Topic: How often do you use a M-Line?

[gmyroup]

Hello

Picking your brains again. Trying to get a feel as to how popular the M-Line feature is and how often you end up exploding a M-Line.

Thanks
Jerry

[Josh Nieman]

I considered their use, at one time, for doing walls for architectural plans, since all you have to do is create various styles for various types of walls..

They suck too much.  Not nearly enough control over them for them to work worth a hoot.

They're useless to me.

I can see a couple instances where they'd be nice to have, but for me... useless... I haven't evaluated this since autocad 2006 though, in case there've been any changes.

[t-bear]

As all our work is 3D, m-lines are of no practical use.  Can't remember the last time I dealt with M-lines.... I think it was when I taught some night classes at the college..............4-5 years ago.

[ronjonp]

I'd have to agree with Josh on this one....mlines suck.

[mjfarrell]

Zero MLINES used in real drawings going all the way back to Ver 2.x.

[deegeecees]

I used M-Lines as a quick work around when my conveyor program wasn't available at a job site out in the boonies. I created a Live Roller representation for a plant layout using an Mline style. I remember when that drawing came back to haunt me.

[Keith™]

I have created a few really useful mline styles ...
Since almost none of my work is done in 3D, I use an mline to represent a shelf and rod for closets, 2 different styles for kitchen cabinets and bath cabinets and a footing/stemwall mline style. These allow me to draw multiple lines simultaneously, automatically offsetting them the proper distance. I tried them for different size walls, but found that to be cumbersome, since most of the walls end up being cut/trimmed several times during the edit process.

They have greatly improved my speed in certain areas and I would recommend that before you discount the effectiveness of mlines, you should examine your drafting process a little deeper. It may turn out that they are not useful to you, but mine has proven to be very useful ... and I stand by that.

[JohnK]

Oh i used to use M-lines constantly. They were/are great for 2d duct and piping. Time saver in the 2d drafting days. (Oh how i miss them)

[Josh Nieman]

I have to agree with Keith.  I can see them being really great.  You can draw many lines at once given the style you use.  And they're not useless lines like if you had a shape file defining a linetype, they're snappable lines that can't be altered from the style (save for hitting the explode button that I actually did end up deleting from a couple people's toolbars)   I did find them to be a pretty neat tool, they just didn't fit into our drawings well.

[whdjr]

I do not like them, Sam I Am. 
I would not use them in a house.
I would not use them on a roof.
I would not use them anywhere.
I do not like them, Sam I Am.

However I saw them used for the side elevation of a downspout in a dynamic block that was pretty cool.

[daron]

I have used them, but mostly when I've used them, I had to consider the other people that would have to deal with my drawings and promptly exploded them and used filter to get them onto correct layers. They could be better, but Adesk doesn't seem to want to develop them further.

[hudster]

I use them for above ceiling flow and return pipework, I set them up as blue and red, then when I've drawn the routes, I explode them, use qselect to select all the Red stuff and move it to it's proper layer, then do the same for blue.

I use different colours for different levels so it makes pipework layouts a wee bit faster.

[CADaver]

Everything we do is 3D.  Don't use mlines at all, but then we don't use lines and circles much either.

[t-bear]

Everything we do is 3D.  Don't use mlines at all, but then we don't use lines and circles much either.

Same here Randy....I'll bet 90% of our drawing is "pick-and-drop" blocks from our library.

[CADaver]

Everything we do is 3D.  Don't use mlines at all, but then we don't use lines and circles much either.

Same here Randy....I'll bet 90% of our drawing is "pick-and-drop" blocks from our library.

A guy wanted me to do a "quick 2d sketch" of something yesterday and I didn't know where to start.  So I did a quick 3D model instead.