How to make custom linetypes in AutoCAD

AutoCAD has it’s own library of linetypes which is quite sufficient for most of the common drawings.

Still, if you are wondering how to make custom linetypes in AutoCAD then this article will help you with that.

Just like linetypes you can also make custom hatch patterns in AutoCAD but here we will stick with linetypes only.

Before we start if you prefer a video then here is the video version of this article.

Making Linetype with text and symbol

Let’s assume that we want a custom linetype containing repeating patterns of text and symbols as shown in the image below.

In this case, the arrows are used from the character map (Symbol library of Windows operating system) and A letter is Mtext.

Let’s start by making this linetype pattern.

Type MTEXT and press enter, now make a box to start writing your Mtext.

To add the symbol in this Mtext box you need to select the “Other” option from the Symbol tool of the “Insert” panel on the “Text Editor” tab as shown in the following image.

Select the Arial font in the character map window and scroll down the list of symbols till you see solid arrows.

Select the left pointing arrow then click on the Select button then click the Copy button and close the character map.

Now right-click in the text box and select Paste from the contextual menu, you can also use Ctrl + V to paste the character.

Now type A and repeat the process of adding the left-pointing arrow symbol.

After adding text and symbols make two lines of equal length as shown in image 1.

Our segment of linetype is ready and we can convert it into a linetype.

For this, we will use MKLTYPE express tool.

But before using this tool explode the text and arrow symbol, this is an important step and without exploding the next commands won’t work.