Copy Plants Along a Path (Polyline, Line, or Arc)

• Keyboard Commands for Our Copy Along Tools
• Copy Along a Polyline
• Keyboard Commands
• Copy Spacing
• Copy Along a Line
  • Keyboard Commands
    • Copy Spacing
  • Placing the Line of Plants
• Copy Along an Arc
  • Keyboard Commands
    • Copy Spacing
  • Placing the Arc of Plants
• Related Webinars
• Troubleshooting

With our Copy tools, you can copy any plant in your drawing and arrange the duplicates into a customized line, arc, or polyline. We've added some commands that allow you to fine-tune your plant spacing in a dialog box and with keyboard commands.

Keyboard Commands for our Copy Along Tools

Each of the three Copy Along tools has its own set of keyboard commands built in. These commands allow you to toggle between plant spacing distances, and between the tools themselves, while copying plants along a polyline, line, or arc.

 

When any of these three tools is active, you can type K to see the available keyboard commands.

You don't need to type K to use the keyboard commands – it's just a quick way to reference each of the commands in the dialog box pictured below. To use the keyboard commands, just press the corresponding keys on your keyboard.

 

 

 

 

Here's a graph showing the trajectory of the spacing increments you'll toggle through when using the D key:

 

 

 

Our Suggestion for the Best Use of the Keyboard Commands

We chose the keys for these commands carefully, basing them on the keys you'd use in any number of computer games that require some sort of movement up, down, left, and right.

 

Think of the W, A, S, and D keys as your home keys, where you should be keeping your hand while copying and placing plants. Then think of the A and D keys as the left and right arrow keys. A will toggle you "left" (decrease the plant spacing) and D will toggle you "right" (increase the plant spacing). While your hand is in that location, you also have easy access to the keys that toggle between best and exact fit (W) and reset back to 100% spacing (S).

 

 

So if you use W-A-S-D as your home base, you'll begin to realize that the commands are built intuitively around this axis. Start here, and you'll have all the commands memorized in no time.

Get on-the-road training on our keyboard commands by playing our Drive game. It's a fun way to learn the commands, and you can do it inside any DWG drawing!

 

 

Copy Along a Polyline

The Copy Along Polyline tool copies a plant you select and offsets the copies along a polyline in your drawing, such as the border of a pathway or planter. The copies will be offset from the polyline at the exact distance at which you've placed the original plant. You can also draw a polyline on the fly with this tool active to set the angle of the line of copied plants.

We've updated Copy along Polyline to follow this dynamic copy style. It allows you have a plant offset from a polyline such as a curb or a road line, and the plant won't be pulled down to the line itself –it will stay where it was intended and copy from that location.

Copy along Polyline also allows you to select a polyline from an Xref.

Want the old Copy along Polyline functionality from before the update? Use the COPYALONGPLINE keyboard command.

 

 

 

Open the Copy Along Polyline tool:

 

 

 

 

or type FX_PlantCopyPLine in the Command line

 

 

 

The cursor will turn into a pickbox, and the Command line will prompt you to Select source object.

 

 

 

Click the plant you want to copy. The Command line will now prompt you to Select polyline, or [Draw]:.

 

 

 

Select an existing polyline, or type D and press Enter to draw a polyline on the fly. Either way, the copied line of plants will offset from the polyline at the same distance as the original plant you selected. You can right-click or press Enter to set the endpoint of the line of plants.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Keyboard Commands

 

 

 

 

Copy Spacing

The Copy Spacing dialog box will open if you type 1.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click OK to accept the spacing and options. You can then proceed with placing the plants at the spacing you've set.

Copy Along a Line

With the Copy Along a Line tool, you can copy a plant in your drawing and then place a line of the copies that originates from the original plant.

 

 

Open Copy Along a Line:

 

 

 

 

The cursor will turn into a pickbox.

 

 

 

 

Keyboard Commands

 

Copy Spacing

 

 

Click OK to accept the spacing and options.

If you select the Exact option, new segments of the line of plants will begin from the last block rather than the last cursor position.

 

Placing the Line of Plants

Once you've set all your spacing preferences, move the mouse to copy the plant along a line. The farther you move the mouse, the more instances of the plant will appear along the line.

 

 

 

When you reach the number of plants you want to place, click again.

 

 

 

The plants will appear along the line at the spacing you set.

Copy Along an Arc

With the Copy Along Arc tool, you can copy a plant and then draw an arc consisting of copies of that plant.

 

 

Open Copy Along Arc:

 

 

 

 

 

or type FX_PlantCopyArc in the Command line

 

 

 

The cursor will turn into a pickbox. Select the plant you want to copy along an arc.

 

 

A “rubber band” line will appear between the plant and the cursor crosshairs, and the Command line will prompt: Arc midpoint.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Keyboard Commands

 

 

Copy Spacing

 

 

 

Click OK to accept the spacing and options.

 

If you select the Exact option, new segments of the arc of plants will begin from the last block rather than the last cursor position.

 

Placing the Arc of Plants

 

Once you've set all your spacing options, click to place the arc of plants.

 

 

Triangular and Square Array

We offer two array tools for plants: Triangular Array and Square Array. These tools will duplicate a plant in your drawing into an arrayed pattern.

For more information on arraying plants, see our Array Plants documentation page.

Plant Mirror

The Plant Mirror tool mirrors plants around an axis – much the same as the standard CAD Mirror command. However, Plant Mirror has an important advantage: Unlike the AutoCAD Mirror command, it allows plant symbols to retain the correct Plant Shadow orientations after being mirrored. For more information, see our Plant Mirror documentation.

The main reason to use Plant Mirror is to keep the shadows correctly oriented, assuming you are going to turn on Plant Shadows. If you don't plan to use our Plant Shadows tool, you can simply use the CAD Mirror command if you wish.

Related Webinars

• Getting Started with Planting F/X: We'll give you a full tour of our F/X Planting ribbon, covering everything from adding, placing, copying, and labeling plants to error checking, scheduling, and turning on our quick render tools. (1 hr)

Troubleshooting

Issue: You copied a plant in the Plant Manager, but when you attempt to change the code, the code of the original plant changes

 

Question: Can I copy and paste plants and labels?

 

Issue: You used Copy along a Polyline on a plant, and the offset is an an unexpected distance from the polyline - either just that it's offset, or that it's offset too far