OSNAP and OTRACK - AutoCAD Tutorial

- [Instructor] We're starting a new chapter now where we're going to be taking a look at creating some simple geometry in an AutoCAD drawing. For that reason we've got a nice easy drawing for you to use. It's called geometry.dwg and you can download it from the library to follow along with the videos. In this particular chapter, it does look remarkably similar to other drawings we've used in previous chapters. That's because it is, but it's got a different file name. So make sure you download geometry.dwg for this particular chapter. Now the drawing itself is a simple floor plan with some furniture, some grids some walls, doors, et cetera. And what we're going to be taking a look at in this particular video is how we utilize AutoCAD's object snaps or the OSNAP function and also AutoCAD's object snap tracking known as O Track. Now both of those functions are on the status bar in the bottom right corner of your AutoCAD application window. So if we come down to the status bar there you can see is O track object snap tracking, sometimes known as auto snap. You'll notice there. And there's our object snaps there, our osnap. Now click on the little fly arrow to the right of the object snap icon on the status bar. And you want to make sure that you've got endpoint midpoint center, intersection, and extension ticked. If none of these are ticked, you simply click on them. Notice I've clicked on midpoint there, it switched it off. So if it looks like that without a tick you click on it again, little tick appears it's switched on. So those five need to be on. And then come down to the little fly out arrow again click on it again and you've got your snaps switched on. Make sure also that they are blue. So at the moment osnap is on because it's blue. If I click on it, it goes gray, it's off. If I click on it again, it's blue, it's on. Same with your object snap tracking here, now known as object snap. It's also known as O track. So if I click on that, that turns it off, click on that turns it on. Now for the purposes of our drawing that we're going to be working on, you also need to check on a couple of other icons on the status bar. You're going to check on polar tracking here make sure that is also on and it's blue. Click on the little fly arrow there and make sure it's set to 45 degree angle increments. And also down here you will have switched this on earlier with the customization of the status bar. Make sure that dyn mode dynamic input is on as well. It should be on by default anyway, but like I said I always switch the icon on on the status bar as well to make sure that I can see it's actually on. It's highlighted in blue, it's on, now, like I said we're going to be looking at osnap and otrack, which is now sometimes known as auto snap as well. I'm going to zoom in on this little area here of the drawing. So get the crosshair about there in that space where the two little tables with the four chairs are. I'm going to get the crosshair there and roll up on the wheel of the mouse. That will zoom me in. And then I'm going to hold down the wheel of the mouse and a little hand appears, move the mouse upwards. That's panning like that. Release the mouse wheel and you can see there that you've zoomed into that particular area. Now we're going to start drawing some things in this particular area of the drawing. Now, before we do that, always try and remember to be on the right layer. Put the objects on the right layer. So home tab on the ribbon layers panel here you'll notice I'm using the A 700 MFFE layer. Make sure you're on the same layer as me. Should be an orangey kind of color. Now the first bit of geometry we're going to draw is a rectangle, a very simple rectangle. And we're going to utilize our dynamic input to create it. So that's this one here. So that's why we're making sure that dynamic input is on there like so. I'm going to go up to the draw panel on the home, tab on the ribbon and go into the top right corner of the panel. Click on the fly out here and select rectangle. Now when I come into the drawing area can you see the crosshair is prompting me for the first corner point. Also, the command line at the bottom of the screen is prompting me. Now the reason I've got the prompt next to the crosshair is because the dynamic input is switched on another part of the AutoCAD interface that makes your life that little bit easier. Now the first corner point I'm going to pick is going to be about there. So it doesn't have to be exact. Just left click once on the mouse and drag upwards to the right. Can you see the direction? I'm taking the crosshair. And as I do that, my dynamic input is asking me for the other corner point of my rectangle. But the other benefit I've got here is the dynamic input is showing me the length of the sides of the rectangle as well. So the good thing is where that three double five two is highlighted in blue. If I now type 2500, can you see the dynamic input picks that