From the course: AutoCAD 2024 Essential Training

OSNAP and AUTOSNAP - AutoCAD Tutorial

From the course: AutoCAD 2024 Essential Training

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OSNAP and AUTOSNAP

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- [Instructor] We're starting a new chapter now where we're going to take a look at utilizing some of the tools in AutoCAD to create objects accurately. Now, we've got a drawing that you may recognize for you. It's Ground Floor Plan.dwg, so GND for ground and then Floor Plan.dwg. You can download this particular version of this file from the library to follow along with the videos in the chapter. Now, as I said, we're going to be looking at drawing objects accurately. So we're going to be utilizing things like object snaps and object snap tracking. And what they consist of is settings in your drafting settings on the status bar. So make sure you've got the drawing open, and then we're going to pop down here to the status bar. So ideally, you want these three icons switched on. There's polar tracking, there's your object snap tracking or auto snap as it's now known. And there you've got your object snaps as well. Now, the most important bit when you're using object snaps and object snap tracking is you need to have the appropriate object snap switched on. So down here on the little fly out arrow, click here and just make sure that you've got these five object snaps running. They are known as your running object snaps. So your endpoint, midpoint, center, intersection, and extension. They're my five go-to object snaps that I normally use. Sometimes, by default, midpoint is not switched on. So if it looks like that, just click on midpoint, little tick appears next to it. And then click on the fly out arrow like so. Make sure that your auto snap is on, this one here, object snap tracking. And then here you've got your polar tracking. Just click on the fly-out there and just make sure you are using the 90-degree increments. It should be ticked anyway, but if it isn't, just click on it to make sure it's ticked. When you click on it, the menu will disappear back into the status bar. Now, once you've got that all up and running, what you need to do is zoom into this area here. So hopefully by now, you've mastered zoom and panning and so on but we've got a space here. Can you see the two small circular tables? We're zooming into that area there between the grid lines. So get that space nice and central on the screen. Now, what we're going to do is make sure that we're on the right layer for furniture. So we're going to come up here and on the layer dropdown, layers panel, home tab on the ribbon, click on the fly-out here. I want you to be using this layer here, A 700 M_FFE. That's your furniture layer in this particular drawing. Now obviously, it's got a bit of a weird name. That's because it's using standardization. So that layer, instead of saying furniture, it's following a particular standard naming philosophy. So don't worry about the name of the layer too much. Now, we're going to go to the draw panel up here. So there's the draw panel on the home tab on the ribbon and we're going to come up here, click on this little fly out here and select Rectangle. Come into the drawing area. And I don't mind where you place this in this space. I'm not worried about the first click, the first coordinate. I'm going to come down sort of towards the bottom left-ish, there like that and left click. And then I'm going to drag the mouse upwards, diagonally to the right. Can you see the crosshair moving? So take the crosshair sort of upwards and diagonally to the right and you'll see the dimensions of your rectangle there. Now, we're going to use a bit of direct distance entry. So horizontally, it's going to be 3,500. Press the Tab key and then vertically, we're going to have 2,000, 2, one, two, three zeros and press the tab key again. And you can see we've got a rectangle now that is 3,500 by 2,000 millimeters. Now, bear in mind, this drawing is in metric millimeters. That's my go-to unit when I'm working over here in the UK. You might be using feet and inches if you're US based and so on. So obviously, utilize the dimensions that you're using accordingly. I'm working with metric millimeters in this particular drawing though, so just be aware of that. Once you've placed those two and you've tabbed each of those direct distance entry distances, just press the left click left-hand mouse button. That'll place your rectangle like so. You can also press enter there if you want to. I always use the left click. That's just my personal preference but you can just press enter and that will obviously close the rectangle command and put the rectangle at the right sizes that you specified. So let's get into object snap and object snap tracking. I'm going to zoom in on my table a bit so that you can see what we're doing. Now, I want to place a circular insert in my rectangular table. Now, there's two ways of doing this. One, you use your object snap tracking, your auto snap. Two, you don't use your object snap tracking auto snap. I'm going to show you the second one first 'cause it takes longer. It's more clicks