Polyline Tool

his tool creates continuous straight lines through points clicked, entered coordinates, tangent between a point and an arc or tangent to two arcs.

It can also be used to create smooth Curved lines.

Watch this video to see this in action:

Watch tutorial: How to use the Polyline Tool

Interactive Drawing

The quickest and easiest way to draw a line is by clicking within the 2D View using the mouse.

• Click the left mouse button to indicate the start point of your line.
• Move the mouse pointer and click again to set the next point in your line.
• Repeat this process to add as many line segments as you require.
• Right-click or press Esc to finish your polyline and exit the tool.
• Alternatively press the Space bar to complete this polyline but stay using the tool and begin drawing another polyline.
• Press the Tab key to automatically close the vector.
• A smooth bezier span can be created by clicking and dragging to modify the curvature. The next span will then also be smoothed. If you want next line to be straight line then you can press S to disable the smoothing.

Curved Lines

• There are two separate curve modes in the polyline tool
• While in straight line/polyline mode, click in the 2D or 3D View to begin drawing a one-shot curve at the clicked point.
• Upon adding your initial point, move the mouse pointer within the 2D View to your desired end point and click and hold the mouse left button to being creating a curve by dragging the mouse to pull out the Curved Line. Release the Mouse button to place your curve.
• A curve will be created that smoothly joins your points.
• You can switch between creating Lines or Curves, using Left Click and release for Lines, and Left Click, Drag and then release for Curves.
• You can also press 'S' on the keyboard to toggle between curved and straight line modes. Alternatively, while in curved drawing mode if you click on the last point added to drawn line, this will exit draw curves mode and will return to draw polyline mode and vice versa, if you are in draw polyline mode you can click on the last point created to return to draw curve mode.
• Ensure snapping options are enabled within the software so the last created point can be snapped to.
• The software will retain the last instance of the curve or line mode used. So if a user closes the software, upon the next use of the Draw Polyline tool, the last mode used - curve or straight - will be enabled.