Today’s tip is more of a “head’s up” to be aware of when using the REVERSE command on a closed polyline.

The Reverse command will reverse the direction of selected objects. What is reversed is the direction or the order of the way that the objects were drawn.

You can use the command REVERSE to launch this command or it is located on the ribbon on the Home tab > Modify Panel > Reverse (shown below)

You can find the “origin” of a polyline by selecting the polyline, then right-click and select “Properties” to open the properties palette.

Click inside “Current Vertex” section of the palette. The first vertex will have a temporary marker “X” on-screen at the “origin.”

When you click on the up or down arrows of the “Current Vertex” section, you will see the direction of the polyline. clicking the Up arrows will show the direction in which the polyline was created. Clicking down will go backwards…

when using the Reverse command so that the direction is changed, note that the origin changes on closed polylines. This may not be a big deal for most situations but there are instances when each vertex is included in a report and its coordinates are included in the report. And maybe the person who drew the polyline drew the polyline in the wrong direction. Hopefully, this can be corrected by using the REVERSE command.

Below is the polyline as shown above and its origin after the reverse command is used on it. Notice that the origin changes.