AutoCAD Prank – Snap On With No Limits – Muhahahaha!

AutoCAD has tons of settings. It so many that it’s easy to play tricks on your fellow CAD users.  Here’s one that I would like to share with you.  It involves changing the Limits and turning on the Snap feature.

Figure on left drawn with Snap Mode on.
On the right are the Snap Mode  control settings

Snap Mode (not Osnaps) is a feature in AutoCAD that allows for quick drawing.  It locks your cursor/crosshairs into a defined grid.  It is similar to drawing on graph paper (the old fashion way - with pencils even!) but only being allowed to draw to points on the graph where the rows and columns are.  Your endpoints, center points, and vertices can only be picked with your cursor if they are on the grid.  It constrains your mouse movement.  Look at it as a matrix of dots defined by columns and rows each set (by you) to a defined distance.  You can set up a grid system to any distance.  If you set the Snap Grid to One (1) then the distance between rows and columns will be one unit.  This will allow you to quickly draw lines that are one unit long.  You don’t have to type in distances or coordinate points.  However, if you need a line (or any drawing object) that is off the grid, you can manually override it by typing in the appropriate distance or coordinate point.


You can further control this grid by setting your drawing’s limits.  Limits will control the lower-left corner and the upper-right corner positions of your grid.  It can also control where you can enter points.  This is called Limit Checking.  When this feature is on it “limits” your working area to within the defined Limits coordinates.  When you turn Snap Mode on (press F9) you can only Snap to the grid area.

This is where the Auto CAD Prank comes in.  Go to Paper Space.  Set both the first Limits coordinates to 0,0 and the second to 0.0001,0.0001 and turn Snap Mode on.  Let the magic happen.  Muahhahahahahahaha!!

UPDATE (in italics)


Several of you have found that you cannot set the Limits while in Paper Space.  After more research I found that you cannot set Limits in Paper Space if you are displaying the Paper Background.  Go to OPTIONS, Display Tab and uncheck this.  Once this setting is off you will be able change the limits in paper space.


Also, if you open the Drafting Settings control window (type OS on the command line) and go to the Snap and Grid tab you can make some changes there that will mess with people.  Change the Snap Spacing (X and Y) to a size that is much larger than the screen (in paper space).  For example, if the drawing is in Imperial units and it is a 24 inch by 36 inch size sheet, set the snap grid spacing to a very large number like 200.  Make sure this number is greater than the limits.  This will “limit” the number of snappable points to just one and the user will not be able to move their crosshairs in the drawing area.