Line tool

The Line tool   lets you create straight lines with only two nodes (a start point and an end point). To draw a straight line with this tool, begin dragging where you want the starting point of the line to be and release the mouse button where you want the end point to be. The line takes on both the current fill and stroke attributes, even though a straight line cannot actually display any fill.

Tip: Hold down the SHIFT key to constrain the line's angle. Ordinarily, this constrains the line to 90- or 45-degrees, but the actual angle depends on the Rotation steps value in the Units and Grids page of the Options dialog box.

A line is a regular Bezier path object. You can achieve the same effect by choosing the Pen tool, clicking once at the start point and double-clicking at the end point.

Appending lines

To append a line to a current path on your page, place the cursor over the start or end point of another path before clicking and dragging with the tool. Alternately, you can drag with the Line tool and let go of the mouse button when the cursor is over the start or end node of another path.

If you do not want your lines to connect to already-existing paths, disable the Drawing tools append to path feature in the Stroke page of the Options dialog box . Alternately, when you choose the Line tool and no objects are selected on your page, the Append to Line check box appears in the Create Line category in the Properties panel. Disabling this check box is the same as disabling Drawing tools append to path preference.