Creating Polylines

Polyline Tool

The Polyline tool creates open and closed polylines—objects made of a series of connected arcs, curves, or lines.

While drawing a polyline, the type of control point, or vertex, for each segment can be set either by clicking on the desired mode while drawing or using the keyboard shortcuts (see Creating or Editing a Workspace) to select the desired mode. A polyline can have different combinations of vertices.

The corners of the polyline can be “smoothed” with the Smoothing command (see Editing Object Surfaces). Markers can be added with the Attributes palette (see Marker Attributes).

 

Mode	Description
Corner Vertex	Creates a polyline object with straight lines and angled vertices at the control points
Bézier Vertex	Creates a polyline object with curves pulled toward, but not touching the control points
Cubic Vertex	Creates a polyline object with curves that pass through the control points
Arc Vertex	Creates a polyline object with curves that look like a fillet placed at the control points; click Polyline Preferences to set the radius of the fillet

 

To create a polyline:

1.	Click the Polyline tool from the Basic palette.

2.	Click to set the polyline’s start point.

3.	Click to set the end of the segment and the beginning of the next.

Press and hold instead of clicking to create a Bézier vertex instead of a Corner vertex.

4.	Continue drawing segments in this manner until the polyline is complete.

5.

Click the mouse at the start point to complete a closed polyline object (end point of the last segment is at the exact start point of the first segment), or double-click the mouse to complete an open polyline object (end point of the last segment is at a different location than the start point of the first segment).

The resulting polyline object, whether open or closed, is a filled object. If desired, remove the fill through the Attributes palette to see objects behind the polyline.