Tutorial - Rendering a custom line style

Let’s learn by example.

In this tutorial, we will learn how to render a custom lines style using the qsketchmetric.renderer.Renderer module.

We’ll assume you have QSketchMetric installed already as well as QCAD Professional and have already done the rendering tutorial as well as parametrization tutorial

First download the tutorial.dxf file from the QSketchMetric repository. It is an example of a parametric DXF file that we will use in a tutorial.

To do so, open it and click Ctrl+S to save it to your computer. As a convention, we’ll assume you saved it in a file called tutorial.dxf.

Open tutorial.dxf in QCAD Professional, the result should look like this:

tutorial.dxf opened in QCAD Professional

tutorial.dxf opened in QCAD Professional

As you can see, it is a simple drawing of a chalice. With every entity placed on the CUTTING layer.

Rendering a custom line style is easy with QSketchMetric. All you need to do is to add a parameter to the entities. Select the entitie where you want a custom line format and scroll down the Property Editor to the Custom section. Click on the red plus button and add the parameter.

In our example, we will use a a line pattern that looks like this: — BOWL —- BOWL —. We will use it for the bowl of the chalice. To do so, Value should be: A,2,-1,[“BOWL”,STANDARD,S=.5,U=0.0,X=-0.1,Y=-.05],-2.5

Where:

  • A - every line pattern starts with A

  • 2 - line length

  • -1 - space length

  • [“BOWL”,STANDARD,S=.5,U=0.0,X=-0.1,Y=-.05] - BOWL part definition

  • -2.5 - space length after the BOWL part

Note

Remember to add a comma after every parameter and do not use whitespaces.

``tutorial.dxf`` with added `line` parameters

tutorial.dxf with added line parameter

That is all! Now you can save the file and render it with qsketchmetric.renderer.Renderer.render() method:

from qsketchmetric.renderer import Renderer
from ezdxf import new
from ezdxf import units

output_dxf = new()
variables = {'h': 50}
output_dxf.units = units.MM
renderer = Renderer('tutorial.dxf', output_dxf, variables)
renderer.render()
output_dxf.saveas('rendered_custom_line_tutorial.dxf')

Note

Remember to make sure that the output and input DXF files are configured in the same units. That is why we set the units of the output DXF file to MM.

Rendered file should look like this:

rendered_custom_line_tutorial.dxf opened in QCAD Professional

rendered_custom_line_tutorial.dxf opened in QCAD Professional

Congratulation you renderer your first custom line!