and change individual Line Weight to .6 and hit Escape to deselect the object, notice that Line Weight is applied individually. It does not apply to anything else on the furniture layer. So that is how Line Weights work, they can be applied individually to objects by using the Properties Panel or they can be applied overall in a drawing, globally, by using the layers, by using the Line Weights in the actual layer itself.