OSNAP and OTRACK - Draw Simple Geometry
[Instructor] We're starting a new chapter now in our Learning AutoCAD course and what we're going to do is look at creating simple Geometry in AutoCAD. The first thing we're going to look at is object snaps, OSNAP, and object snap tracking, OTRACK, and we've got a drawing for you. It's called geometry.dwg. You can download it from the library to use it to follow along with the video. Now, what we're going to do is utilize OSNAP and OTRACK to create some lines on our drawing. So you can see that we've got a nice rectangle sitting there in the drawing. If I hover over it, the little tool tip will tell me it's a polyline and it's on the layer, objects. So let's have a look now and see how we can add some lines to the drawing, utilizing our object SNAPs and our object SNAP tracking. Now, they're down here on the status bar. There's object SNAP tracking which you just switch on and off and there's our object SNAPs there. If I click on the fly out, you can see that I've got these five go-to objects SNAPs as my running object SNAPS. I've got endpoint, midpoint, center, intersection, and extension. Any of the object SNAPs that I click on will get a little tick next to them and they will also become running objects then. I can got into object SNAP settings and bring up the dialogue box if I need to, set even more settings if I need to and then okay it. So, object SNAP tracking is on and object SNAP is on. I can utilize both of those. Please also ensure that your polar tracking is on and you want to make sure that it's set to a default of 90 degrees which is the default setting for polar tracking. Now, we're going to go to the home tab on the ribbon, into the draw panel and click on the line command. I'm going to come into the drawing area and the dynamic input is prompting me to specify the first point of my line. I'm going to utilize object SNAPs and object SNAP tracking to draw my line from the center of the rectangle to the right-hand side. So I'm going to hover over this midpoint SNAP here. Notice it appears. I'm not going to click on it. That's the object SNAP tracking point there. I'm then going to hover over this point, another midpoint, and I'm not going to click. That's another object SNAP tracking point. Now as I drag vertically downward, you'll see the polar tracking line kick in, but as I approach that other object SNAP tracking point, can you see it shows me the intersection between those two midpoints, object SNAP tracking points. When it appears, I left-click and now my line starts from the dead center of the rectangle. I'm now going to drag my line horizontally along the polar tracking line and you'll find that I get an intersection or possibly a midpoint SNAP here. It doesn't matter, either will work as long as you're on the zero degrees polar tracking. Left-click, enter to finish, and you've drawn a line using purely object SNAPs and object SNAP tracking. Now, obviously object SNAP tracking allows you to work with points that you track from and to. You can just use your object SNAPs on a regular basis if you want to as well. So, I can go back to the line command here or what I could do is hit the space bar or the enter key and that will repeat the last command that you used which is the line command. So, I'll just press the space bar and the line command is kicked in. Now I can just use object SNAPs now to draw the lines that I want. So I can go endpoint here. There's an endpoint SNAP. Left-click, coming down to this endpoint here. Left-click, coming down to this endpoint here, left-click. Now it may be that I didn't want that last line segment. So I can right-click and on the shortcut menu now, which is contextual you'll notice, I can undo the last line segment. So if I undo that, can you see it takes me back to the last point. Very useful if you've drawn a line segment that you don't need. So I'm going to go back to the endpoint again, repeat what I've just done and press enter to finish and there's my lines all drawn up quick and easy using object SNAPs. So that's how you can utilize object SNAP tracking, object SNAPs and a little bit of polar tracking to work with your AutoCAD drawings and generate the geometry you need.