Cad color to line/weight standards
Paul Hoffer
Hi there
My company is reviewing the cad standards and I was wondering if anyone
knows of any recognized standards for:
color to line type
color to line weight
Please e-mail if you know of any and where the might be obtained.
Thanks alot
Paul Hoffer - KACC
Ian A. White
On Tue, 12 Nov 1996 11:03:08 -0800, Paul Hoffer <pho...@ior.com>
wrote:
>Hi there
>My company is reviewing the cad standards and I was wondering if anyone
>knows of any recognized standards for:
>
> color to line type
>
> color to line weight
>
>Please e-mail if you know of any and where the might be obtained.
There are no official standards when it comes to colour:line weight
associations.
Some try and use the draughting pen nib colours (also referred to the
ISO colours). The problem is that in AutoCAD, only the 8 colours are
"defined", with the rest being used for rendering and shading. This
causes problems with the ISO colours.
With the ISO colours, the following are used.
Red = 0.18 mm
White = 0.25 mm
Yellow = 0.35 mm
Brown = 0.50 mm
Blue = 0.70 mm
Now, here comes the problem. Brown is not a standard AutoCAD colour,
so many substitute red, but red is already allocated to another size.
White is the default colour that AutoCAD uses when it creates a new
layer, so it is a colour I normally recommend against using, as if you
use it, you have no way of being warned that you are working on a
layer which may be new. Blue is also hard to see in a black
background, so many substitute cyan, and yellow can be almost
impossible to see on a white background so many substitute magenta.
So much for the ISO standard :-)
I have adopted a different set based on experience when transferring
data between different CAD programs. Basically, there are 4 standard
drawing pens you would use. For what is called the 0.5 mm group (the
most commonly used group), the pen sizes are 0.25, 0.35, and 0.50.
For extra thick lines, a further pen can be added. This is the 0.7 mm
pen.
I arrange the pen widths in ascending order and the assign pen 1 to
colour 1, pen 2 to colour 2, pen 3 to colour 3, and pen 4 to colour 4.
In AutoCAD these first four colours are Red, Yellow, Green, and Cyan.
I also recommend that only one colour be used for any pen size, as if
it is going to be confusing on the screen it certainly will be
confusing when plotted. It is pointless being able to discriminate
things on screen because of different colours as when plotted in black
with the same pen size you will not be able to discriminate between
the objects. There is no separate colour used for different line
types.
Regards,
Ian A. White, CPEng
waiw...@zip.com.au
WAI Engineering
Sydney 2000
Australia
Peter Katzur
Paul Hoffer <pho...@ior.com> wrote in article <3288C9...@ior.com>...
> Hi there
> My company is reviewing the cad standards and I was wondering if anyone
> knows of any recognized standards for:
>
> color to line type
>
> color to line weight
>
> Please e-mail if you know of any and where the might be obtained.
>
>
> Paul Hoffer - KACC
>
This is a favorite topic of mine and our company standard has been in
use since we used 4 shade monitors and it seems to work quite well.
Basically, there are 4 line widths in drafting
.25 mm like dimension, center and phantom lines
.35 mm for text and hidden lines
.50 for object lines
.7 for borders & thick lines
Since Autocad initially had an 8 pen set up and most plotters
have a minimum of an 8 pen setting, 2 colors can be assigned
to each thickness.
Now since we prefer the black background, and we want the object
lines to be the most distinguishable we picked white. Most times
a second color is required for this thickness. Green is nice and
bright as well
white, green = .5 mm - continuous - object
Now we want the dimension lines to be in the background so as
not to be as noticeable as the object lines. Blue suits this.
Center lines are required to stand out more than the dimension
lines but not as much as object lines so yellow was chosen for
centerlines.
blue = .25 mm - continuous - dimension
yellow = .25 - center - center
Text must be more noticeable than the dimension lines but still
secondary to the object lines. Red was selected. As with the
second object line color a second .35 mm color was needed .
Hidden lines are .35. We made them cyan.
red = .35 mm - text
cyan = .35 hidden - hidden
For the border outline and other thick lines the color magenta
was used . It doesn't distract from the rest of the drawing.
The remaining pen (of 8 pens) was also used for thick lines.
magenta, alternate = .7 mm
This is the beauty of autocad that everyone can have there own
settings to suit their needs / requirements. We have this in our
in house cad standard and we request vendors to provide
the finished dwg file in this format. They can do it however
they want and then change them at the end easy enough.
Juha Hanninen
Peter Katzur <686...@ican.net> wrote in article
<01bbd22d$e46b0200$1fb0...@pkatzur.soo.algoma.com>...
> Paul Hoffer <pho...@ior.com> wrote in article <3288C9...@ior.com>...
> > Hi there
> > My company is reviewing the cad standards and I was wondering if anyone
> > knows of any recognized standards for:
> >
> > color to line type
> >
> > color to line weight
> >
> > Please e-mail if you know of any and where the might be obtained.
> >
> > Thanks alot
> >
> > Paul Hoffer - KACC
> >
The standards I have seen are not based on productivity with CAD but
copying old manual working methods. We have used the color to express also
drawing content type. Different colors on the screen can have the same pen
width in the plotter so plotting is not a problem. Different colors for
different objects can considerably help reading complex drawings. Here's a
quote from our internal drawing standard.
"On drawings prepare on scale, colours are used to present data contents
and the line thickness. The colours are defined by the layer.
COLOR = BYLAYER
As the line colours are BYLAYER, all the colours can easily be changed by
changing the layer colours.
As the lines are drawn in thickness 0, it is easy to change the scale of
the drawing and to use it as a submodel on drawings on different scales.
