AutoCAD: Tips & Tricks

- [Narrator] Welcome to another AutoCAD tip and trick. And what we're going to look at is how we create 2D regions in an AutoCAD drawing. Now if you're following along with the project series in my tips and tricks, this is the next one along and we're going to basically convert AutoCAD objects to regions in the premise that we're slowly going to work towards a 3D gasket with the holes in it and then create drawing dimensions, title block, communication of our design intent. That's the whole idea of all of this project series in the tips and tricks videos. If you're not following the series this is a standalone video on how to convert your AutoCAD objects to AutoCAD regions. The drawing you need to download from the library to follow along with this particular tips and tricks video is 224_PROJECT_Regions.dwg. You can see it there at the top of the screen. If you're following the series it's the next one along it's 224 the next subsequent numbered tips and tricks video. But as I said it's also standalone video about regions in AutoCAD. So what we're going to look at now is creating our AutoCAD objects first. So to do that, make sure that objects is your current drafting layer, in the layer dropdown. So select objects there, like so and there's our last panel home tab on the ribbon. Now, before we do anything else we need our construction lines. So click here and thaw out the construction lines there they are there. And you may recognize those. If you are following the tips and tricks project series. What we're going to do using the objects layer is create some AutoCAD objects that represent a 2D flat gasket in a plan view. And I'll explain this as we go more along in the tips and tricks video in the project series. If not and you're not following the series, it's basically going to show you how to generate some AutoCAD 2D objects and convert them into regions. So let's cram our objects first, quick and easy. Go to the drawer panel on the home tab, rectangle command first. Make sure that your object snaps are on. And I'm going to go from intersection here to intersection here on my construction lines like so. I'm going to go to the modified panel now and go to the filet command. There's filet there. And it says, select first object. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to right click and specify radius. That radius is going to be 30, 30 there, enter to confirm. Another right click on the shortcut menu now we're going to go to polyline. This is a lovely feature in the filet and also chamfer command. And what it allows you to do is select your polyline click like so, and it's done all the corners on the polyline for me, quick and easy, saves time having to do each corner. I can do all four corners in one click really really useful. Next step is I'm going to go to the offset command here offset command on the modified panel like so. I'm going to come in and specify an offset distance of 15 and enter to confirm, I'm then going to select my polyline like so, click and come inside your original polyline. You'll not just the original polyline is highlighted. That polyline, that isn't highlighted is the offset polyline click for directions inside, enter to confirm. We're now going to go to the circle command on the draw panel and click here like so. On the down arrow center radius. And we're going to come over here to the outside edge that midpoint there like so I'm going to zoom in and it's that one. Can you see that midpoint there? Drag outwards and the radius will be 15, and then enter like so. I'm just going to roll back on the wheel one click just so we can see all of our shapes. I'm now going to draw another circle. I'm going to go circle here like so, center radius again and use the sensor or the midpoint against, can you see I've got a sensor or a midpoint there like so. And then I'm going to draw a smaller circle radius of 7.5 and enter to confirm. Now here's the trick utilize your modify commands to save time. If I select both of these circles now just click on each like so and then do a right click and copy selection. If I utilize the center snap there and click and then just pop up here to midpoint on the outside edge, midpoint on the outside edge, midpoint on the outside edge, and enter to finish. I've copied those quickly and easily. It saves having to worry about typing in radii, pressing enter picking center points and so on. Three little clicks with the copy selection, quick and easy. So you can see now that we've got our objects that represent our 2D gasket. So what I can do now is go to the layer drop down here, like so and I'm going to freeze the construction layer by clicking on the sun icon there. Just gives us a little bit more clarity and then hit escape to lose the layer dropdown menu. So I'm back in the drawing area and you see our gasket is pretty clear now, you can see that the circles represent the holes where the bolts go through the gasket and that offset polyline with the curved corners, represents the hole in the gasket where the machinery goes through. Now we need to convert these to regions. Now just before we do that let's utilize the AutoCAD info bar see where it says type a keyword or phrase there like so I'm going to type in there regions because I want to know what a region is. So I press enter and it brings up the AutoCAD online help. Now you need an internet connection for that. I hasten to add you can download the offline help but it's always good to use the online help, 'cause it's the most up-to-date. Autodesk