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CAD Forums => CAD General => Topic started by: yyou on July 20, 2004, 03:48:51 PM

Title: Lt scale
Post by: yyou on July 20, 2004, 03:48:51 PM
When I was in school, I was told to set lt scale to .5 or to be half of scale that is used for dwg.  I have been doing it since.  But why doesn't Autodesk fix the linetypes to be smaller so we can use the default LTS at 1?
Title: Lt scale
Post by: M-dub on July 20, 2004, 03:53:12 PM
That sounds like one of Murphy's Laws...


:lol:
Title: Lt scale
Post by: Keith™ on July 20, 2004, 09:15:18 PM
you know the funny thing is, that in my office, the ltscale must be set to 16 in order for the plots to be correct. I had this guy recently started and he said... HEY your ltscale is wrong ... it says 16 ... I told him that it was required to be that to make it plot correctly and he tried to set it to 1 and start a new drawing... and ... then all lines plotted out as solid....interesting
Title: Lt scale
Post by: t-bear on July 20, 2004, 09:43:07 PM
Hmmmmm..... Ours is set to .25 to plot correctly.  Go figure
Title: Lt scale
Post by: Keith™ on July 20, 2004, 09:55:24 PM
The plot thickens ....  (pun intended)

When we plot from PS the ltscale (psltscale) must be set even larger to make the same view on the paper...

BUT...

when we import a drawing drawn in R14... we have to change the ltscale (and psltscale) to something like 0.125 to make it plot correctly....

and since the ltscale is setup as part of the housekeeping routine, we generally will cut and paste all geometry from a R14 to A2k2/4 and the linetype problem goes away...go figure... it is a problem we have learned to deal with...
Title: Lt scale
Post by: sinc on July 20, 2004, 09:56:19 PM
I keep LTSCALE at 1 nearly all the time - the times that I set it to anything else are very few and far between.  But then, I almost always use the half-size versions of linetypes (like HIDDEN2 and CENTER2), rarely use the normal size versions, and never use the x2 versions.  I even created my own quarter-size linetypes for each (HIDDEN4, CENTER4, etc.) which I use occasionally.  I also defined my own fence linetype - those ARE way too big in Autocad's default.

Just out of curiousity, what sort of linetype definitions are you using that require an LTSCALE of 16?
Title: Lt scale
Post by: Keith™ on July 20, 2004, 10:01:24 PM
Believe it or not.... hidden, hidden2, dashed, center, fence, batting, among othes
Title: Lt scale
Post by: Dent Cermak on July 20, 2004, 10:04:19 PM
architectural drafting must really suck
Title: Lt scale
Post by: Keith™ on July 20, 2004, 10:18:36 PM
nope... there is no problem.... we just have it set to do the setting whenever we start a new drawing... it is automatically handled... and if you never looked for the ltscale variable, you wouldn't even know what was going on.... there are many things that I do "behind the scenes" to "force" compliance.....

I was recently battling with people to put dimensions on the DIM layer....it was becoming a problem... so... I made our drafters a little dumber... I simply put an event module in their startup that forces ALL dimensions onto the correct layer....one guy asked me today.."Hey how come my dimensions are on this layer?" I told him because I put them there... he looked at me funny and continued his work....

I need people who follow compliance issues a bit closer.....
Title: Lt scale
Post by: CADaver on July 21, 2004, 07:26:49 AM
We use 1/3 the dimscale for MS plots, or just 1/3 for PS plots with PSLTSCALE on.

You can fix your own linetypes so that you can use whatever ltscale you wish.  AutoCAD has left it as it was with R1 for legacy issues.
Title: Lt scale
Post by: BREZI on July 21, 2004, 08:35:20 AM
We multiply the scale of the drawing by 12.5, so if it was a 1:100 it would be 1250!

Don't know who came up with it, but it works!

Im building services by the way!
Title: Lt scale
Post by: Kate M on July 21, 2004, 08:43:02 AM
Keith, what's your PSLTSCALE set to?

