Discover the key elements of creating and managing point marker styles in AutoCAD. This article provides a step-by-step guide, from navigating to the settings tab to applying your newly created style to your ground shot points.
Key Insights
- The point marker style creation process begins in the settings tab of the tool space window, where you can select 'new point style' and enter relevant information such as the style name and description.
- In the marker tab, you can customize your marker from predefined shapes or an AutoCAD block symbol, and adjust its rotation angle. Other important options include selecting the size of the marker and choosing the orientation reference system.
- The 3D geometry tab allows you to determine how your point will be displayed in 3D space, either by using the elevation point, flattening the point to a specific elevation, or exaggerating the points by a scale factor. Additionally, the display tab lets you choose how to color and display your point marker, as well as the option of visibility.
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In this video we're going to discuss point marker styles. We're going to create a new point marker style and then we're going to walk through the different tabs inside of the point marker style creation window.
So in order to do that we're going to navigate over to the settings tab of the tool space window. We're going to select settings. We're going to drop down points.
We're going to go to point styles and drop that down and we're going to right click on point styles and select new. Now that we've selected new we are in the point style new point style window. The reason why this is called new point style is because currently the name is set as new point style.
Inside of the first tab we have the information tab which is the place that contains the name of the point style, the description of the point style, the person who created it, and the person who last modified it, and the dates in which it was last or when the dates in which it was created and last modified. So I'm going to go ahead and change my name to spot for a spot elevation point that I'm going to then apply to my ground shots points. So then I'm going to navigate to the marker tab.
Inside of the marker tab we have the options to create a marker which is shown in this preview window based on a AutoCAD point, a custom marker with predefined shapes, and an AutoCAD block symbol for a marker. The other option that we have in the left hand column is the marker rotation angle. You can change this rotation angle based on the grip edits if you'd like or you can predefine a rotation angle for your markers inside of this text box here.
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Often I find myself using the use custom marker option for creating custom marker styles but sometimes you have objects like trees that need an actual AutoCAD block to be placed in and then this is when you would use the AutoCAD block symbol for marker. For our instance I'm going to go ahead and use a use custom marker. I'm going to go ahead and select the dot and you'll see in the preview window that we have a single dot here.
You have the other option of selecting also surrounds for these points so you can double up on these by having a circle or a square or just a circle or you can change the marker center to come up with a myriad of different marker styles. I'm going to go ahead and select the point, unselect square, unselect circle. Over on the right hand column we have the size of the marker so we have the options for how we would like to scale it for a drawing scale, fixed scale, size and absolute units, and relative to the screen.
Because all of our other points are being scaled based on the drawing scale I'm going to leave this as use drawing scale and I'm going to leave it as a 0.1 inch drawing scale. You have the option for if you selected fixed scale you could put in the scale options in here. I'm going to leave it as drawing scale.
Then we have the preview window which will give you an indication of what your marker will look like when it's placed into the drawing and then you have an option for your orientation reference system whether it's reference to an object, a view, or world
coordinate system. I'm going to go ahead and leave it as world coordinate system because that is the system we're working in. I'm going to navigate to the next tab which is 3D geometry.
Inside of 3D geometry you have the option for how your point will be displayed in 3D space. You can either use the elevation point, flatten the point to a specific elevation, or exaggerate the points by a scale factor. And depending on which option you choose then the remaining options will either be grayed out or be available.
If I select flatten points to a specific elevation I can then type into this box here what the elevation I want to flatten all my points to. In our case I'm going to go ahead and use point elevation. I'm going to navigate to the next tab, display, and in here we have which orientation we are viewing the point in and how it will be displayed in that view orientation.
So for a point you have the options of how you would like to display it in plan, model, profile, and section. In future classes we'll be talking about models, profiles, and sections. For our uses now we're going to be dealing with plan.
But just so you know if you click on any of these options the different component display options will change based on which view direction you're in. If I move to point you'll notice there's only one option. If I move to section there's only one option.
And if I have plan or model I have two options for marker and label. So inside of here is where you will choose how you would like to color and display your point marker. I'm going to go ahead and leave these as is.
If you wanted to turn on visibility or turn off visibility or if you would like to force a certain layer or a certain color you can do so inside of this window. The last tab here is the summary tab and the summary tab displays a text information panel for all the previous tabs. If we drop down information it will give us information based on the information tab for the name, description, created, and modified.
Inside of marker you have the information for the marker tab. So you have the information for how you have a marker rotation, leader stops at markers, you have different modes for your markers, and then in the 3D geometry drop down you have all of the options for your 3D geometry display. So your display mode, your force to certain elevation, or your scale factor for scaling points.
I'm going to go ahead and click apply and click okay and then I'm going to go into our description keysets and I'm going to apply this to our ground shot. So I'm going to select survey, I'm going to right click, I'm going to go to edit keys, and then I'm going to find our GS. I'm going to click on style and select standard so that the point style window opens.
I'm going to drop down, I'm going to find spot, I'm going to click okay, and then I'm going to check the mark to close the window. And then as we stated in the last video, to apply this you have to select your points, right click, and apply description keysets. Now you'll see that all of the ground shot points have a new marker style of the single dot like our spot marker style displayed and we created.
We're going to go ahead and save and then I'll see you in the next video where we'll talk about point label styles and creating point label styles.
