We would find it very helpful to have ‘Perpendicular’ switch in Polyline command, so when it is enabled, each new segment is constrained to perpendicular direction from the previous one.
Currently SmartTrack can be used but is quite inconvenient and takes a while to ‘get’ that, plus hard to achieve on more complex underlays. Ortho mode also does not help that much if the drawing direction is not aligned with XY, and changing CPlane each time is also more problematic and slows things down. Tracing any technical shapes or building outlines using this mode would be very helpful.
EDIT: the Helpers mode does not help much in Line mode, maybe in Line mode it could actually quickly pick up perpendicular direction instead of adding a brand new switch ?
This is already possible with SmartTrack when “Smart tangents and perpendiculars” is enabled, which I think is the current default.
With SmartTrack enabled, either turn on Point osnap and tag the last point while drawing, or go to Tools->Options->ModelingAids->SmartTrack and Guides, and turn on “Smart ortho” to autotag the last point. The cursor will be automatically snapped perpendicular to previous segment.
This doesn’t solve the issue the request came from. As you may see in my original post I am well aware of the SmartTrack and using it with all the suggested checkboxes checked. I saw @mikko’s comment on YT.
The SmartTrack is not quick or convenient to use for that purpose when:
a) there is a lot of lines around and you have to work hard and mouse-around a lot to get the ‘perp’ direction
b) when your ‘perp’ direction segment is quite small and you have to zoom in for ST to pick it up
c) it does not work at all when we don’t use OSnap or Alt override. Again, many times on dense drawings I don’t want Snapping but still would like to do Perp from last segment.
I have done a lot of tracing of map building footprints where almost each of them is the case when you need PerpFromLast and SmartTrack definitely is not that convenient to work with.
The requested additional option or tuning up the behavior of Helpers in Polyline command would solve all of the above.