Exercise duration: ~10 minutes

Advanced drawing objects

In this practice exercise you will create and edit
polylines in a drawing. When completed, your
drawing will contain arrows created from
polylines.

Learning objectives:

• Create polylines.
• Edit a polyline to make a tapered shape.
• Join polylines.
• Copy selections to create multiple copies.
The completed exercise
• Snap objects using object snapping.

1. Open the Contours Map-001.dwg

drawing file (see Figure 1). Ensure you
are on the Arrows layer.

Figure 1. The Contours Map-001.dwg file

open in AutoCAD

2. Use the POLYLINE command to

generate a polyline with width, using
the units below:

Length = 500
Width = 50

Advanced drawing objects Page | 1

 Width must be consistent along the Figure 2. The POLYLINE icon on the Draw
length of the polyline. panel on the Home tab of the ribbon

3. Draw another polyline, again with the

POLYLINE command, with a tapered
width, with one end of the above
polyline (in item 3) being the start
point (using the Endpoint snap), using
the units below: Figure 3. The second (tapered) polyline
being drawn, using the right end of the
Length = 300 previous polyline as its start point
Start width = 200
End width = 0

Tapered width needs to form an

arrowhead.

4. Select one of the new polylines, right-

click, and choose Polyline > Join on the
shortcut menu to join the two polylines
together to form one arrow.

Figure 4. With new tapered polyline

selected, the shortcut menu displays the
Polyline > Join option

5. Use Copy Selection to create two more

new arrows, making a total of three to
replace the original arrowheads.

Figure 5. Using the MOVE command and

Advanced drawing objects Page | 2

 utilizing Snap Overrides for the Nearest
object snap

6. Use the MOVE command and set the

object snap to Nearest in order to move
the arrows near the contour lines (you
can delete the existing arrows in the
drawing but they are provided there as
a guide for placement).

Figure 6. The Contours Map-001.dwg with

the new polyline arrowheads in place

Advanced drawing objects Page | 3