Technical data

Chapter 4 Working with Drawing and Editing Tools
148
Curved Objects
You can use various methods to create curved objects, such as circles,
arcs, ellipses, and donuts. The method you use depends on the
information that you have available.
Key Concepts
■
Create a circle by specifying a center point, radius or diameter, or
tangent points. Choose a method to create circles depending on
how you want to control the sequence of point selection.
■
There are several ways to create an arc, but one of the points that
you specify is either the center point or the start point. Arcs are
drawn counterclockwise from the start point.
■
To draw an ellipse, you can specify center points or endpoints. The
size of the ellipse is determined by its major (long) axis and its
minor (short) axis. After you create the ellipse, you can move the
cursor along one or both axes to adjust its size.
■
You can draw an elliptical arc by specifying endpoints and axis
distance as if you were drawing a full ellipse. A start angle and an
end angle that you specify define the arc’s start point and
endpoint.
■
To create either filled rings or solid-filled circles, you can create
donuts, which are closed polylines that have widths. Create a
donut by specifying the inside and outside diameter and the center.
Curved Lines
You can draw a smooth curve passing though or near specified points
in the drawing by drawing a spline-fit polyline.
To draw a curved line
Steps
Use
to look up
1
From the Draw menu, choose Spline. You are
prompted to select a polyline object or specify
a point.
Drawing Spline Curves
SPLINE Command
2
Specify points along a path where you want to
create the curved line.