You may find it necessary, on occasion, to change an object into a polyline or a polyline into a region during an editing session. You can do so using the Convert to Regions or Convert to Polylines commands.
For instance, you select a group of nodes that you want to copy and paste elsewhere on your map. MapInfo Pro treats the group as a polyline and copies it to the clipboard. After you paste the polyline on your map, you can convert it to a region: on the SPATIAL tab, in the Create group, click Regions, and Convert to Regions.
If you want to create a buffer zone within one mile of a boundary, meaning you want a zone that extends one mile from the boundary to the outside and to the inside, you must first convert the region to a polyline and then create the buffer. If you first create the buffer on the region, you will include too much territory in the buffer (the entire region in the buffer plus the one mile buffer that extends outside of the region).
Converting objects to polylines and regions lets you perform node-editing operations on objects that ordinarily do not allow node editing. For example, you cannot add nodes to a rectangle object. If, however, you first convert the rectangle into a polyline or region, you can then add nodes to the object.