From the course: AutoCAD 2019 Essential Training

OSNAP and OTRACK - AutoCAD Tutorial

From the course: AutoCAD 2019 Essential Training

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OSNAP and OTRACK

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- [Instructor] We're starting another chapter now in our AutoCAD Essential Training Course, and we're going to be looking at getting you started with drawing simple geometry in AutoCAD. Now we've got a new drawing for you. It's called Geometry.dwg, and as usual you can download that from the website to use to follow along with these particular videos in this particular chapter. Now the first thing we're going to look at when you're working with simple geometry in AutoCAD is being able to draw accurately. Now in order to draw accurately you need to utilize your object snaps and also your object snap tracking. Now object snaps are abbreviated to Osnap, and object snap tracking is abbreviated to Otrack. They're fairly simple to remember, Osnap and Otrack, and you can find them on the status bar at the bottom of the AutoCAD screen. So if I just come down here you can see that my Otrack is on there and my Osnaps are on there. Now I mentioned running object snaps previously. If I click on this fly-out menu here, you can see there that I've got five running object snaps, which are endpoint, midpoint, center, intersection, and extension. Do not switch them all on at once. You will slowly go insane because it tries to snap to all of the snaps at any given time. Just use the optimum ones that you need. So they're all set up, and your Otrack is already on as well. So click on the fly-out little arrow again, and that'll close down the menu. Now with Osnap and Otrack the whole idea is that you can draw and snap accurately to known points on objects. So if we go to the Home tab on the ribbon and first of all just check the Layers panel and make sure that you're utilizing the objects layer there in the dropdown menu. And you can see that the rectangle onscreen in the geometry drawing here is also on that objects layer. Now I'm going to go to the Draw panel and I'm going to click on the Line command first of all. Now I can specify a first point, and you'll notice that's coming up on my crosshair there because my dynamic input is switched on. Try and have your dynamic input switched on all the time. It's a lot easier to use AutoCAD that way. Now if I hover here over that corner I get an endpoint snap. So I can draw my line from an endpoint object snap. If I hover there over the midpoint, there's the midpoint snap. I can draw a line from there as well if I want to. And if I come down here I can also draw a line from this endpoint snap as well. So I can snap accurately to any point on that particular rectangle. Now I did mention Otrack as well, object snap tracking. Now object snap tracking allows me to hover over up to seven concurrent object snaps, and I can pick intersections between those snaps. So let's say that I wanted to draw that line exactly from the center of my rectangle. So what I might do there is hover over this midpoint here, but don't click on it. And then hover over this midpoint here and don't click on it again. And as I come into the drawing center here, can you see I start to get these polar tracking lines. And now these are also tied in with my object snap tracking. So what I'll do is I'll hover over that midpoint again there, and as I come in this time, can you see that I get an intersection? Now that intersection is my object snap tracking kicking in with my polar tracking as well. Now the polar tracking we'll discuss in a moment. But you can see there with polar tracking on, which it is on the status bar, if I click on that intersection, that's where my line starts from, which is the dead center of my rectangle. So I can now come over here horizontally, get that midpoint snap there and click and enter to finish the Line command. And you can see that I've drawn a line from the center of the rectangle, out to that right-hand midpoint without any need for construction lines at all. And that's the benefit of your object snap tracking, that Otrack. It basically reduces the need for construction lines virtually to nil, because you can hover over object snaps and specify the construction lines, those green dash lines that we saw, without any need to draw physical lines to represent them. So that's a very, very useful tool. So let's go through that one more time. So I'll go to the Line command again in the Draw panel. And this time I'm going to hover over this midpoint here, like so. And then I'm going to hover over this midpoint here, like so. As I come down can you see they intersect again or will they? They won't this time because I've got an endpoint snap there of the line that I've drawn previously. So that overrides the object snap tracking. So I can just use that endpoint there. I can come out and I can draw that line, say to that corner there. Click again on the endpoint snap, enter to finish. And as you can see, that's very quick and easy. So your object snaps allow you to work accurately, snapping to exact points on objects. And your Otrack, your object snap tracking, allows you to pick a combination of those snaps to draw accurately between points, and for example, to find the center of the rectangle, as I showed you in this video.

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