OSNAP and OTRACK - AutoCAD Tutorial

- [Instructor] We're starting a new chapter now and we're going to take a look at drawing some simple geometry in your AutoCAD drawing. For that reason, we've got a new drawing for you. It's called geometry.dwg. No surprise there. And you can download it from the library. It's a follow along with some of the videos in this particular chapter. Now we've got the same drawing that we've used before. It's just got a different photo name and we are in the model tab down here, bottom left corner. Make sure you're in the model tab so that we're looking at our floor plan. Now, when we work with geometry in AutoCAD, there are certain settings that you need to make sure are functioning otherwise you're drawing can become very inaccurate very very quickly. So two of those settings are your Osnaps, your object snaps, and Otrack your object snap tracking. Now these are normally on by default in your status bar. Let me show you where they are. They're right down here. There's Osnap, and there's Otrack, like so. It's called AutoSnap now, it used to be called Otrack, it's object snap tracking. And you see it's called AutoSnap and you can use the F11 key to switch it off and on if you wish. Now, the benefit you have with these is it allows you to snap accurately to different parts of the geometry in your AutoCAD drawings. Now, what we're going to do is we're going to zoom into this little area here, like so. I've just highlighted that deliberately using the window selection, I won't select anything, but I'm just going to hit escape there just to show you exactly where we're going. Now, all you've got to do is put your cross here in that space and roll up on the wheel of the mouse, and you'll zoom in. We'll talk about zooming in a little while. Now, all I want to do here is I want to put a table in this area. And the table is going to have a circular inlay in the table as well. Now see other bits of furniture on this sort of orangy browny layer. What I've done in the layers here, you'll notice when you open up the drawing, is you're already on the appropriate layer to place the furniture. Which is A700MHFFE. That's the layer that all the furniture is on. Now we're going to draw a simple rectangle utilizing just a free hand method, okay? So I'm going to do that first then we're going to look at Osnap, then we're going to look at Otrack. So we go to the home tab on the ribbon, draw panel, and there's our rectangle command there. If it's not there, click on the fly out. And you've got a choice of rectangle or polygon. Select rectangle. We're going to come into the drawing area here. And I'm going to pick a corner point about there, and left-click. And as I drag upwards, can you see? To the right, I'm actually getting a rectangle. Now we need to specify the size of our rectangle. So you see there horizontally it's 3479. That's millimeters in this particular case. So I'm going to type 3500 in there. Then I'm going to press the tab key on the keyboard. And we're going to make sure that that distance there is 1750, like so. When you press enter to confirm, that we'll place your rectangle like so. Now you will notice that that is a bilayer layer, if you get my meaning. Can you see there on the properties? Now, what we need to do is make that a continuous line. So select the rectangle, just pop up to properties here, and you can change that to continuous. Just change the properties there to continuous. I'm not going to worry too much about properties and things. You can dive into that more deeply in some of the other AutoCAD courses in the library. I'm just doing that for clarity at the moment. So all I've done is I've given that an individual property there of a continuous line type. Just hit escape to de-select it, and you'll see those blue grips disappear. So there's our table. Now we need to be able to snap to the corners of our table. If you want to zoom in a bit closer, put the cross out over the table, roll up a notch on the wheel like that, gets you in a bit closer. Now, Osnap and Otrack or AutoSnap as it's known now, how do they work? Well, let's go down and look at Osnap first. Now there's the icon. It's blue indicating the object snap is on. If I click on it again, it's off. And you can see, Osnap off appear on the command line. If I click on it again, Osnap on. We need it on. And if you click on the fly out arrow here, there's all our different objects snaps. Now the ones that are ticked here at the moment are our running object snaps. So they'll always appear when we're drafting an AutoCAD. Now, ideally you should have endpoint ticked, midpoint ticked, center ticked. Node, you don't actually need. I've obviously left that on by mistake. So if I click on it, the tick disappears. So it's now switched off. It's not a running object snap anymore. And also you want intersection and extension. Those are the five go-to object snaps that I normally leave switched on. So I come down to the arrow here, like so, click there and you can see obviously that that loses the menu. Now I can, if I want to click here and go to object snap settings, or if I click on the triangle and just right click over the icon, it does the same thing. So objects snap settings, and you'll see there that I can switch those on and off there in the dialog box if I want to using the object snap tab. Now you'll notice there that object snaps is on which is this icon here. Object snap tracking is on, which is this icon here. Now object snap tracking is just an on and off toggle because it uses the snap settings that you've got in your object snaps. So I'll just okay that making sure everything is as it should be. Now, here's the lovely trick with the object snaps. So I'm going to do something so simple now. All I'm going to do is I'm going to go over here to the line command, in the drawer panel again on the home tab, line. And I'm going to go from that end point snap, it's one of my running object snaps, it's switched on. And it will highlight that. So when I left click, it goes exactly to that end point, you'll notice. So I come down here, endpoint there, click and then enter to finish line command, job done. I've drawn some geometry now very quick and easy utilizing my object snaps. Now let's have a little look at object snap tracking. Now I need to get to the midpoint of that diagonal line. Now I could just draw another line over there. And because my midpoint snap is one of my running objects snaps, it'll appear like that as you can see. But you notice that there's a little green cross there. That is known as a blip in AutoCAD terminology. And that's your object snap tracking picking up on the fact that you just hovered over an object snap which is why object snap tracking is switched on. Let me show you something really neat. I'll just hit escape a couple of times to cancel the line command. Now I don't need to go exactly to that midpoint. Now again, I can for speed obviously cause midpoint is switched on. But just let me show you something kind of cool now. Let's delete the line. Select the line and just hit delete on the keyboard. Now let's say I want the exact center of that rectangle to draw a circle, to show the inlay. All I've got to do now is go up to the circle command, again on the drawer panel, and I'm going to select center radius. Now, as soon as I do that, it says specify center point for circle. If I hover over that midpoint there, don't click on it. If I hover over that midpoint there, again, don't click on it. As I come down, it snaps to the intersection of those two midpoints. Because I've hovered over each of those midpoints on the lines there of the rectangle, I'm now getting an object snap tracking point which is exactly in the middle of the rectangle. So I click that's the center of my circle showing the inlay. So I'll just come out a little bit now. Let's give that a 500 millimeter radius by typing in the box there, press enter to confirm. And there's our circular inlay in our rectangular table. And we've utilized Osnap and Otrack to create that geometry in our AutoCAD drawing.