To prepare contours for milling or laser cutting on a CNC, it is important to set the correct direction of the cutting lines and the correct clockwise or counterclockwise bypass of closed contours. In addition, it is important at what point of the contour the cut will begin, the entry point of the cutter. To solve these problems, you need to clearly see where the starting point of the polylines is and in which direction they are directed. However, standard Autodesk® AutoCAD® tools do not allow you to see either the starting points or the direction. Only the property panel helps a little in this, but you need to deal with each polyline separately, which is very time-consuming.

The Polyline Direction (PLineDir) program will help you in working with contours for CNC and for any other tasks where the direction and starting point of any curves are important. The program colors the curves and places conditional icons so that you can clearly see the direction and starting point. All these changes to the drawing are temporary, the colors of the curves will return to the original ones at the end of the command.

In addition to a visual demonstration of the direction, the program allows you to change it quickly. You can change the direction of the curves by clicking on each curve or by selecting many curves at once and assigning them all to clockwise / counterclockwise. You can also edit the starting points individually for each curve or reassign them to all curves at once.

• The program works with all types of curves: lines, polylines, 2D polylines, 3D polylines, splines, and arcs.

• Circles and ellipses are automatically converted to polylines and splines so that they can be assigned a direction and starting points.

• The program can "highlight" the direction and starting points of all curves visible on the screen or only selected curves.

• While the command is running, all selected drawing objects are assigned 3 colors: closed clockwise - green, counterclockwise - purple, the rest - yellow.

• While the command is running, a red cross will be drawn at the starting point of the curves. In addition, the direction of the curve can be indicated by a red arrow from the beginning of the curve to the end point of the curve.

• Almost closed polylines and splines are automatically marked as closed.

• There are 7 operating modes for convenient assignment of direction and starting point. Modes can be switched from the command line.

  • Reverse curves by clicking on one curve.

  • Rotate all closed curves clockwise/counterclockwise.

  • Set the start of one curve at the clicked point. Unclosed curves will be cut in two at this point.

  • Set the start of all selected polylines in the middle of the longest linear segment.

  • Set the start of all selected curves at the minimum point (lower left vertex) or at the maximum.

• When changing the direction of closed polylines, the program saves the start point (unlike the Reverse command).

• You can flexibly configure which objects in the drawing will be involved in the work: you can discard unnecessary ones by object type, by layer, or by being too short.

• All features and modes can be configured in a convenient dialog in the AVC Options Palette. You can create up to 9 settings styles and quickly switch between them.