Symbol Management

The Symbol Manager in Pythagoras CAD helps you organize, edit, and maintain your own symbols, line styles, and patterns across your drawings. You can easily add, remove, group, and update these elements. This guide walks you through how to use the Symbol Management tool effectively.

What are Library Styles?

Your personal library — Library Styles — includes symbols, line styles, and patterns that:

• Are fully editable (symbol properties)

• Can be renamed, regrouped, and relocated

• Are available across all drawings when stored in the system library

Note: A style currently used in an open drawing can’t be deleted or overwritten.

You can access Symbol Management via:

• Settings > Symbols > Symbol Manager...

• Right-click a library style > Edit Symbol (from version 2024 onward)

What can you do in the Symbol Manager window?

In the Symbol Manager window, you can manage symbols, line styles, and patterns by:

• Moving items from the document to the system library

• Change Group name (sorted alphabetically)

• Change Symbol name (also sorted alphabetically)

• Deleting styles not used in the current document

• Grouping styles for easier reuse and organization

• Using filter and search to quickly locate specific items

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Tip: Use clear group names like Cables, Buildings, Traffic to navigate faster.

Library vs Document Symbols

The library styles which are added to system library are saved in the system file (PYTHAGOR.LIB) to keep your styles consistent across multiple projects. How to back up system files

Symbol Characteristics

Each object type supports different characteristics:

In the Symbol Management window:

• Black = property is active

• Gray = property is inactive

You can change these characteristics via Edit > Edit Symbols (Symbol Editor).

The shared characteristics across all styles are:

Scale

Scale-dependent

• Object retains its real-world dimensions scaled based on the sheet scale (e.g. 1:200)

• Not affected by the scale factor (%)

• Useful for: manholes, wall thickness, hatching

Scale-independent

• Object is visually always the same size, regardless of sheet scale

• Affected by the scale factor (%)

• Useful for: north arrows, legend symbols

Note:
Sheet scale (e.g. 1:500) controls print output.
Scale factor (e.g. 50%) affects visual size of symbols and text only.

Fixed Color

• Black = Active: The object keeps its own color, independent of the layer

• Gray = Inactive: The object inherits the layer color

Use Fixed color if you want an object to always look the same — e.g. for infrastructure symbols or mandatory icons.

More about specific style characteristics

Create Symbol (Point Style) — How to define your own symbol and set properties

How to create Line Style — How to use hotspots and repeating patterns

Exporting and Importing Symbols

Go to: Settings > Symbols > Import/Export System Symbols

• Export: Save selected symbols to a file for sharing or reuse

• Import: Load external symbols into your pythagor.lib system library

Standard styles for objects - Pythagoras includes some built-in styles that cannot be modified. These are fixed to ensure compatibility and consistency.