From the course: AutoCAD 2015 Essential Training

Arraying objects

From the course: AutoCAD 2015 Essential Training

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Arraying objects

In this video, I'll discuss the array command and its variations. Open the array sample file to follow along. There are three different array tools here on this fly out menu. Let's start with Rectangular Array. Zoom in to this desk. You have a Select Objects prompt. Select the chair. And press Enter. You might need to zoom out to see what's happened. A default array has been generated. Notice that there's a green line around this whole tab. This is a temporary tab. It only exists while you're creating the array. We can set a number of columns, and a number of rows. In this case I just want to have three chairs along the edge of the desk. So, I need to have three columns. Highlight the value here and change it to three. Press the Tab key. To have it take effect. Sometimes it takes a couple of seconds before it updates. The number of rows should be one, so type one and press tab. You can set the distance between the columns here. So right now it's at three foot and one half inch. I'll change that to two foot six by typing two apostrophe six. Press tab to have that take effect. That's a bit tight I'll like it to be more or less centered on that edge of the table. I could keep entering values here, or I could enter a total distance. Let's try that. 5'6 > Tab. Now that's a bit too much. There's a little less space here, as compared to the space over here. Now we could keep playing this game with numbers, or we could do it graphically. I prefer the graphic method because we can just click this grip, and move these objects over until it look just about right and then click again. This last grip over here sets the number of columns. Go like this, and add more chairs. All with the same spacing. Now, it's very important up here, that you choose whether you want this array to be associative or not. If it's not associative, when you close the array, you'll just have three independent chair objects. You won't have the ability to come back in the future and edit the array as an array. So I recommend that you do select associative because it gives you more options. I'll click close array. And it's done. Now position the cursor over one of these chairs and you'll see that it's all one thing. It's an array. If I click on that I can then go back here and edit these values. Close array. Now let's say I want to have a room of these training desks, so we can make an array of the array. Go up here and choose rectangular array again. And this time select the array and the table. I'll make an enclosing window to select all of those objects. And then press enter to exit out of select objects mode. Here we have another default array. Now I don't want this to go up, I want it to go down. And so, these are the rows. To do this, I will highlight this value, and use the arrow keys to move the cursor to the beginning of this area here. And type, minus. So we have a negative value between the rows. Then press the tab key. That flips the array down. I'll use this grip to change the number of columns and rows. So we have a two by two array. And I can use this grip to increase the number of rows. Or this grip to increase the number of columns. This grip is probably the most useful, because it allows you to graphically set the distance between the desks. Of course you can do that with numbers, right here. If you prefer. I'll leave this as an associative array, and then close it. If I want to go back in, I can just click on any part of that array and make some changes. However I no longer have access to the chair array within this array, this nested chair array. If I wanted to change that. I could but I'd have to explode this over arching array. I can click this explode button. Select the array object and press enter. That blows away that data structure. And now I have individual, objects here. So here I have access to this array, and I can change, say the number of columns To one, and close that. So I could have sort of a one off training desk with just one chair at it. So there are also two different kinds of arrays beyond the rectangular array that you can create. You can make a polar array that goes around a circle and an array that goes along a path. Let's try those. Go to polar array, select the chair. And press enter. It asks you to specify the center point of the array. And for this I need to use object snap so I can snap to the center of the circle. Hold down shift and right click and choose center. And then click at the center of the circle. The default polar array appears. You can set its parameters. Appear. Let's say I want eight chairs. Type eight tab. I'll close the array, and it is associative so I can click on it in the future and I can make changes to it if I want. Let's close that. Now over here let's make a path array. Open up the fly out choose path array. Select the chair, right click or enter. Now it says select path curve, that will be this spline. Now here we have. A choice about whether we want to align the items to the path or not. I'll turn that off, and everything retains it's original orientation. You can set the distance between the items here, let's say we want three feet between each chair. Three foot, press tab. There's a little bit more spacing there. I want to make sure that this says Associative so I retain the functionality of the array. If this is off and I close it, then I just have individual chairs that are not connected to each other in any way. But while it's associative I can close the array. And then come back later, at some future date, and make a change to it. Let's say I want to specify the number of items. I'll click here and say I want to have seven, tab, close the array. Another nice feature is, because this is associated with the spline path, I can select the spline and alter its shape using the grips. And when I do that all the objects go along for the ride and they stay connected to that path. I can then also go back and change this, and click here on item count to have AutoCAD automatically calculate the number that is needed to maintain this distance that is between. Maybe I"ll also choose to align the objects. That does not look so great. Let's go back and specify maybe eight items and then close the array. So there you have it, all the different ways you can array objects in AutoCAD. In the next video you'll learn about the offset and mirror commands.

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