The drawing colours present the data contents in two different ways:
- On the basis of the line colour it can be seen whether the line is an
outline or an auxiliary line.
- The line colours can be linked to certain information which has been
defined in advance, for example equipment, building parts, tanks or flow
substances in piping.
The basic colours from 1 to 8 have been defined for outlines .
- Each piece of information contents has been given its own basic colour.
- These bright colours are clearly visible on the display.
- The bright colours emphasize the presentation of different subjects
clearly in colour plotting, for example equipment entities, buildings and
piping.
The colours from 9 to 16 have been given to finer lines, which shall not
be emphasized on the drawing:
- dimensioning and texts
- center lines of objects, auxiliary outlines, auxiliary dimension lines
etc.
- in practice only two colours have been used for fine lines
Colour No. Pieces
Fine lines: ( 0 ) 7 (dimension lines, center lines, etc.)
9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15
Semifne lines: ( 0.25 ) 2 (outlines, etc.)
16, 17
Thick lines: ( 0.35 ) 7 (outlines, etc.)
1 Red
2 Yellow
3 Green
4 Cyan
5 Blue
6 Magenta
7 White
Semithick lines: ( 0.50) 4 ( bold outlines)
20, 21, 22, 23
Extra thick lines: (0.70) 4 (thick lines)
24, 25, 26, 27
Extra heavy lines: (1.0) 4 (extra heavy lines)
30,31,32,33
The remaining colours can be freely defined."
Bill Gilliss
> > > My company is reviewing the cad standards and I was wondering if anyone
> > > knows of any recognized standards for:
> > >
> > > color to line type
> > >
> > > color to line weight
> > >
Not having seen any color standards that didn't seem completely
arbitrary
and unrememberable, I devised my own standard that is equally arbitrary
but
very rememberable. I use only three line weights - fine, medium, and
heavy.
For anything wider, like a property line, I use polylines with width.
I do mostly architectural work, and produce both construction drawings
for
the contractors and 3d perspective views for the clients.
I keep colors 1-16 at a medium weight so drawings from consultants (who
seem to keep things pretty basic) will plot reasonably well. (Except for
color 8 - light grey - to which I assign a fine line; just can't help
myself.)
Colors that end in a 1 are all fine lines.
Colors that end in a 2 are all heavy lines.
Everything else is medium weight.
That's it for normal construction documents. I don't worry about
assigning
"real" looking colors to layers (like avocado(!) for appliances,
off-white for
walls, white for toilets, etc.) because I render with AccuRender which
lets
me assign rendering colors independent of the object or layer colors.
For aerial perspectives into a building, I have defined another plotter
definition in which all the lines are fine except for the color (15)
that
I use for walls, which is medium-heavy so the structure will pop out
from
the furnishings. This way, instead of having to change the colors of
layers
and then change them back again, I just use a different plotter
definition.
No pain, much gain. Coupled with AutoArchitect's ability to exchange 2d
and
3d symbols globally, I can work fast with 2d symbols and plot them for
CD
sets with my normal plotter definition, then change them all to 3d,
switch
plotter definitions, and plot the aerial views without futzing around
with
layer colors.
Works for me.
--
-Bill Gilliss gil...@iglou.com 72320...@compuserve.com
Robert
Bill Gilliss wrote:
>
> > > > My company is reviewing the cad standards and I was wondering if anyone
> > > > knows of any recognized standards for:
> > > >
> > > > color to line type
> > > >
> > > > color to line weight
> > > >
>
> Not having seen any color standards that didn't seem completely
> arbitrary
> and unrememberable, I devised my own standard that is equally arbitrary
> but
> very rememberable. I use only three line weights - fine, medium, and
> heavy.
> For anything wider, like a property line, I use polylines with width.
The problem with polylines is that they will change their appearance if
you change your plotscale...
I've yet to see a real color/pen width system that is perfect and works
for all users. I think that is because colors are by themselves so
subjective and personal that most people will not agree on what "looks"
best. ("I hate purple...but Green's my favorite color...this white too
glary on my eyes and gives me eyestrain...etc, etc.") I've found that
what usually needs to happen is to have a benevolent dictator set those
standards in an office environment and just have everyone adopt to that
standard (of course, it should make sense...) ; )
Geoffrey Moody
In message <329641...@iglou.com>
Bill Gilliss <gil...@iglou.com> writes:
> > > > My company is reviewing the cad standards and I was wondering if anyone
> > > > knows of any recognized standards for:
> > > >
> > > > color to line type
> > > >
> > > > color to line weight
> > > >
Hi Bill
Being a Simple sort I use the same colours that Rotring use for there
Drafting Pens:
Red = 0.18mm
White = 0.25mm
Yellow = 0.35mm
Brown = 0.5mm
Cyan = 0.7mm
I realise this isnt very Scientific but it seems to work OK for us
Regards
Geoff
Steve Knopf
Robert wrote:
>
> Bill Gilliss wrote:
> >
> > > > > My company is reviewing the cad standards and I was wondering if anyone
> > > > > knows of any recognized standards for:
> > > > >
> > > > > color to line type
> > > > >
> > > > > color to line weight
> > > > >
> >
> > arbitrary
> > and unrememberable, I devised my own standard that is equally arbitrary
light screen (20-30%) 21-30 .005 - .100 heavy screen (40-50%) we also
have a color chart for pens 30-250 once again the ones digit determines
the width. This system makes drawings more interchangeable within the
office and with R13win it is easy to change the background color to be
able to see what you are working.
--
><> ><> ><> ><> ><> ><> ><> ><> ><> ><> ><> ><>
Steve Knopf
skn...@dcn.davis.ca.us
City of Davis PW
Davis Ca 95616