“Hiding” specific lines in a drawing view using a blank line style

Recently a customer wanted to hide just a few lines from a drawing view.  The view was set to the usual display mode of “Hidden Lines Removed”, but removing a few extra visible lines would make the view clearer and easier to understand.  Unfortunately the usual technique of right-clicking on the lines and selecting “Hide/Show Edges” didn’t give him the result he wanted.

We were able to achieve what he wanted by creating a new line style that was effectively blank and assigning that to the lines in question.

The line style format we used was:  A, 0.0001, -100.

Here’s how this formatting works:

The first character can be an A or a B.

• A = Normal line
• B = Bold segments on the end of lines

The numbers control the line segment lengths and gap lengths.

• A positive value indicates a physical line segment
• A negative value indicates a gap between segments

Here are some examples of line style formats and how the lines look.

• The first line has a segment 1mm long, followed by a gap of 1mm, and this pattern is repeated for the length of the line.

• The second line has a segment 1mm long, followed by a gap of 1mm, then a line 0.5mm long, followed by a gap of 0.5mm, and this pattern is repeated for the length of the line

• The third line is the same as the first line, but it has bold segments at each end of the line because the first character is a B instead of an A.

 

In this case we effectively wanted a line that was all gap, ie, nothing visible, so we created a new line style with the following formatting:

• First character set to A

• Line segment length set to 0.00001, which is one hundred thousandth of a mm. Not going to see that!

• Gap set to 100mm long. This suited the scale of the drawing, but could be increased if necessary.

The resultant line style formatting, as shown above, was:

A, 0.0001, -100

 

We saved the line style, calling it “Nothing”, assigned it to the lines in question and they disappeared!  Exactly what our customer wanted.

 

---

 

Creating a new line style and assigning it to a line, in more detail:

To create a new line style for a drawing:

1. Open the drawing in question. (If you want the line style to be available in all drawings, do this in your drawing template)

2. Select Tools -> Options -> Document Properties -> Line Style, as shown below.

 

Click on the “New” button, enter a name to identify the line style and press Enter to save it, as shown below.

 

4. Enter the line length and spacing values, as shown below.

 

5. Click “OK” to save the new line style. (Note: the “Save” button saves all the line styles to an external .sldlin file for backup purposes or sharing with colleagues)

 

Assigning the line style to a line:

1. To assign a specific line style to a line in a drawing, click on the line.

2. Select the required style from the Line Style drop down list in the toolbar, as shown below.

 

The result

About the Author:
Bill Murch
Technical Support Engineer
CSWP, CSWE, CDWP
Based in Sydney, Australia