Symbol Sets

Like hatches, symbols are also supplied as True Type Fonts and have the same advantages. Symbols are similar to colours in that they can both be saved in a palette. Palettes are a convenience that let you define groups of symbols from many ASCII and Unicode True Type fonts and keep them in one place. When you create a symbol set, you select symbols from a Symbol Palette.

On the Home tab, in the Symbology group, you can select Symbol Sets | Edit Symbol Palette to create as many symbol palettes as you want.

A file called default.mmSymPal is the symbol palette supplied as part of the distribution. It contains symbols from the Symbol font (also supplied as part of the distribution).

When you create a display or a plot, the program takes the font name and index (the position of the symbol in the font) from the symbol palette. If you have given the symbol a name and defined a rotation, it also obtains these from the palette.

If you send a plot containing symbols to another computer where the fonts containing those symbols are not installed the result will be difficult to predict.