If you had to type in coordinates every time you needed to enter a point, creating drawings would take a very long time. To make selecting points easier, AutoCAD® lets you select them with your mouse. In this lesson, you review a number of techniques that will let you select points quickly and accurately without having to enter coordinates at the keyboard.

Using Snap to Make Point Selection Easier

One way that AutoCAD can help make it easier to select points without typing is to ensure that you can?t select strange coordinates with your mouse like 3.3034853, 39438243. You can tell AutoCAD to control your cursor, which is the pointer that moves on screen when you move your mouse, so that you can only select points that lie a specified distance apart. For example, you can specify a snap of 2.0 units. This will tell AutoCAD that you want to be able to select coordinates like 2,2 or 4,6 using your mouse.

Follow the instructions below to set up a simple drawing and to configure grid and snap settings that will make selecting points with your mouse easier.

Starting a New Drawing

1. From the File menu, choose New.
2. Select Metric to indicate that you want to measure distances in metric units.
3. Choose OK to exit the Create New Drawing dialog box.

Using LIMITS to Define Your Drawing Area

1. From the Format menu, choose Drawing Limits. Drawing limits determine where grid dots appear in your drawing. Use the LIMITS command to specify the size of your work area.
2. Press ENTER to accept the default lower-left corner coordinates of 0,0.
3. Type 500,300 to specify that you want your drawing area and grid to extend from 0,0 to 500,300 in this drawing.

Setting Up Grid and Snap

1. From the Tools menu, choose Drawing Aids.
2. In the Snap area, type 10 in the X Spacing box and press ENTER to copy this value to the Y Spacing box. This value specifies that you want your cursor to move in increments of 10 units.
3. In the Snap area, select On so that the Snap will be active when you exit this dialog box.
4. In the Grid area, type 20 in the X Spacing box and press ENTER to copy this value to the Y Spacing box. The Grid will look like dots that fill the area defined by your limits. Although GRID doesn?t control your cursor or otherwise control point selection, it does make distances easy to judge by eye.
5. In the Grid area, select On so that the Grid will be active when you exit this dialog box. Remember, the grid will look like dots that fill your drawing limits.

   

6. Choose OK to exit this dialog box.
7. From the View Zoom menu, choose All to make your display show the limits of your drawing.

   

TIP:
You can turn Grid and Snap on and off by double-clicking on the toggles that appear in the active status bar found at the bottom of the AutoCAD window. You can also, if you prefer, press the F7 key to turn Grid on and off, and the F9 key to turn Snap on and off.

---

This is the first page of our tutorial. If you have logged into our site, you can see the rest of the tutorial pages by clicking here

If you do not have a userid or password, sign up for a Free Trial and you will get access to several hundred free tutorials.

To get access to more than 1000 tutorials just sign up for a low cost subscription at http://store.complete-support.com.

OpenCAD has been helping people learn AutoCAD, 3DS MAX & Autodesk VIZ since 1996. We deliver AutoCAD Training, 3DS MAX Training & Autodesk VIZ Training online, on CD & via download 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, worldwide.

If you encounter any difficulty, just email us. We are here to help.

---

---