The Drafting Elements

The 2D drafting elements are primitives, Text Strings (TEXP) and Symbol Instances (SYMB) and Images (EXTIMG).

Primitives are basic geometric shapes (for example, rectangle, circle, straight or arc).

Text Strings can be up to 1000 characters in length, can be multi-line and can incorporate intelligent text codes. Four fonts are available, and character height, spacing and alignment can be varied in the same way as for Label text.

Symbol Instances (SYMB) are particular instances of Symbol Templates (SYTM). The SYTM defines the composition of the symbol; the SYMB defines its size, position, and orientation.

Symbol instances can be nested - the instanced SYTM can itself own SYMBs that reference other SYTMs. However, second-level and higher SYTMs must be owned by SYLBs, not LALBs. Any intelligent text codes in TEXPs owned by such SYTMs are not expanded.

Images (EXTIMG) are images inserted from a file. They can be positioned under a view note (VNOT), note (NOTE) or a symbolic template (SYTM) element in the hierarchy.