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2.1.2 Curved Track

Creating a curve is a two step operation.

The five methods (with their Shortcut keys) used to create a Curved Track are:

Section 2.1.2.1. Drag out the end and then set its radius by dragging the endpoint.

Section 2.1.2.2. Drag from the an endpoint to the center and then drag the second enpoint around that center.

Section 2.1.2.3. Drag from the Center of the Curved track to one of the endpoints. Position the second endpoint around the center.

Section 2.1.2.4. Drag from one endpoint to the other endpoint to form the Chord of the Curve. Drag the arc out to form the Curve.

Section 2.1.2.5. Construct a Bezier by placing its four control points.

A drop-down menu, which allows selection of the Curved Track creation method, is invoked from the down arrow button () located on the right side the Curved track button. Dependent upon previous selection, the Curved Track button will look like , , , , or .

Curved Track Button Menu

For all but the Bezier Curve, two Red arrow heads will be drawn after the first step to indicate where you can Left-Drag to complete the second step.

A straight track will be created if the second endpoint is lined up with the first endpoint except for Bezier tracks.

If the Snap Grid (Section 2.12.1) is enabled then the endpoints will be constrained to the grid if they are not snapped to another object. Shift ensures that other objects will be ignored.

Optionally, the curve center point and radius can be displayed for the Curve. This is enabled by the Move Label (Section 2.2.10) command.

For Beziers, the active control point will be drawn in red and the available endpoints are shown with circles.

Note: You can also create Straight and Curved tracks using section 2.2.8 by Left-Draging out extra track from an open end-point.