Autodesk Certified Professional in AutoCAD for Design and Drafting Practice Exam

If a field created to show the length of a polyline appears as hash marks, what does this indicate?

1. The field needs to be recalculated

2. The line that the field was linked to has been erased

3. The field is corrupt and needs to be recreated

4. The polyline is not selected

The correct answer is: The line that the field was linked to has been erased

When a field created to show the length of a polyline appears as hash marks, this indicates that the object the field is referencing has been deleted. In this case, the field is meant to display information based on the properties of a specific polyline, such as its length. If that polyline no longer exists in the drawing file—because it has been erased or removed—the field cannot retrieve the data it needs to display. The hash marks serve as a visual cue within AutoCAD that the field is broken or invalid due to the absence of the linked polyline. Other options may suggest different issues, such as requiring a recalculation or recreating a corrupt field, but those scenarios wouldn’t result in hash marks. The key aspect of this case is the direct link to the polyline which has been removed, leading to the hash marks as a placeholder for missing information.