How to make a multi-coloured line

This might sound impossible, and honestly, until I was faced with the need of produce a 2 colours line in a project, it was something that never even crossed my mind.

Well, in case someone faces the same challenge, or wants to use this technique to enhance the presentation of drawings, here is a method you can use, and eventually avoid a “head scratching session”:

In this method, we’re going to use RichLines. RichLine entities consist of two or more parallel linear constructions created as one object. Before using RichLine entities, you can create custom RichLineStyles to specify the LineColor, LineStyle and other entity properties. But before starting there, make sure you have available in your drawing the line styles you want to use. You can load line styles by typing in your command line LineStyle, and hit enter. The LineStyle dialog will appear:

In this example, we are going to use the styles DASH2 and/or DASHED. Click the “Load” button, select the LineStyles, and load them to your drawing.

Now, we’re going to combine them/create the RichLine:

-          In your command line, Type RICHLINESTYLE (or from the Menu, go to Tools> Options. Click the Drafting Styles tab, and expand the node RichLine).

-          In the RichLine node, we are able set our preferences. Let’s start by creating a new RICHLINESTYLE, and call it MultiColourLine:

-          Now, in the line properties, let’s set the offset value for both lines equal to 0 (Just double-click in the value shown in the column offset). Once you do this, the preview will show what apparently is a single line. It’s not: The two lines are overlapping at this point.

-          In the LineColor column, change the colour to the ones you want (again, by double-click on the value). At this point, our RichLine definitions are these:

-          Activate the RichLine created, click Apply/OK.

-          Back to the model, type RichLine in your command line. Draw your line in the desired points, and there you go:

You can also use the same method to define even more colours (by adding component lines to your RichLine).

As DraftSight supports complex LineTypes, containing text, for example, you can define RichLines with embedded text in a different colour than the line (e.g. line in a BYLAYER colour, and text always in blue). To achieve this, you need to define one complex LineStyle containing text and almost no lines (e.g. only dots), plus an appropriate dashed LineType with spaces for the text. You can practice this principle with the LineType “GAS_LINE”, that is included in DraftSight.

You can always create your own LineTypes, although, if you don’t want to lose too much time on this, and you are looking for a “quick fix”, I hope you find this method  useful.