Click the Draw | Shape | Spline Polyline
command 
to draw a spline polyline. Spline polylines
are smooth, flowing polylines with no sharp or distinct angles. Spline
polylines can have associated primary IDs, so you
can use spline polylines as boundary files with pie,
bar, symbol,
flow, prism,
line graph, territory,
and post maps.
Spline polylines can be used to represent data on some thematic maps. Spline polylines can be assigned a line style, color, and width (see Property Manager). You can assign a primary ID (PID) used to link the spline polyline to data in a file. Secondary IDs, attribute 1 IDs, attribute 2 IDs, and hyperlinks can be used as an additional identifiers for the spline polyline. Spline polylines can be imported using the File | Import command, the Map | Base Map command.
Spline polylines can be used to display thematic information stored in the data file. A spline polyline is linked to a corresponding row in the data by its primary ID. If you want to assign a primary ID to a spline polyline, select the spline polyline after it is completed, and then type the PID into the Object Manager. You can also change the IDs for a selected spline polyline in the Info section of the Property Manager.
To draw a spline polyline:
Click the Draw
| Shape | Spline Polyline command to enter
drawing mode and begin drawing a spline polyline.
Move the cross hair pointer over the location for the start of the spline polyline and click the left mouse button.
Move the pointer to the next position along the line and click again. Generate the spline polyline by clicking on the anchor points during the polygon creation. The anchor points identify a change in the spline polyline's shape and direction. Notice that the spline polyline shape is visible and that you can change its curvature by moving the mouse.
Continue clicking on the anchor points until you click the final point then press the ENTER key, or double-click the left mouse button to place the final point. The new spline polyline is drawn.
Press the ESC key or another command button to exit drawing mode.
This shows a Spline
Polyline drawn through
three points.
Click points on the page to draw a spline polyline.
If the CTRL key is pressed while clicking points, the points are constrained to 45-degree angles.
Click the right mouse button to remove the last drawn point. Repeated clicking of the right mouse button removes all points in reverse order.
Double-click the left mouse button or press the ENTER key to close the spline polyline.
Press the ESC key to cancel drawing the spline polyline before ending the line.
Click the Draw | Tools | Reshape command to change the spline polyline's shape.
Edit the spline polyline properties in the Property Manager.
Change the properties for a group of selected spline polylines in the Property Manager.
Use the File | Options dialog Default Properties page to set the default line properties for the spline polyline.
See Also