For a longtime the SKETCH command has been in AutoCAD. While the SKETCH command was good for some limited uses like digitizer tracings, the problem was it created tons of small polyline segments that were unjoined to each other. These polyline segments were ok unless you intended to use the geometry for other than a reference.
Now with AutoCAD 2011 the default object created by the SKETCH is the spline. You can also access the Spline Freehand on the 3D Modeling workspace ribbon: Surface tab > Curves panel > spline drop-down > Spline Freehand.
The default for splines is to show the Fit Points, but now there is an option when the spline is selected to show the Control Vertices.
You can also rebuild the Spline with more or less control vertices using the command CVREBUILD or access it from the Surface tab > Control Vertices panel > Rebuild
Cheers,
Shaan
