T-FLEX Parametric CAD. Fundamentals. 2D Design

Fundamentals. Two-Dimensional Design
CREATING CUSTOM LINES AND HATCHES
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T-FLEX CAD supports creation and use of user-defined custom graphic lines and hatches along with
standard types. This chapter describes methods of creating and using those entities.
T-FLEX CAD standard distribution includes several examples of custom lines and hatches that can be used
as a sample for creating your own ones.
Graphic Lines
To add your custom line type to standard types of graphic lines, all you need is to place the descriptor file of
the new line type in the folder …\Program\LinePatterns.
The descriptor file of a custom line type – the line pattern − is a T-FLEX CAD drawing created to satisfy
certain required rules. The file name coincides with the name of the line type. Upon restarting T-FLEX
CAD, the new line type automatically appears at the end of the list of graphic line types.
Creating Line Pattern
Generally, a line image is created from the following elements:
• periodical part – this is the main element of a line repeated over and over along the extent of the line;
• center part – this is the line element drawn once at the mid-line;
• start and end – these are the elements drawn once at the ends of the line.
A line may or may not have any of the center part, head and tail. Meanwhile, the periodical part is always
there.
The custom type line pattern must contain description of all required elements. Description of the periodical
part is mandatory, other elements can be omitted. A line element is described by a drawing of the respective
line part created from nodes, graphic lines, text, hatches, as well as construction lines. Description of each
line element should preferably be placed at a separate page of the pattern drawing. The order of pages in the
pattern document is not significant.
An invariable attribute of each line element description is a pair of nodes named in a special way. The nodes
define the joint points between the given line element and the neighboring ones (characteristic points). The
node names are strictly prescribed for each line element. In this way, the named nodes define which element
description is on the current page of the pattern drawing. You may put more than one pair of named nodes on
the same document page. In this case, the page contents will be the descriptor for multiple line elements.
Names of nodes for each line element are provided in the following table:
Line type element Name of start node Name of end node
Period Start End
Start TailStart TailEnd
End HeadStart HeadEnd
Center part CenterStart CenterEnd
Start and end are connected to the main part of the line by TailEnd and HeadEnd nodes,
respectively.