Creating an AutoCAD Linetype for Valentines Day

February 15, 2020

How about a Heart Linetype in AutoCAD for Valentines Day?

I wanted to post this again about linetypes in AutoCAD and how you can use the wingdings and webdings fonts to display shapes in AutoCAD linetypes. Let’s use the Heart symbol to illustrate a linetype suited for Valentines Day.

So you ask “Why would you want to draw a heart in AutoCAD?”

This post is not about the heart symbol but about special characters used to create a line type with a character symbol used in fonts.

This post focuses on how to create a custom linetype in AutoCAD incorporating already defined shapes via the Webdings font into your custom linetype. We are going to create a linetype using a heart shape. Keep in mind there are many different shapes within the Webdings and Wingdings fonts that are available for our use. These can easily be shared with your users providing a standard approach to linetypes.

Check out my video on how to create a Heart Shaped Linetype in AutoCAD for your favorite Valentine!

Copy and paste this code below into notepad and name the file Valentine.lin Make sure you create the text style weblines or you will get a bad definition.

The semi colons are not recognized therefore you can add notes to you team members on what you created.

;; Linesanity is back again in 2020: CADproTips
;; to load the setting and configure the lines.
;;
;; Create a text style named weblines and give it a 0 height and not annotative
;;
*HEART,Happy Valentines Day
A,.78,-.005,[“Y”,weblines,y=-.15,s=.4,u=0],-.55,.78

Two years ago at Autodesk University 2018 I presented a class on how to leverage linetypes in AutoCAD. Within the class we had objectives as shown.

Learn how to create custom linetypes using fonts and shapes

Learn how to create and compile a complex linetype library with shapes

Learn how to create a tool palette with custom linetypes loaded and properties defined

Select the image below to be taken to the presentation