Charlotte Birchall 26/11/12
Establishing Professional Practice For an unclosed object hit the C button to close it and hit spacebar. PE – Poly Edit – to edit it.
Poly lines are continuous lines- made up of various segments – they can be used to construct closed areas for hatching and many other drawing for laser cutters or CNC machines. PL – Polyline – So polylines can be constructed from stretching using the PL command converting and existing set of standard lines using the PE 9 Poly edit command. Poly edit enables us to join a series of lines together to create a continuous polyline – select a line – turn it into a polyline the join additional lines. BEWARE: If your lines do not meet (have gaps) – your probably not using the OSNAP options – Turn on OSNAP (F3) and make sure the lines are connected – use the fillet tool or the trim tools… Lines that don’t meet can cause a whole host of problems especially when applying hatching or laser cutting etc.. OFFSET BONUS NOTE: When offsetting a polyline you can save time… there is no need to trim or fillet..
Explode tool X – Explode – if you select the polyline and hit the X button on your keyboard and hit spacebar it will then explode your polyline. Change the width of the line by entering PE on your keyboard.
Charlotte Birchall 26/11/12
Establishing Professional Practice
To turn a standard line into a more flexible polyline – enter poly edit command > select the line you wish to turn into PL (answer do you want to turn into a polyline >yes) then join (j) together > select the lines you wish to add to the PL. To break down a polyline back to its more basic parts firstly select the line then use the explode function (x) - this will preserve the geometry and destroy the linking element of the object. We can create complex curves by transforming a Polyline using poly edit. – use the fit option or the spline option. Hatching tool Hatching tool - keyboard shortcut H – it allows you to fill the space you have selected in the colours and the rendering you want it.
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