Zone

If you work with flat plans of water pipes, gas pipelines and similar networks, then you probably have to solve the problem of constructing zone boundaries around this pipe. Typically, a pipeline is indicated by lines and curves. And there may be many more branches. It’s not difficult to make a couple of offsets in a line in both directions and add lines at the ends to close the contour of the zone. But what if there are dozens of lines, hundreds of branches, and you still need to remove the intersections of zone contours from different pipelines and combine them all into a single region, one closed polyline. Such work on a gasification plan for a small village can take half a day. But the simple and convenient AVC Zone command comes to your aid. You will only need to select the lines and the zone width (offset distance). Then the program will do everything itself almost instantly.

Another application of this program will be useful for CNC milling technologists. You will be able to construct a sampling contour along the trajectory of the circular cutter. For example, draw a polyline with a snake and call Zone with a distance of 5mm. You will receive a contour with a width equal to the size of a cutter with a diameter of 10 mm, repeating the shape of the original polyline with roundings at the ends. Now you can extrude this outline from the 3D solid.

Additional program features

• Work with any 2D curves: lines, polylines, 2D polylines, splines, arcs, circles, ellipses.

• Working with 3D Curves: 3D polylines and 3D splines will be XY projected before drawing the zone outline. All other curves are also projected onto the XY plane.

• Working in the user coordinate system UCS. The result will lie in the XY plane of the current coordinate system, not the world coordinate system. This can be useful for engraving on flat surfaces of solids.

• On unclosed curves, the program can make two options for completion - connecting offsets in a straight line or in an arc.

• You can set up filtering of the original lines and not worry that the selection includes axes, dimensions and other auxiliary lines that do not need to be enclosed in a zone.

• You can create a zone as a region, instead of polylines and splines.

• You can automatically delete original curves.

• You can assign any layer to a zone or create a zone outline on the default layer. Moreover, if the layer you specified is not in the drawing, it will be loaded from the template or a new one will be created.

• You can disable the distance request and use the same distance many times.

• You can configure up to 9 zone styles and quickly switch all settings at once.

• You can switch the plugin language to English, Russian, Italian, German, Chinese at any time. The plugin language is not related to the AutoCAD language. This does not require downloading any additional modules.

• There is the AZone alias for the command specifically for use in AutoCAD Architecture (so as not to be confused with the Architecture command of the same name)

Read about downloading and installing the program here.

To run the plugin, you will have to register account and top up your account balance or receiving bonuses.

Then you can activate one of the licenses:

• • Annual license - 10 EUR.

  • Unlimited license - 50 EUR. Free updates for 1 year.

  • The trial period is 20 days.

• In advance, before calling the Zone command, you need to take care of choosing the correct coordinate system (UCS). You also need to break the loops on all self-intersecting polylines and splines with the _break command anywhere in each loop.

• You can select drawing objects (any curves) in advance, before calling the command. But in this case, you will not see options for switching styles on the command line.

• Call the Zone or AZone command. If no objects have been selected yet, the command will ask you to select. In the prompt you will see options to switch styles and open a settings dialog. You can also configure the Zone command from the A>V>C> Options Palette.

• Next, the program will ask you for the offset distance. The width of the zone will be equal to two of these distances. This request can be disabled and then the program will use the distance from the current Zone style.

• Next, the program will start working:

  • First of all, all objects based on the specified filtering conditions will be discarded. By default, objects of inappropriate types (ray, solids, texts, etc.) are discarded and objects from auxiliary layers are discarded. Before writing to technical support that the program does not process your curves, first read all the program messages on the command line - it clearly indicates which filter worked and why the object was discarded.

  • All selected curves will then be projected onto the XY plane of the current user coordinate system UCS.

  • Two offsets of each curve will be made in both directions at an equal distance. If the original curve is closed, then you get two closed contours.

  • If the original curve is not closed, then the program will close the ends of the offset curves in a straight line or along an arc (the radius of the arc is the same as the offset distance).

  • Next, the resulting zone contours around each curve will be combined into a single zone. If there were splines or ellipses among the original lines (after projection onto XY), then a closed spline will be obtained. In all other cases, a polyline will be obtained. A polyline may contain arcuate segments.

  • At the end of the work, the program will assign the resulting contour a specified layer or a default layer. And it will display the number of processed curves on the command line.

Program settings

Name - the name of this Zone style. This name is not used anywhere. Just for the convenience of choosing a style.

Selected object filter - a set of settings for filtering the desired objects. Thanks to the filter, you can select many objects with a frame and not worry that unnecessary objects, annotations, and objects from auxiliary layers will be included in the selection.

Distance - the distance of the zone contour from the original curves. The width of the resulting zone will be equal to two of these distances.

Request distance - display a distance request every time you call the Zone command after selecting objects. If you disable this option, the program will use the distance from the settings of the current style. You will see the current distance setting on the command line before you are prompted to select objects.

Create a Region - Create a zone as a Region object rather than a polyline or spline.

Delete Sources - Delete all original lines and curves around which it was possible to construct a zone. Except for objects from locked layers.

At the ends of the zone - a figure with which the program will connect the ends of offset curves (only for unclosed source curves)

• Line - the ends of the curves will be connected by a straight line, which will also touch the original curve. Thus, there will be no indentation from the original curve in this place.

• Arc - the ends of the curves will be connected by an arc (semicircle) with a radius equal to the zone indentation distance. In this way, an indentation zone will be provided at the ends of the original curve too.

Layer - assign a layer to the zone outline. The drop-down list will contain all layers of the current drawing. But you can write any layer name and the program will try to copy such a layer from your dwt template or create a new layer. By default this setting is empty - the current layer will be used by default.

Restrictions

• The program does not work with self-intersecting polylines and splines. You must first break the loop with the _Break command anywhere in the loop. But the result will be combined into a single zone outline.

• The program does not work with Ray, Xline, Multiline, Blocks.