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Auto Cad: Week10 Polylines PL – Shortcut Polylines are continuous lines made up of various segments. They can be used to construct closed areas for hatching and many other uses including preparing drawing for laser cutters or CNC machines.

Polylines can be constructed from scratch using the PL command or by converting an existing set of lines using PE (poly edit) command.

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PEDIT PE – Shortcut Poly edit enables you to join a series of lines together to create a continuous polyline. To execute select a line, turn it into a polyline then join additional lines.

BEWARE!! If your lines do not meet (have gaps) you are probably not using the ‘OSNAP’ options. To turn ‘OSNAP’ on click (F3) and make sure the lines are connected by using fillet or trim tools. Lines that do not meet can cause a whole host of problems when applying hatching/ laser cutting... Etc.

Gap in polyline

I can close the gap by using ‘PE’ or ‘Fillet’ command. I can also create complex curves by transforming a polyline (PL) using poly edit (PE).

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Closed gap

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Hatch This command hatches and fills an existing object with desired material, such as concrete or steel.

H – shortcut To execute •

Specify a point in an area that is enclosed by objects

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Select objects that enclose an area

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Specify boundary points using the Draw option of hatch

This should come up when hatching

Example showing hatched areas

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If the polylines are not connected red circles will appear at the unconnected endpoints and an error message should pop up.

Hatching of wall in school drawing

When hatching remember to turn the grid off to prevent it from intersecting with the drawing.

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To turn the grid off go to the layers palette and click on the light bulb and sun

Dimensioning • •

Always add dimensions in paper space.

Always use the ‘Annotative’ setting - This means that the size of the dimension changes for you depending on the scale of viewport, therefore you do not have to work it out.

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To change the settings of the dimension use the DIMSTYLE command to bring up dimension editor.

You may want to lock the viewport when adding dimensions as they can easily move. Select the viewport > right click on the viewport > choose ‘Display Locked’ > Yes!

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Paper space: School drawing Make sure all dimensions are the same size when it comes to printing. It has to be 1:50 scale.

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