Lauren Manley 26/11/12
Establishing Professional Practice Week 10 Polylines: A polyline is a continuous line that can bend and stretch to form an object using only a single line. They can be used to make closed areas for hatching and to prepare drawings for laser cutters and CNC machines. The shortcut for making polylines is ‘PL’ you then draw it out in the same way you use the line tool.
When offsetting a polyline you don’t need to stretch and join corners as the whole line will be offset as one.
Lauren Manley 26/11/12
You can also use the line tool to draw a series of lines and then turn them all into a single poly line using the Polyedit tool (PE).
Select your first line and then choose to join other lines to it, proceed to select the adjoining lines and here is the finished polyline.
Lauren Manley 26/11/12
PolyEditWidth
PolyEdit – Fit
PolyEditSpline Original Polyline
Lauren Manley 26/11/12
To break a polyline down into its separate segments use the Explode tool, Keyboard shortcut ‘X’, this stops it being a continuous line and allows you to use it as a series of normal lines. Hatching: Keyboard shortcut ‘H’.
Pick a pattern
Pick a colour
Set your scale. Patterns are normally set at 1, others at 100
Lauren Manley 26/11/12
A Polyline must be closed before you can use the hatch tool, if you try to use the hatch tool within an open object then an error message will appear telling you it is not possible. Annotations in Paper space: Dimentions:
Lauren Manley 26/11/12