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Dashed lines

There are two ways to produce dashed (dotted) lines of any length in Finale: Smart Shapes and Shape Expressions. In general, you should use a Smart Shape. A Smart Shape has three advantages: First, it expands and contracts along with the measures it affects. Second, it will automatically break into separate segments if it straddles a system line break. Third, there are three dashed-line Smart Shapes—one with a hook on both ends, one with a hook on the right side, and one without hooks, plus you can define custom lines as well. You place Smart Shapes into one staff at a time; they may be horizontal or diagonal, and you can control the length of the dashes.

If you want a dashed line to appear in many staves at once (such as a dashed barline), you can create one in the Shape Designer, where you can also specify the thickness of the line.

 

Drawing a Smart Shape dashed line

Moving, reshaping, or deleting a Smart Shape dashed line

 

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