Trim

The trim command removes the portion of a Line that lies between two adjacent intersection points, splitting the line into one or two shorter segments. The segment to cut is determined by the cursor position — hover over the part you want removed and click to trim it.

Trim works on Line entities only. For arcs, circles, polylines, and other entity types use Delete or grip editing instead.

Trimming a line

1. Type trim in the terminal or click the Trim toolbar button.
2. Hover over the line segment you want to remove — a red preview highlights exactly the portion that will be cut.
3. Click to remove that segment.

The command stays active after each trim, so you can continue hovering and clicking to cut more segments. Press Escape to exit.

  Before:                     After trimming middle segment:

  ──────●──────●──────        ──────●          ●──────
      intersect  intersect       (left part)  (right part)
                                 (middle segment removed)

How the trim segment is determined

The command projects the cursor position onto the hovered line and finds all intersection points the line has with other entities. These intersection parameters divide the line into segments. The segment whose interval contains the cursor's projection is highlighted and will be removed on click.

• If the cursor is before the first intersection: that leading portion of the line is removed.
• If the cursor is between two intersections: that middle portion is removed; the line splits into two.
• If the cursor is after the last intersection: that trailing portion is removed.
• If the line has no intersections with any other entity: no preview is shown and clicking does nothing.

Keyboard reference

Key	Action
Escape	Exit trim mode

Supported entities

Entity	Can be trimmed?
Line	Yes
Arc, Circle, Ellipse	No
Polyline / Rectangle	No
Text, Spline, Dimension, Leader	No

The entities used as cutting boundaries can be any type — only the line being trimmed must be a Line entity.

Trim vs Extend

	Trim	Extend
What it does	Removes a segment of a line	Stretches a line endpoint to a boundary
Trigger	Hover over the segment to cut	Hover near the endpoint to extend
Result	Line splits or shortens	Line endpoint moves to the boundary
Both	Lines only	Lines only