Underground utility line types and color standards

[workworkwork]

I am currently showing utilities with solid lines but different line weights for cable, telephone, electric and gas. I would much rather assign line types and colors but wondered if there is already some standard out there. Anyone know where I can go to dig this up or maybe some ideas? I need existing and new for each and can easily make up my own standard based on norms I see today but is there already a common standard?
Thanks,
Craig

[sinc]

There are a number of "standards". But most of them call for putting lettering in the linetype for utilities. Lineweight is generally used to indicate relative importance of lines, and it probably isn't a good idea (at least most of the time) to use different lineweights to indicate different types of utilities. And drawings are frequently printed in black-and-white, so color might not be a great choice, either.

So, for example, a cable TV line would be a line with little "CATV" lettering inside the line. A gas line would say "GAS", etc. If you are doing a color plot, you may want to assign different colors for each of them as well, but it's still a good idea to use the lettering in case someone down the line makes a photocopy or fax of your drawing.

In any case, as long as you supply a legend, you're generally OK. If you do work for particular clients, they may require a particular standard, in which case you just do what they want. For example, we do work for the Air Force, and when we do, we must use a modifed version of the DOD standards. Those standards are limited and annoying, so we don't use them for our other stuff, but we utilize many of the same ideas for our in-house standards.

[MHultgren]

It is fairly easy to define custom linetypes that include a letter or group of letters. I prefer to stay away from using the LDT linetypes, since they will actually break the line and place the text in it. Makes it a real PITA when you have to make edits to the run. I have attached a couple linetype definitions with text in them to give you an idea. Notice the 'gap' before and after the text, this will create a space that the text will show up in. 's' is the sixze of the text (before scaling factors are applied, 'r' is the rotation (you can create two linetypes with the same text but change the rotation to 180 in one to use when we have linework showing text upside down, if that is a problem). This should be enough to get you started with custom linetypes.

*WATER,Proposed Water Line
A,2.0,-0.1,["W",Standard,S=.08,R=0.0,X=0.035,Y=-0.04],-0.1
*SD, Proposed Storm Drain Line
A,2.0,-0.125,["SD",Standard,S=.08,R=0.0,X=0.035,Y=-0.04],-0.125

You can change the Style 'Standard' to any style that is defined in the drawing before you load the linetype, or you can set Standard to use your standard Font style in your drawing template instead of the TXT font by changing your DWT to use that Font. The - in front of a distance is simply the 'space in the line. Positive numbers mean there will be a line drawn and negative numbers mean there will be a space in the line.
Hope this helps,

[sinc]

It is fairly easy to define custom linetypes that include a letter or group of letters. I prefer to stay away from using the LDT linetypes, since they will actually break the line and place the text in it. Makes it a real PITA when you have to make edits to the run.

Which linetypes are those? The standard ones that come in the ACAD.LIN file look like they're basically the same as your example...

...or you can set Standard to use your standard Font style in your drawing template instead of the TXT font by changing your DWT to use that Font.

Personally, I'm not a fan of this method. Redefining "Standard" can cause weird issues when inserting stuff to/from drawings done by others. YMMV.

A similar problem occurs when using common names for text styles. For example, the name "TITLE" is a common one for text styles. if you have a company text style named "TITLE", it may cause weird problems that are difficult to identify if you block stuff to/from drawings by others, because you have a conflict with their version of the "TITLE" text style. Likewise, DIMSTYLES (and the other styles, as well) suffer a similar problem.

The problem is compounded if the "other company" doesn't seem to know how to use styles. Some people use the "STANDARD" styles for everything, and then use overrides all over the place. (BLECH!)

To reduce the occurances of this problem, I precede all my text styles by "EJ" (from my company name). It is not very likely that we will get styles from any other company that have names starting with "EJ", so we don't have conflicts any more.

[MHultgren]

Hi Richard,
I don't like using Standard for anything either. I was just posting how to create a new linetype with custom text placed inside the line. As far as the Text Style, As long as the style is already defined in the drawing, you can use any style you like. Since I don't have 06 installed here on this machine, I don't know if these are supplied with the ACAD.lin file now or not. I usually create my own SHP (to be compiled into an SHX) containing all my custom shapes and then load my custom linetypes from that file. For example, my custom SHX is named FFESHp and my custom LIN file is FFE.LIN. A couple shapes that I have defined are the triple slash for EOP, a regularly spaced slash for Building Slab and a Flow Direction arrow for my swales. Here is a clip from my LIN file and a screen capture showing those linetypes.

*EOP,___\\\____\\\_____
A,.6,.1,[RSSLASH,FFESHP.shx,s=.04],.04,[RLSLASH,FFESHP.shx,s=.04],.04,[RSSLASH,FFESHP.shx,s=.04],.1
*X-EOP,_ _ _\\\_ _ _ _\\\_ _ _ _ 
A,.2,-.1,.2,-.1,.2,-.1,.2,-.1,[RSSLASH,FFESHP.shx,s=.04],-.04,[RLSLASH,FFESHP.shx,s=.04],-.04,[RSSLASH,FFESHP.shx,s=.04],-.1
*SWALE, Swale line
A,0,[ARW1,FFESHP,s=.05,r=180],0.35,-0.05,0,-0.1,0,-0.1,0,-0.1

[sinc]

Hi Richard,
As far as the Text Style, As long as the style is already defined in the drawing, you can use any style you like.

