In many situations, you will find that even after applying the linetype, the line may not visibly change at all and may still remain a solid line; in some cases, the line's gaps or features will be too sparsely placed. In these situations, you need to change the scale of the linetype to any value that will ultimately make it look good.

To do this, you need to change the linetype scale from the PROPERTIES palette of the line. Select the line that is not displaying properly even after applying the linetype. Then, right-click and select PROPERTIES from the context menu or type PR and press Enter. Here, PR is the command alias of the PROPERTIES palette.

On the PROPERTIES palette, you will find an option called Linetype scale, as shown here:

The default value for Linetype scale is 1. Change this value to a smaller or higher number depending on the linetype you are getting. If your current linetype has features very closely spaced, then increase the linetype scale to a bigger number, and if they're very sparsely placed, then decrease the number. You may even need to use very small or very big numbers, such as 0.01 or 100, in the Linetype scale field to make your lines look normal.

Although the name linetype may be a little confusing sometimes, as it seems as though it is a property specific to lines, that's not the case: you can apply linetype to other drawing objects, such as circles, polyline shapes, and ellipses.