From the course: AutoCAD 2023 Essential Training

OSNAP and OTRACK - AutoCAD Tutorial

From the course: AutoCAD 2023 Essential Training

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OSNAP and OTRACK

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- [Instructor] We're starting a new chapter and we're going to start looking at creating simple geometry in AutoCAD. And we're going to look at some of the basics first and go through some basic methodologies that you'd use. Now, the first thing we're going to look at once you open up the drawing is we're going to look at the fact that one it's a floor plan. You can see the furniture, the dimension the grid lines, et cetera. We're going to look at working with object snaps and also object snap tracking. Object snaps are known as OSNAP, object snap tracking is known as OTRACK. And they're set up on your status bar on the bottom right of your AutoCAD application window. It's these two icons here. So there's our object snap tracking which is On, and there's my object snaps there which are also On. Now, when you are working with both of these, ideally you want a sort of optimum number of object snaps on automatically, then known as you are running object snaps. So what I can do here is I can click here on this arrow, and you can see that I've got five running object snaps, Endpoint, Midpoint, Center, Intersection, and Extension. And you can click on them and turn them on and off like that. So when they've got the tick they're On, when they haven't got the tick they're off. So make sure that you've got Endpoint, Midpoint, Center, Intersection and Extension ticked. They will be your optimum running object snaps. Don't switch them all on it will drive you slightly crazy because AutoCAD will try and snap to absolutely every single object snap when you're drafting. Just click on the little arrow down on the status bar, again, to close that particular menu. Like I said, make sure that your object snap tracking is also On, it should be blue as well. And what we'll also use a little bit of is our polar tracking here. So we'll cover polar tracking as well in a moment but just make sure that polar tracking is On and click on the little arrow there on the fly out menu and make sure that is set to 90 degrees for the moment. So what we're going to do, we're going to zoom in on an area of the drawing, and we're going to create a small rectangular table. So we've got this nice big kind of reception atrium in the floor plan in this area here. So I'm going to zoom into this particular area where the two circular tables are, so let's get in there a little bit like that. There we go. And what we're also going to do is make sure that we can see what we're doing. So when we zoom in, get to a point where you can see everything that you need to see in the drawing. So I'm in the area where I'm going to be working in, I can see the detail a lot more clearly now by zooming in and out. Now you'll notice we're on this layer here in the layer dropdown A 700 MFFE. That is your furniture layer. So just make sure you're on that layer so that when you draw things on the right layer first time, always try and get on the right layer first time, it's a lot easier. Okay, so we're going to go over to the Draw panel here. And in the top right corner, there's a little fly out menu there and select Rectangle. We will cover rectangles in more detail later. We're going to click on rectangle there and come into the drawing area here. Now, the reason I'm getting you to draw a rectangle is we're then going to use the object snaps, and the object snap tracking to create some elements within that rectangle. So just pick a corner point inside this area somewhere, I'm going to go down here towards the bottom left. I'm going to click once drag upwards to the right and you'll see each side of the rectangle appear and also the length of each side of the rectangle. So horizontal edge where it's blue there, we're going to type in 3500 and you can see that we're working in metric millimeters again. Now, if you're working in feet and inches obviously, that would be a different measurement entirely. But all I'm doing here is just using units to represent a table in a drawing. Doesn't matter what units they are at the moment because we're representing a workflow. The workflow would be exactly the same if we were using imperial measurements such as feet and inches, it's just a different unit of measurement. So I've got 3,500 there, press the Tab key on the keyboard, and that'll tab you to the other side of the rectangle where we're going to put in 2000 like that. And then press the Tab key again, and you can see both of the dimensions are locking with the little padlocks, and then it's just a case of pressing Enter. There's our rectangle with those sizes. So now we've got that up and running like so what we can do now is zoom in a little bit more if we need to. So I'm going to go in one more notch, so I can see my rectangle like that. You start to see things in a lot more detail such as your grid lines, there's your columns there, some door detailing and so on. Now what we're going to do, we're going to use OSNAP and OTRACK to place an object in the center of our rectangle. Now, the first way that you would do it is basically the way that a lot of people do it. And it takes a little bit longer than other methods that I could show you. So I'm going to use the sort of old fashioned way first. I'm going to draw a line from one diagonal corner to the other. So line command here on the Draw panel, hover over the endpoint snap there, left click. Hover over the endpoint snap there, left click. Enter to finish, and there's our diagonal line. So now I can go over to the Draw panel again, click on the fly out for circle there and select center radius. And then I'm going to come down to the midpoint snap on the line when it appears, left click. And as I drag out, which you can see I'm forming a circle which might be a circular inset in this particular table. You can see it's asking for a radius there just type in 650 as the radius and press Enter. So that's drawn our circle. So what we would then have to do is select the line, right click, erase on the shortcut menu. That's one way of placing the circle. There is another way of placing the circle as well using what they call object snap tracking and a bit of polar tracking as well. I'm going to select the circle now by clicking on it, right click and it raise on the shortcut menu again. So let's do that now without the diagonal line, let's jump over to the circle command again. So there we go, circle there and center radius. Come into the drawing area, and this time to specify the center point for the circle, I'm going to hover over this midpoint here on the top edge. I'm then going to hover over this midpoint here on the vertical edge. As I come in, you'll see the polar tracking kicks in but I also get an intersection with the other midpoint that I selected. Now, I didn't actually click on those, what I did was I hovered over them, and that's where object snap tracking kicks in. Because object snap tracking is now going, hey you've got two midpoints that intersect. Left click, there's the center of your circle, type in the 650 again and press Enter for the radius. That's exactly the same circle, same size, but without that diagonal line method. So that is with object snap tracking and a bit of polar tracking in there as well. What if I told you there's one more method as well using object snaps. I'm going to select the circle again, right click and I'm going to erase the circle. Now, what you can do with AutoCAD is I can just right click and I can go to Recent Input and select CIRCLE. I don't have to keep going up to the ribbon all the time. So there's circle there. I click on circle, it's prompting me for the center point of the circle again. Now I don't have a certain snap switched on in my object snaps on the status bar. And there's a snap that I can use called geometric center, and it'll find the exact center of any closed boundary like a rectangle. So if I hold down the Shift key on the keyboard and then right click on the mouse it brings up my override snaps also known as snap overrides. So if I go to geometric center and click on it, touch on the edge of the rectangle there's the geometric center, left click and again my circle can be placed using the 650 radius and ends to finish. So you can see there three different ways of placing that circle using object snaps, using object snaps, and object snap tracking, and then using snap overrides as well. So there's all different ways of placing the same object, but different workflows, different methods. Snap overrides is obviously the quickest because it's a one stop shop, you're picking one snap, off your snap overrides menu. But potentially you might want to use object snap tracking or if you're old school, you might draw the diagonal line and use the midpoint on the diagonal line. Try out each method, find out what's good for you and stick with what you're happy with.

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