Drawing straight lines
The Line Segment tool creates individual straight lines called line segments. There are two ways to draw with the Line Segment tool: you can drag to draw the line directly on the artboard or click to specify properties in a dialog box. Note: You can also use the Pen tool to draw straight lines. For more information, see Drawing straight segments with the Pen tool.
To draw a straight line by dragging: - Select the Line Segment tool
. - Position the pointer where you want the line to begin, and drag to where you want the line to end.
You can press any of the following to get specific results as you drag: - Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) to extend the line from both sides of the reference point.
- The spacebar to switch from drawing to moving the line.
- ` (grave accent) to create additional line segments as you move the mouse, all emanating from the same reference point.
- Shift to constrain a single line to 45°.
To add arrowheads to a line, use the Add Arrowheads effect. (See Adding arrowheads to lines.)
To draw a straight line by specifying properties: - Select the Line Segment tool
, and click where you want to start the line segment. - Set any of the following options in the dialog box, and click OK:
- Length to specify the total length of the line.
- Angle to specify the angle from the reference point of the line.
- Fill Line to specify whether to fill the line with the current fill color.
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