By Dennis Collin
When training AutoCAD, I am often asked about whether AutoCAD or LT has the ability to drawing batting line insulation for walls or slab elements in section. The answer is no , out of the box, but AutoCAD users are quite resourceful and have created various ways of creating batting or insulation lines within their plan and section drawings.
Some users do utlise the Batting linestyle, but the problem with that method is that the linetype may adversely scale should annotative scaling be used to control annotation appearance. Another solution could be creating a dynamic block, but that would only work if it were placed along straight lines. The best solution therefore is to make use of AutoCAD and now AutoCAD LT’s support of Lisp.
A Lisp file is just a text file of a few kilobytes. Once loaded via the Appload function, and added to the startup suite. AutoCAD can then draw new or convert existing linework to batting line entities. These entities are just simple polylines and can be edited to suit awkward or cramped spaces.
This lisp routine will convert all manner of elements to a batting line style including arcs and splines!
The routine shown can be accessed from a thread below on the Autodesk support forum. Although other equally good examples can be found on Cadalyst and elsewhere!
I will say now whilst most routines are great, there are a few ‘buggy’ examples which may not perform as expected. Therefore, the use of external routines is ‘at your own risk’. As a precaution I will always backup files prior to running a routine. Also run the routine on a testbed setup just in case problems result. Better to be safe than sorry!