up. If I now press the tab key on my keyboard tab key is the one with the right hand facing arrow. You'll see there that it locks that 2,500 in place. And takes me to the other vertical dimension of the rectangle. I'm going to type in 1500 there and press the tab key again. So can you see now that I've kind of locked in the two sides of my rectangle, so 2,500 in length, 1500 in width. Now I'm working in metric millimeters in this drawing 'cause I'm from the UK. So if you were working in inches, you'd type in the distances in inches for example. Or if you were working in meters, you'd type in the distance in meters, et cetera, et cetera. Now, because they're both set up nicely now, 2,500 and 1500 I can just press enter to confirm that. And there's my rectangle to the right side. So that's utilizing my dynamic input, which is one of the ones that we've got down here on the status bar. Now that doesn't actually apply to our object snaps or our auto snap our object snap tracking. So I'm going to zoom in. Now on the table itself that I've created that's a table by the way. The little rectangle represents a table. Zoom in by getting the crosshair in the center of it. Roll up a couple of notches on the wheel. Again, hold down the wheel pan a little to get it central and then release the wheel. Now as you can see I've got a rectangle there with four corners. This is where my object snaps come in. So I'm now going to pop over here to the draw panel again and click on the line command. And then when I hover over this corner I notice the dynamic input is prompting me for the first point of the line. But if I hover there can you see I get an endpoint object snap. That's because my object snaps are switched on with those five object snaps ticked that I told you about earlier, endpoint, midpoint, center, et cetera. So I can now left click and I can draw exactly from that endpoint with my line. If I come up to this end point and hover as soon as the endpoint appears like that, can you see there? There's the endpoint, left click again, and it's placed exactly on the end point the other corner of the rectangle. Now you can keep doing this ad nauseum. As you can see I can keep drawing lines to my heart's content. I don't want to, I can either press enter on the keyboard to close the line command or I can right click and select enter on the shortcut menu. There we go. So there's my line there like that. Now I can use the midpoint on that line to draw the circular inlay for this table. So what I'm going to do now is go back up to the draw panel here, click on the flyout for circle and select center radius. By clicking on it, it'll now prompt me for the center point of my circle. Hover over the midpoint of the diagonal line. There's the midpoint snap left click. So the center of the circle is now placed. It'll prompt you for the radius of the circle. I'm going to say 650 like that. And just press enter, type in 650 and press enter. And there's my circle like so I can then delete the diagonal line by clicking on it right clicking and erase. So there's my circular inlay in my rectangular table. Now wouldn't it be lovely if I could go through that process without having to draw that extra line and then delete it? So let's delete the circle, same process as the line. Get the little crosshair there, click on the circle like that, and it'll select. And again, it's a right click and erase. So we're back to just our rectangular table. Now remember we've got our object snap tracking switched on here. Our auto snap as it's called, this is really clever but you've got to remember when to click back up to the circle command center radius. So I'll click on center radius and come into the drawing area. Now, I don't have a midpoint of a diagonal line this time, but what I do have is midpoint of the sides of the rectangle. So if I now hover over that one there can you see the midpoint appears And it looks like a little cross inside the triangle that represents the midpoint that is actually known as a blip. So as I come away can you see there's a little green cross there? If I now hover over this midpoint here a little cross appears again and as I move away, there's another cross there. Now the polar tracking kicks in. That's the green dashed line. And as I move along that polar tracking line can you see the two points that I've hovered over are not clicked on intersect. So I've now got polar tracking intersecting lines. If I left click now can you see it uses the intersection of those two midpoints that I hovered over as the center point of the circle. So I type in my radius of 650, press enter to confirm and there's my nice rectangular table with a circular inset no line needed with that midpoint. What we've done there is we've kind of used a bit of polar tracking, a bit of dynamic input. We've used our auto snap, our object snap tracking and we've used our object snaps as well. So all of these are fundamental to creating simple geometry in your AutoCAD drawings.