update this all the time. And we're going to pop down here to the region command URL there just click on it and it'll open up the page. So it now tells me all about the region command it converts objects that enclose an area into a 2D region object. They can be created from closed planar loops. What does that mean? Closed planar loops. It means that every loop that creates a region is co-planar and they will all be co-planar in this case because we're utilizing a default Z value of zero because we're creating a flat 2D drawing. We're not working with the Z values at all. We're not in 3D. We're in a flat 2D drawing at the moment. And the valid objects include polylines lines circular arcs, circles, ellipses, and splines. So that's really useful because all of these objects as long as they're co-planar and all have the same, either X, Y, or Z value depending on which dimension you're working in 2D or 3D. It means that you can convert them into separate regions. Now there's another really cool system variable as well. It's called a DELOBJ delete object. Now it deletes the original objects after converting into a region, unless that D-E-L-O-B-J is set to zero. So we're going to set that to zero just before we create our regions. And you'll see why I'm going to do that. So if the original objects were hatched hatch associativity is lost you will need to rehatch, but you'll notice you can combine into complex regions using union, subtract, or intersect. And if you follow along with subsequent tips and tricks I'll show you how to do that. At the moment we're just converting into regions. So what I'm going to do now is close the online help and up here, just delete the word regions as well. That's always a good thing to do. And then come back into the drawing area here because then it prompts you to type a keyword or phrase as you can see. And it's always there because if it's blank you might not think, Oh, I need to go up there to check something or look something up. If it's there saying type of keyword or phrase it's a nice little visual indicator to remind you that the help is there if you need it. So we go to DELOBJ like so, there it is there press enter. And the value at the moment is three. I'm going to set that to zero and press enter again like so. Now what we're going to do is create regions from all of these objects. We're then going to switch on selection cycling and see what happens in AutoCAD, it's really clever. So we've done the DELOBJ that's set to zero. We now go and find our region command it's over here on the draw panel. Just expand it and pin it open there's region right there. You can just type region and press enter if you want to. And you'll recognize those graphics there from the online help. So to click on region. I want to select all of my objects. I'm just going to do a window selection and get everything like that and press enter to confirm. See this 10 found on the command line when I press enter it says 10 loops extracted 10 regions created. Now my selection cycling is available down here on the status bar. So I'm going to come down here to customization and selection filtering is right there and you've got selection cycling as well. Make sure you select selection cycling, not selection filtering. Easy mistake to make you want selection cycling. And it's got this funny little green icon here. Can you see that there? So click on the little customize icon to this menu and then switch on selection cycling like so. Now, if I hover over any of these now it tells me there's two objects there. Can you see? So if I click, I've got a region or a polyline so there's two objects there now that's because I used that DELOBJ variable. I set it to zero. So my original polyline is actually still there with the region on top of it. Let's just hit escape a couple of times. Let's go do a circle here now. If I click on that, can you see I've got the two little squares. There's a region there and a circle there. So if you want to keep your original objects when you're converting to regions, you need to set that DELOBJ to zero. Really important that you do that so that you keep the original objects. So what I could do now here is possibly use something like quick select. It's got a quick select here on the utilities panel on the home tab, entire drawing and I'm going to go regions like so. And I want to select all the regions and there on the layer objects. So operator, and I'll set that to objects. So it's going to select now all of the regions that are on the layer objects. When I click on okay, there they are there. If I do a right click now and a move and just pick a sensible point like a center there and just pan across slightly. You'll see now, as I come across and click there I've got two sets of objects that look exactly the same. They're not exactly the same. If I hover here, hang on a minute. That's a region, not a circle, but if I hover over here that is the original circle that are created the region from. So what I've got there now it's two sets of objects that look exactly the same but the objects on the right are regions the objects on the left are my original AutoCAD objects. So they don't actually look any different. But the thing is the regions are now tied into that flat co-planar region. So they're all sent at that Z value of zero basically in this case 'cause it's the default when you work in 2D. So the region command allows you to create those objects. And the DELOBJ variable allows you to retain your original AutoCAD objects when you convert them into regions.