I have another object shaped almost like the letter c once again it is almost horseshoe shaped. It is made up of splines, arcs, and line.  I was able to acquire the shape from a 3dsolid by exploding it and then extracting it out by moving it. It said it was a region so I exploded it and now i have lines, arcs, and splines. I attempted to make it a closed pline so that I could extrude it, but the pedit command won't accept it, it won't join them. it comes back with 0 segments added.  Any sugestions?  thank you

Make sure that all of your intersecting elements are touching. You will not be able to close your shape otherwise. If you already have a multi-segment polyline, use pedit, select the polyline, then use the Edit vertex option. This will display a cursor that you can "scroll" around each vertex. The cursor will not advance past a break in the line. Also be sure that there are no lines laying on top of one another. If you have the Express tools loaded use Overkill command to get rid of lines laying on top of one another.