and it's just a little bit unwieldy. So then we'll go to the object snap tracking and you'll see how object snap tracking can save you a lot of time. I'm going to go up to the line command on the draw panel. Click on the line command and using object snaps now, because they're switched on, I'm going to come down here. I'll get an endpoint snap on the corner, left click, drag my line to the opposing diagonal corner there, get the endpoint snap, left click. When you're happy with that, just press enter to finish. You've drawn a diagonal line. Now, one of the mathematical rules of a rectangle is if you've got a 90-degree corner rectangle like we have, each of the corners is at 90 degrees, and the lines are obviously perpendicular to each other, that diagonal, the midpoint of that diagonal is the dead center of the rectangle. It's the geometric center. Now, there's ways and means of doing this and using object snaps. Now, I'm going to show you two ways first and then I'm going to show you a third way, which will actually probably blow your mind a little bit and you probably didn't know it existed in AutoCAD but that's one of the little tips and tricks that I'll show you in a minute. So we've got our diagonal there. So I now go up to the circle command on the draw panel, center radius, just select the default center radius there and when you hover over the diagonal, there's your midpoint snap there. That's why I wanted you to have the midpoint snap switched on. So left click, drag your circle outwards and we'll give that a radius of say 800. Press enter to confirm. There's your circular insert on your table. So what you would do now is your sacrificial diagonal here. You would select it, right click and on the shortcut menu, just click on erase. So that erases it like so. So that's one way of placing your circular insert in your table. Let's do another way. Let's delete the circle. Just click on the edge of the circle, right click and erase on the shortcut menu. Now, you'll remember, I got you to switch on down here object snap tracking auto snap. And make sure that your polar tracking, like I said, is set to that 90 degrees. What I can do now is I can go back to the circle command here, center radius again but I don't have a diagonal to work with. But what I do have are my midpoint snaps. So I hover there. So just hover over that midpoint, don't click on it. Otherwise you'll place the center of the circle there and then come up to the midpoint on this one, the horizontal like so. Again, don't click on it. Just come down a little bit and as you come down, you'll get an intersection of those two midpoints that is utilizing the polar tracking. So what you're utilizing there is your object snap tracking, your auto snap and your polar tracking at the same time. And as you can see, left click, drag the circle out, 800 radius again, press enter. Now, that saves a huge amount of time. No sacrificial diagonal line whatsoever needed. Now, that is normally my preferred way of utilizing object snaps and object snap tracking is you can hover over, don't click on the points and find the intersection like we've just done. What I'd like you to do now is utilize just one object snap to place your circle. So we're going to select the circle, right click and erase like so. Now, this kind of defeats the object of the object snap and the object snap tracking but it is an object snap that is incredibly useful and just doesn't get used much. It's called geometric center. So this time, I'm going to show you with your object snaps how to use what is called snap overrides. So we come up to the circle command, click on the fly-out again, center radius. Now, we need the radius obviously of the circle but we need the center point first. Otherwise we can't specify radius from that center point, right? So we've got a closed rectangle. It's known as a closed polyline. Now, if I told you that all you've got to do is hold down the Shift key, right click on the mouse and on that shortcut menu, this is known as your snap override shortcut menu, there's geometric center, click on it and then just touch on the edge of the rectangle. There's the geometric center. Click once and there you go. Geometric center of your rectangle, type in 800 for your circle radius. Boom. Look at that. That's how quick and easy it is to use your object snaps with certain types of geometry in AutoCAD. So if you've got a closed geometric shape like a rectangle or perhaps a hexagon or something like that, use that geometric center object snap to place something dead center of the closed geometric shape. Now, if it's not closed and perhaps you're just using some geometry in your drawing, you then want to use your object snap tracking, the auto snap where you hover over certain points, move in a particular direction. You'll see the intersection of those points, and you can place more geometry. But don't use the first method, the sacrificial method. You don't need to draw all those construction lines. You should be using your object snaps, your object snap tracking, and more importantly, some of those lesser used object snaps, such as geometric center.

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