Topic: Acad Custom Linetypes in Microstation

[Arizona]

Does anyone know of a way to have microstation recreate an acad custom linetype?
Currently what I'm seeing is that even though ms will read the acad.lin file it does not recognize the custom linetypes?
 

[Keith™]

It depends .. custom linetypes are available in Microstation, but the inclusion of linetypes that require complex entities (shapes and true type fonts) are not supported by Microstation .. although I have heard that XM is supposed to support them, I cannot confirm.

[Arizona]

although I have heard that XM is supposed to support them, I cannot confirm.

No it doesn't support it either. I was working on the latest release of XM today when I discovered this.
This is a huge issue for us

[Murphy]

You can use fonts in line styles you just have to drop the complex nature of the text.
I used this tutorial to make my own linetypes. The text works fine.

[Arizona]

It depends .. custom linetypes are available in Microstation, but the inclusion of linetypes that require complex entities (shapes and true type fonts) are not supported by Microstation .. although I have heard that XM is supposed to support them, I cannot confirm.

Let me re-state this one a bit differently.
Microstation will support using text (including TTF) and point cells in custom linetypes.
Autocad custom linetypes are not interpreted by Microstation reading from the acad.lin file
When a dwg is opened in MS the custom lines are continuous. Times this by thousands of drawings containing acad custom lines.

I guess I really know that there is no easy solution to this problem.

Thanks for the help guys!

[pmvliet]

Arizona...

I understand that the linetypes are not showing correctly in Microstation.
I understand you have thousands of files that will have this problem.

This may not be the simplest solution, but would it be possible to

1) create all the linetypes in Microstation (to make them native)
2) be able to create a macro/vba or some routine that would change the properties of the various linetypes to make them become a native Microstation linetype from step 1?

I'm sure you have exhausted your testing in regards to Microstation not reading the custom linetypes correctly.
But I don't know if Microstation has a "linetype scale" variable? Maybe it's really there, but either very small or very large so you don't see it correctly. I have seen this with even the basic Autocad linetypes going into Microstation.

Just trying to give you some ideas??

Pieter

[Arizona]

Arizona...

I understand that the linetypes are not showing correctly in Microstation.
I understand you have thousands of files that will have this problem.

This may not be the simplest solution, but would it be possible to

1) create all the linetypes in Microstation (to make them native)
2) be able to create a macro/vba or some routine that would change the properties of the various linetypes to make them become a native Microstation linetype from step 1?

I'm sure you have exhausted your testing in regards to Microstation not reading the custom linetypes correctly.
But I don't know if Microstation has a "linetype scale" variable? Maybe it's really there, but either very small or very large so you don't see it correctly. I have seen this with even the basic Autocad linetypes going into Microstation.

Just trying to give you some ideas??

Pieter

Thanks for the ideas Pieter!
I haven't exhausted anything but myself at the moment

[Arizona]

Things I have discovered about this:
By pointing the microstation configuration variables for reading the acad.lin file and the variable for reading the .shx files, microstation will read and interpret the custom lines if they already exist in the file. If they do not currently exist in the drawing file then all custom lines from acad are ignored and not selectable.