Break a closed feature line

[cyberfiche]

I often use feature lines for parking lots and ponds.  They're great when they work, but they drive me NUTS when they don't - which is a lot of the time.  For parking lots and ponds, my feature lines usually close back on themselves.  That's when I have trouble breaking the feature line.  When I use BREAKFEATURE, I choose two points and this should, in theory, leave a gap in the feature line between those two points.  That's not what happens.  I end up with a huge gap between the first point I picked and a vertex point 5 or 6 vertices away.  It doesn't matter where I pick the breaking points.

I've also tried TRIMFEATURES.  I draw lines across the feature line where I would have chosen the breaking points.  But the portion that I want to remove is the portion that always remains.  It doesn't matter where I select the feature line to be trimmed (inside or outside of the cutting edges).

I think there may something wrong with the feature line itself.  Sometimes, if I erase the original and draw a new one, it will trim just fine.  But that's such a headache, and it doesn't always work.  If I knew what was causing the feature lines to go squirrely,  I would aviod it.  Unfortunately, it seems like breathing the wrong way can screw up a feature line.

Has anyone else had any luck with opening a closed feature line?

[JessieQuilatan · Accepted solution]

When breaking a closed feature line, you must select the break points in the same direction the line was drawn.

[Sinc]

Ah!  Thanks for clearing that up.

I'd noticed the problem, but hadn't figured out why it happened.

[d1of2]

how does that explain the trim problem? I am having the same problem when I trim a feature line. I have to cutting edges, I use trimfeatures, then select the two cutting edges. end the selection mode, then I select the feature I want trimmed. Guess what, it always trims the line past one of the cutting edges and completely ignores the other. If I break the feature line, from the first breakpoint on, disappears,

One funny thing is, when I hit the undo command to bring everything back, I have to hit it like 10 times, but I only entered one command.

[troma]

AFAIK, when you break a feature line, the part past the breakpoint loses all style settings and displays as the 'Standard' style. Try editing standard style to make sure it is visible.
I can't help with the trim problem.

[davidHE4LD]

I found that once I enter the BREAKFEATURES command and select the feature line I am trying to break, I have to select FISRT point and then choose where on the line I want to start the break then select the second point.  This makes is so that the command behaves similar to the BREAK command with polylines and does not simply delete the part I am trying to keep.