We use LTSCALE=0.5, PSLTSCALE=1 -- I even made a macro to set them right before plotting...doesn't work with our metric drawings, unfortunately -- those need LTSCALE=10.
Title: Lt scale
Post by: Keith™ on July 21, 2004, 09:49:23 AM
PSLTSCALE is generally set to 0, that is because some of our drawings must be plotted from MS ... and as such, switching between the two is more a headache than simply setting it once and leaving it alone...it works and is efficient, and actually increases productivity because the person doing the drawing does not have to worry about the settings at all... it is all automatic...
Title: Lt scale
Post by: Craig on July 21, 2004, 11:02:36 AM
You guys got it good. Whoever setup our system here should be shot. It's not even worth my time to try to redo it all. My previous employer we typically ran LTSCALE = 1 and everything worked fine. Here our standard LTSCALE = 96. I was taught in school and just a general rule of thumb that my PS is ALWAYS 1:1, that way I NEVER have to screw with the plot scale. Well, here we constantly have to see what the scale is to make sure we are using the correct plot scale. Bring up the topic of changing? That will never happen
Title: Lt scale
Post by: Keith™ on July 21, 2004, 11:04:52 AM
poor guy
Title: Lt scale
Post by: Bob Garner on July 21, 2004, 11:46:51 AM
I do a lot of structural steel detail sheets that contain different details drawn to different scales.  To accomodate this, I draw the details at 1:1 and x-ref them to a full size title block sheet.  The ltscales of the details have to be multiplied by the reciprocal of the x-ref insertion scale to plot correctly.

Cheers

Bob G.
Title: Lt scale
Post by: yyou on July 21, 2004, 11:55:27 AM
When working (in model space), we have LTS set according to the scale of dwg.  When plotting (papaer space), we use script to set LTS to .5 before sending.  Psltscale is always set at 1.
Title: Lt scale
Post by: CADaver on July 21, 2004, 01:17:35 PM
Quote from: Keith
PSLTSCALE is generally set to 0, that is because some of our drawings must be plotted from MS ... and as such, switching between the two is more a headache than simply setting it once and leaving it alone...it works and is efficient, and actually increases productivity because the person doing the drawing does not have to worry about the settings at all... it is all automatic...
Somewhere on this board is a routine that toggles ltscale & psltscale based on a "tab" reactor.  I don't remember who wrote it or where I got it cuz' the machine crashed and I had to re-create it, but here's what I use.  Some guru here could probably make it a lot slicker.


Code: [Select]
(defun ChangedLayout (reactor layout / )
  (if (/= (nth 0 layout) "Model")
   (progn
      (setvar "ltscale" 0.3333)
      (setvar "psltscale" 1)
    )
  (progn
    (if (> (getvar "dimscale") 12)
      (setvar "ltscale" (/ (getvar "dimscale")3.0))
      (setvar "ltscale" 40)
    )
      (setvar "psltscale" 1)
    )
  )
)
(if (not *LayoutLTS*)
 (setq *LayoutLTS* (VLR-Miscellaneous-Reactor nil '((:VLR-layoutSwitched . ChangedLayout))))
)
Title: Lt scale
Post by: Keith™ on July 21, 2004, 01:59:24 PM
Hmmm.. interesting... that would solve the issue..
Title: Lt scale
Post by: yyou on July 21, 2004, 02:38:23 PM
Try this link.  It might help some cases.

http://newsline.cadalyst.com/code/browseyear.cfm?fullyear=2003#10
Title: Lt scale
Post by: Kate M on July 21, 2004, 03:32:01 PM
Here's the one I got from someone on the Autodesk forums...you have to regen after you switch layouts, but it's still a great timesaver.

Code: [Select]
(defun   ChangedLayout (reactor layout /)
   (if (= (nth 0 layout) "Model")
    (setvar "ltscale"
          (*   (if   (= (getvar "dimscale") 0)
              1
              ; else
              (getvar "dimscale")
              ); if
            0.5
            ); *
          )
    (progn   (setvar "ltscale" 0.5)
         (setvar "psltscale" 1)
         )
    ); if
)

(if
  (not *LayoutLTS*)
    (setq *LayoutLTS* (VLR-Miscellaneous-Reactor nil
      '((:VLR-layoutSwitched . ChangedLayout))
    )
  )
)