Breaklines

I got an e-mail last week asking me about creating break lines in AutoCAD LT. You know, for when you want to show only part of an object and indicate that it continues.

There's no built-in way to do this in AutoCAD LT (AutoCAD has an Express Tool), but it's not hard to make your own.

Here's the dynamic block I built to replace the Express Tool:

Its insertion point is in the center, and it has an independent stretch action for each end. (I use the M2P object snap a lot when placing this breakline. I also threw in a rotation action, but as it acts on the whole block, it's optional. (Without the rotate action, you can accomplish the same thing with grip-rotating or the Rotate command.)

I put the block on a tool palette, and set up its auxiliary scale so that it would insert at the current dimension size. It's worked great ever since.

In the spirit of "teaching to fish", I'm not going to post the block here. It's pretty simple to make -- with just a little knowledge of dynamic blocks you'll be able to create it yourself. But maybe I'll use the rest of this week to walk through the steps...we'll see what other tips I come up with between now and then. :-)