gINT | Keynetix Wiki Symbol Design Tutorial Part 1: Symbol Design Overview

Symbol Design Tutorial Part 1: Symbol Design Overview


	Applies To

	Product(s):	gINT Logs, gINT Professional, gINT Professional Plus
	Version(s):	8.x
	Environment:	N\A
	Area:	Symbol Design
	Subarea:	N\A
	Original Author:	Kathleen Holcomb, Bentley Technical Support Group

Part 1: SYMBOL DESIGN Overview

Part 2: What Fills Do inside a Shape

Part 3: How Tiles Work

Tiles that Stretch in One or Both Dimensions

Part 4: Composite Symbols

Part 5: Tile Colors and Color Overrides in Composite Symbols

Part 6: Library Maintenance Options for Symbols and Colors

Recommendations for Modifying Symbols

Copying Symbols between Applications

Copying Data Markers to User-Friendly Names

Symbol Design Tutorial Part 1: Symbol Design Overview

The SYMBOL DESIGN tab enables you to create and modify fill patterns for material, sampler and well columns, non-repeating graphics for indicating water levels and curve points, and various other symbols, lines and colors.

With the exception of bitmap symbols, which are primarily for bitmap (JPG, BMP or PNG) logos that you import into reports, the symbols you use and maintain in gINT are line graphics. These are also called vector graphics, and consist of line and curve objects. Line graphics are maintained using the gIDraw interface, which consists of the same drawing tools and other interface elements as are found in the REPORT DESIGN and DRAWINGS tabs. If you employ closed polylines in your symbols, you can fill them with a solid fill or a fill pattern, and apply a color.

Most gINT symbols are either employed as discrete graphics or fills, described as follows:

Discrete graphics are not repeated or stretched, appear once at a given location, and are not intended to fill enclosed spaces. Examples include water level symbols, data markers on curves in graphs, and borehole markers in site maps.
Fills are patterns that fill up an enclosed space by repeating or stretching. These include the following:
- Tiles: These are simple fills constructed from line graphics. They may be used alone, and also are the main building blocks of composite symbols. gINT ships with over 800 predefined tiles.
- Composite symbols: Composite symbols are fills that are constructed from other fills, generally tiles, in predefined ways. Material, sampler and well symbols are all composite symbol fills.
- Miscellaneous fill types: Hatches are rotatable fills that let you duplicate some AutoCAD fills that you couldn’t otherwise. Bitmap fills are bitmap (dot) graphic patterns rather than line drawings. Solid fills are as the name suggests. Other than solid fills, you will typically not use these types either singly or as components of composite fill symbols.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a basic fill in the Tiles tab, and how to combine tiles into composite symbols. Note that all composite symbols work the same way, although there are separate Material, Sampler and Well tabs. This is to keep these segregated, but they are constructed from tiles (and other basic fill types) in exactly the same way.

You will also learn how to create copies of existing symbols with new names, and caption existing symbols.