topic Line drawing order. in AutoCAD Forum

Line drawing order.

dann002 — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 13:43:23 GMT

How do I draw a line under an existing drawing.

I'm using existing drawings and needing to measure multiple lines. The best way I have found is to draw a wide polyline over the existing drawing, I have found on some drawings my polyline in UNDER the current drawing, but most of the time its over ( as I would expect),

What is the setting to always draw a PLine UNDER an existing drawing ?

Re: Line drawing order.

pendean — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 14:33:32 GMT

@dann002 No such auto setting exists, but are you 100% sure the display-only issue you are facing does not get corrected by just running REGENALL command when you see it? That works for all of us.

As, as a general rule, if you don't use DRAWORDER command to set what you desire, the last-drawn (or copied or moved) object is on top (unless your video card needs a nudge to refresh as I noted in the first sentence above).

Re: Line drawing order.

Kent1Cooper — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 17:33:02 GMT

@dann002 wrote:

.... needing to measure multiple lines. The best way I have found is to draw a wide polyline over the existing drawing, .... to always draw a PLine UNDER an existing drawing ?

I'm not sure I understand how drawing a Polyline relates to measuring lines. But as for drawing one UNDER what's already there, there's no setting that will do that, but try this little custom command:

(defun C:PLU (); = PolyLine Under everything (command-s "_.pline") (command "_.draworder" "_last" "" "_back") (prin1) )

Your Polyline will be on top of things as you draw it, but when you finish the command, it will be put under everything else.

Re: Line drawing order.

dann002 — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 20:30:33 GMT

Hi pendean,
thanks for your quick reply,looks like i can't really achieve what exactlyI
want. Is there any way of drawing a transparent Polyline?

thanks
daniel

Re: Line drawing order.

imadHabash — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 03:44:14 GMT

Hi and Welcome to AutoCAD Forum,

>> Is there any way of drawing a transparent Polyline?

@dann002 Of course you can get such a transparent Polyline by:

Make a special layer for your polylines then from Layer Properties Manager change the transparency for that layer from Transparency tab.
Enter a value between 0 and 90 to specify the percentage of transparency for the selected layer. The higher the number, the more transparent the objects are on that layer.
Also, you can from Properties palette (Ctrl+1) you can change the transparent value for a specific selected item.
To ensure transparency is displayed ... Turn on Transparency Display by TRANSPARENCYDISPLAY system variable and enter 1 for on, or 0 for off. OR from transparency (Status Bar Button) >> Click <<

Re: Line drawing order.

dann002 — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 08:23:33 GMT

thanks,

Daniel