We often move blocks from drawing to drawing. As surveyors, there are times when we use Autocad more like a calculator than a drafting tool. So we sometimes do things that we wouldn't otherwise do if we were producing a plan set or other set of drawings, and often that involves mixing pieces of linework from many drawings. Having our own names for things prevents surprises.

Sure, starting from templates and using correct procedures generally avoids any issues, and I enforce that when we're actually producing drawings. But many of these "rules" are extraneous when it comes to using Autocad like a glorified calculator, which we do frequently. Having our own names, and names that are unlikely to conflict with others, makes things go more smoothly when doing "nonstandard" shuffling of blocks for calculations, or when trying to track down inconsistencies, etc.

Since I don't have 06 installed here on this machine, I don't know if these are supplied with the ACAD.lin file now or not.

Those particular linetypes are not included. In fact, it looks like the only utility linetypes that ARE included are "Hot Water" and "Gas". (Why just those? I have no idea.) There's also the two fencelines, and "Batting", "Tracks", and "Zigzag".

Of course, they are mostly scaled WAY too big (by roughly a factor of 2), so we don't use any of the defaults, either. I know some people set the linetype scales in the Object Properties to .5 for certain linetypes so they can use the Autodesk defaults, but I'm not a fan of that solution. Especially since most of them need to be scaled by .5, but some don't. I'd rather redefine the linetypes so that linetype scale stays at 1 nearly all the time.

But my question was more about the issue you said of LDT linetypes "breaking the lines". That's the part that had me confused.

Are you talking about the way that gaps (aka pen-ups) in custom linetypes confuse things like the Intersection OSNAP and the FENCE option of "Select Objects"? Or are you talking about something else?

[MHultgren]

Of course, they are mostly scaled WAY too big (by roughly a factor of 2), so we don't use any of the defaults, either. I know some people set the linetype scales in the Object Properties to .5 for certain linetypes so they can use the Autodesk defaults, but I'm not a fan of that solution. Especially since most of them need to be scaled by .5, but some don't. I'd rather redefine the linetypes so that linetype scale stays at 1 nearly all the time.

But my question was more about the issue you said of LDT linetypes "breaking the lines". That's the part that had me confused.

Are you talking about the way that gaps (aka pen-ups) in custom linetypes confuse things like the Intersection OSNAP and the FENCE option of "Select Objects"? Or are you talking about something else?

Richard,
As far as the Scale Factor goes, you can edit your ACAD.LIN file and change the 'S' variable behind the text to a smaller number, add your own linetypes like I showed above, and then save it as another file name with the LIN extension. Then, load those linetypes into your DWT and set your layers for each linetype and your drafters don't have to think about making sure the layers are set to the correct linetype. Just draw ByLayer and all is cool.

The broken lines that I was talking about are the LDT Special Lines. They have things like the Tree line type that draws the Cloud shaped lines for trees and hedges, RockWall, Lines with text that you specify, Such as W for water, SS for Sanitary Sewer and so on. These are the lines that are a line segment, your text, and then another separate line segment. You can find them under the Lines\Curves pulldown menu.

[sinc]

Richard,
The broken lines that I was talking about are the LDT Special Lines. They have things like the Tree line type that draws the Cloud shaped lines for trees and hedges, RockWall, Lines with text that you specify, Such as W for water, SS for Sanitary Sewer and so on. These are the lines that are a line segment, your text, and then another separate line segment. You can find them under the Lines\Curves pulldown menu.

Wow! I never even noticed those. Not that I'm sorry... Like you say, they break the lines, and thus are completely worthless.

And yeah, as I said, we use our own custom acad.lin file, too. I'm just puzzled as to why the standard Autodesk ones are so screwy. Like I said, I don't know anyone that uses them without either modifying the acad.lin file or putting a linetype scale factor on everything.

[MHultgren]

I ALWAYS make my own LIN file. If you share your drawings with others, they will not get your linework the way you do since you have a 'Modified' LIN file. Your linework may show up as continuous lines if you have defined a custom linetype in your acad.lin. If you use eTransmit, your LIN file and any shapefiles that need to be included are added to the list of files that go in the Zip file you send out. That way, as long as the recipient extracts all files, they will see what you intended them to.

[sinc]

I ALWAYS make my own LIN file. If you share your drawings with others, they will not get your linework the way you do since you have a 'Modified' LIN file. Your linework may show up as continuous lines if you have defined a custom linetype in your acad.lin. If you use eTransmit, your LIN file and any shapefiles that need to be included are added to the list of files that go in the Zip file you send out. That way, as long as the recipient extracts all files, they will see what you intended them to.

That's incorrect.

Linetype definitions are stored in the drawing itself, and will display correctly as long as they are not explicitly redefined. Any shapefiles that are needed get included by eTransmit, but not the LIN file.