Custom Arrowhead Styles in AutoCAD

When I was teaching a class at Autodesk University 2016 someone asked me a question and started the question by saying “Sam, we have some very creative users”. I laughed and still think of that moment since it was a clever way as a CAD manager to describe a person who just loves customizing AutoCAD and trying out new features.

Now that being said, it is great to be creative and have passion but please stay within the boundaries of your CAD standards. I am sure many CAD managers like myself welcome the opportunity for others to share what they know to appease their creative site and keep things interesting. This post is all about being creative. I actually had to create a custom arrow head for a dimension on a project and incorporated into our company standards.

Let’s first discuss the 19 arrowheads that are available for leaders, multileaders, and dimensions. These blocks will be added to your drawing when you launch a dimension command, leader, or multileader command. You can modify these blocks to custom arrows to align with your business needs.

The following video will show you how to create new arrow styles in AutoCAD. I start out with the blocks already provided and go through steps on how to create new styles.

This second video I created for fun. It’s hunting season in Michigan and I have this unique photo of an arrow head (thanks James!). I wanted to show you how to take an image, import into AutoCAD, and create a custom arrow style based off the object in the picture.

That’s all for this month – time to go finish up decorating the house for Christmas.

I will post after the holidays about Autodesk University 2017 – It was another great year of collaborating with design professionals from all over the world. I saw some old friends and met some new ones. I am very thankful for having the opportunity to be a part of such a wonderful event.

Sam