Skip to content

DDScad Pen, layer and font tables

Introduction to the tables

DDScad has a setup for pen, layer, and font tables. These control the appearance and what is included on screen and in printouts (plots). The program uses the same tables by default for screen display and printing (WYSIWYG - What You See Is What You Get).

Note

We can choose other tables for printing if desired.

After installation, pen, layer, and font tables are located in the sys folder (SHR files). Some of these are adapted for Gemini Terrain and are called P_TER, L_TER, and F_TER_Truetype respectively.

TER pen table

All pens in the TER pen table, from 1-400, are defined with color and thickness.

Setup of pens for application layers can be found under Presentation... on the right-click menu in the vertical list field. Setup of pens for designed objects such as roads, VA, and excavation pits can be found on the Format menu.

We see that some pens are available. These are not used by the program and we can use them for whatever we want.

Pen RGB Line thickness Note
1 - 20 standard colors 0.0 This is the thinnest line the printer can draw. If it becomes unclear on the printout, you can for example increase this to 0.1.
21-40 as 1-20 0.18
41-60 as 1-20 0.2
61-80 as 1-20 0.35
81-100 as 1-20 0.5
101-120 as 1-20 1.0
121-140 Various pens
141-150 Available
151-196 Guides for municipal and zoning plans under old legislation
201-221 Standard for digital maps on scale 1:500 - 1:10000
231-250 Available
251-259 System pens
260-269 Exposure maps
270-279 Slope maps
280-309 Elevation layer maps
310-400 Municipal and zoning plans under new Planning and Building Act 2008
401-423 AR5 - classification of land resources
424-446 Municipal and zoning plans revisions

Info

Note that the pen table can have a maximum of 499 pens. If you want to update with your own pens, you can use those marked as available.

Change active pen table

Instructions

  1. Select Format - Presentation's pen, layer, and font table
  2. Check what you want to change: Pen, Layer, or Font
  3. Click Change...

If we make a change in one of the tables, it is copied to the project folder. In other words, we can make changes that only apply to specific projects.

The User folder is allocated to users. It is common to place user customizations here, such as custom figures, custom title fields, custom pen, layer, and font tables, etc. For pen, layer, and font tables, we have a specific function, Transfer..., to transfer these between the project and User folder. With this function, we can, among other things, update the tables in the User folder.

Note

If tables are in the User folder, the program uses these and not those in the Sys folder.

We can also create our own tables. We simply enter the name in the field and click Change.... We then get a new table in the project folder with default colors.

Update pen table in project from Sys folder

Occasionally, program updates will contain new tables. As mentioned above, existing projects have their own tables that are not automatically updated with the changes. If we want to update existing projects, we must do this manually.

Instructions

  1. Select Format - Presentation's pen, layer, and font setup
  2. Click Transfer...
  3. Click Advanced...

TER layer table

The command for handling drawing layers in DDS-CAD can be found on the toolbar:

Icon for Show layers Show layers...

All commands in the command file will have a drawing layer. Layers in the DDS-CAD concept are called drawing layers to distinguish them from application layers. We can turn these drawing layers on/off with the function Show layers....

Info

Note that application layers also have a connection to drawing layers. If we want to show this connection in the application list, we can right-click in the column headers and select Drawing layer.

Users can create new layers or change which layer the object should be linked to. This gives the user full control over the display of different objects in the drawing.

Layer Description
10 Control point
11 Municipal plans
12 Zoning plans
20 Terrain
30 Water
40 Property boundaries
42 Land cover
50 Buildings
60 Facilities
70 Transport
80 Utility networks
90 Other map themes
100 Surveyed vegetation
110 Surveyed topsoil
120 Surveyed mass replacement
130 Surveyed soil
140 Surveyed rock
190 Other surveyed layers
200 GDP texts
210 GDP dimensioning
220 GDP polyline
290 Other GDP objects
300 Buildings
310 Other building figures
320 Traffic signs
330 Other road figures
340 Playground equipment
350 Garden tables and chairs
360 Tree figures
390 Other figures
400 Line definitions
410 Extra lines
420 Vertical curvatures
430 Line definition texting
440 Road bodies and intersections
450 Line definition data
490 Other road objects
500 Excavation pits
900 Other objects
910 VIPS surface group 0
911 VIPS surface group 1
912 VIPS surface group 2
913 VIPS surface group 3
914 VIPS surface group 4
915 VIPS surface group 5
916 VIPS surface group 6
917 VIPS surface group 7
918 VIPS surface group 8

All objects in the drawing and application layers have a connection to a predefined drawing layer. The program uses this drawing layer, among other things, when exporting to DXF/DWG.

TER font table

This table links DDScad fonts to Windows Truetype fonts.