The Pen Properties control the styles, colors, weights, and patterns of the text created using the Text tools.

Style

A Pen Style is a collection of pen attributes such as color, weight, and pattern. A style is a means of preserving and recalling frequently used collections of these attributes. In addition, pen styles are associative. This means that after you create and assign pen styles to an object, you can go back and modify the pen style and have all objects using that pen style automatically update.

The top three menu options provide tools to create, delete, and modify user-defined pen styles. The proceeding pen styles are unmodifiable pen styles. Styles listed after those are user-defined pen styles.

The New… option creates a new user-defined pen style. Specify the name, color, weight, pattern, and pattern scale to define a new pen style.

The Delete option allows you to remove a user-defined pen style

The Modify option provides a means to change a user-defined pen style attribute. Once again, the default, predefined pen styles are not modifiable; only user-defined pen styles can be modified.

Color

The Pen Color command specifies the object color of an entity. In the case of a surface or solid, the color defines the facet color for shaded display modes. The first eight entries provide selection to predefined colors

The last option displays a tool palette with color swatches. Clicking in the upper right corner of the title bar will toggle the color palette into different versions. Clicking in the pen color palette will change all selected objects immediately to the selected color.

The RGB (Red, Green, and Blue) values and names of the colors used by the application are stored in the rgb.txt file located in the application Preferences folder.

Apply Color Per Face

You can apply different colors to each face of an object. Previously, a color would be applied to each side of an object.

Applying color per face

1. Click the Select Deep tool.
2. Select the face you want to color.
3. From the Pen Properties, choose the color you want from the Colors drop–down.
4. Continue to select faces and colors to apply different colors.

Pattern

The Pen Pattern menu allows specification of patterns to objects. The first eleven patterns are predefined.

The last option displays a dialog box that has more patterns and the ability to set a scale associated with a pen pattern.

By default, ViaCAD uses the descriptors located in the cadd.lin file located in the Environ folder. Users can manually add or modify line fonts with any text editor. Each style definition contains two lines in the cadd.lin file. The first line is the style name plus a descriptor string. The second line contains the length attributes for dashes, spaces, and dots. A zero value indicates a dot and a negative value indicates a blank space. The following are example definitions for the BORDER and CENTER line styles.

BORDER, . . . . . .

A,.25,-.125,.25,-.125,0,-.125

CENTER, _ _ _ _

A,.75, -.125,.125, -.125

Weight

The Pen Weight menu allows specification of pen weights. The first eight pen weights are predefined thickness values. The next four are pixel-based thickness. The last option provides a means to specify a custom pen weight.

Arrow Start

The Arrow at Start command displays an arrow at the starting position of a curve. In the case of a line, it’s the first point you clicked.

Arrow End

The Arrow at End command displays an arrow at the ending position of a curve. In the case of a line, it’s the second point you clicked

Arrow Size

This command controls the size of an arrowhead. The five fields are described below.

Diameter/Length Controls the diameter of circular arrowheads. Also controls the horizontal length of slash arrowheads.

Length Specifies the horizontal length of an arrowhead.

Height Sets the vertical height of an arrowhead.

Side Sets the length along the hypotenuse.

Angle Defines the angle of the arrowhead in digress.