Favorite Lines

We have recently added a new tool palette to WildTools. Credit Matt Arnold with coming up with the concept.

Most architectural offices have a wall chart of the office standards for line sizes used for hairline, normal lines, dimensioning, title borders, etc.

The Favorite Lines palette has tool icons that have a rounded look to them similar to buttons, and while the tool palette may be used in the normal vertical presentation, this one looks best in a horizontal presentation.

To set the tool palette this way, press the Control key, click on the tool palette and choose Change Palette Orientation from the menu. The tools will then look like the image above, and it's convenient to put this at the top of the drawing, over the title bar and on the opposite side from the Snap Indicator.

These tools work in concert with the Normal Line style of StyleTools in WildTools. The tools are for Normal Line, Hairline, Edge Line, Outline, Border Line, Center Line, Hidden Line and Long Dashed Line.

Select any of these tools and then use the Attributes Window to set the attributes of these tools, just like for any other tool.

Click on any of these eight tools and you have just changed the pen size and dash pattern of the Normal Line style in WildTools. Each of these tools is, in effect, a copy of the WildTools Line tool, so you can go right to work drawing lines, or you can use any of the other tools in WildTools to draw rectangles, circles, polygons, etc. with the new line size you have just chosen.

Note that you must select Use Styles in the WildTools preferences pane for this to work.