Workaround – Drawing Arcs To Length

A CAD-a-Blog reader sent me this e-mail asking how to draw an arc to a particular length. Here is Saqib’s question:

“If we have a curve or arc, we know its length and radius. If we want to divide or mark some points on given length so what is way of it. One way to do this use "DIVIDE" command then enter how many parts you need. But what I want is that we don’t need exact parts like 10,20,23,50 etc. How can I divide arc into desire length like 12.33,44.77,20.83 like so on.”

These tow methods are how I do it. If anyone has a different method of doing this please e-mail me or comment to this post.

Method one:

Use the ARC, Center, Start, Length command. You can find it in the DRAW, ARC pulldown menu. Or start the ARC command, select the CENTER option (type in C at the prompt-then press enter), select the arc’s center point, then select your starting point, and finally type in the desired length. You have just drawn an arc of a known center point and radius to a specific length. Keep in mind that AutoCAD defaults the direction of an arc as going counter clockwise. That means that when you select your starting point that the arc will be drawn from that point and extend out in a clockwise manner. If I start at the top of the arc, then it will be drawn to the left of that point. If I start at the bottom of a circle, then my arc will start at the bottom and go to the right.

Method Two:

Use the lengthen command to change the length of an arc. Start the LENGTHEN command (type in LENGTHEN). Choose the TOTAL option (type in T). Now you have the choice to change the arc to a certain angle (or delta) or to a certain length. Type in the length desired and select the arc (you can select multiple arcs if you want to). Make sure that you know which end is your starting point. In this case, the starting point will be the first end point drawn.

I hope this helps. Happy CADDING.

Multi Leaders

In AutoCAD 2008, Autodesk gave us Multi Leaders. These are annotations that can have more than one leader coming from it. They can do more that that too. You can combine multileaders, you can align them, and you can use blocks in them as callouts.

You can start the command by typing in MLEADER. Or, in AutoCAD 2008 go to the Multileader toolbar, and click the mleader icon. OR, go to the DIMENSION pull down menu, and then click the Multileader button. In AutoCAD 2009 you can do the same as above, or in the Ribbon, go to the HOME tab, in the ANNOTATION Panel click the Mleader icon. OR in the ribbon, go to the ANNOTATION tab and then go to the Multileader Panel. Quick tip, don’t type in ML (I know, it seems logical) because that is the shortcut for Multi-Lines. Instead, type in MLD to create a new multileader. Here are some other out of the box keyboard shortcuts for multileaders:

MLA, *MLEADERALIGN

MLC, *MLEADERCOLLECT

MLD, *MLEADER

MLE, *MLEADEREDIT

MLS, *MLEADERSTYLE

Now that we know where to go to start the command, let’s start the command. You will quickly find the multileaders work and act in a very similar fashion to leaders. You pick the point where you want your arrow head to point to (get the point yet?) and then you pick the point where you want your landing (the landing is the horizontal tail that comes from the end of the leader and stops just short of the text.) Then enter your text. Easy enough.

Now, if you want to add a second leader to this callout, then click the ADD LEADER button. Then follow the prompts. Select the multileader you want to add to. A new leader is drawn and follows your crosshairs around until you designate where you want your new leader’s arrow head to point to. It will keep doing this until you hit the ENTER key. So you can add more than one leader to your multileader at a time. It can be fun. Go crazy, get a little wild, and add tons of leaders. Ok stop, that’s too many!!

How do you remove a leader? Good question. Go to your toolbar, pulldown, ribbon panel, whatever, and click the, any guesses, REMOVE Leader button. Select the multileader you want to edit, and then select the leader you want to remove. You can keep doing this until there are no leaders left to select. If you select them all, then the multileader will be deleted, oops!! When you select the ones you want to remove, they will be highlighted. Press enter to remove them. There you go.

Now that you have multileaders in your drawing, you need to edit them, move them, and adjust them. Go ahead. Use the grip edits to do this. You can move the arrow head around just like any other leader. Look at the image provided. I have selected the multileader. See the grips that are available? The grip at the top of the text will allow you to move just the text, while the arrow head stays in place, just like regular leaders that are associated. The grip at the end of the landing, just before the text, will stretch the landing and move the text, keeping the distance from the landing to the text the same. The grip where the leader and landing meet will stretch the leader and the landing while leaving the text and the arrow head in place. Cool huh? The grip in the middle of the landing will move it and the text around leaving the arrowhead in place.

To edit the text, just double-click it and it works just like mtext. If you change the text justification, the multileader landing will stay relative to the rest of the text. If you want to change the landing position to the text, select the multileader, open the properties palette, and change the left/right attachment setting. You can set it to line up at the top, middle, bottom, etc.

There is a lot more you can do with multileaders, but that will have to come in a different post. These abilities are what really set multileaders apart from leaders. You can align them, combine them, and use blocks, standard and custom, for your callouts. We will look at those later.

Happy CADDING.

Quick Tip – Clean Screen

The Clean Screen command in AutoCAD will provide a fuller view of your screen, making it easier to work with. It turns everything “off” on your screen except for the status bar, menu bar, and the command line. Invoking the Clean Screen command again restores your screen

Click the Clean Screen button in the lower right hand corner of the screen (it looks like a box) to toggle it on and off. OR, press “CTRL+O” (that’s the letter “O” not the number zero).

Happy CADDING

What do you want to see from CAD-a-Blog?

I found out about a widget (a widget is a gadget in a blog or on a website) called SKRIBIT. I'm all about bells and whistles and for trying out things, so i said WHY NOT? Anyway, Skribit is essentially a poll, but not just any poll. Most blog polls are created by the blogger (that's me) and the reader is limited to chose from the bloggers allotted choices. With Skribit, you get to say what you want, not me.

So, if there is a topic that you want to see in CAD-a-Blog, just click on the Skribit Widget on the right and add the idea. If you like the ideas that are already there, then vote for the ones you want. A vote is a yes vote. There is no "NO" vote. if you don't want it, don't vote for it. Got it?

To suggest a topic idea, click in the Skribit Widget on the "What Should CAD-a-Blog write About?" text. Then type in your idea. you only get 100 characters, so keep it short.

So, bring on your ideas. Skribit is my way of helping you to help me to help you ??!!??!? My head hurts now.

Happy CADDING.

Quick Tip - Layer Walk

What's on your layers? In AutoCAD, users can utilize the LAYER WALK command, or LAYWALK. Lynn Alan has posted a video on her CADalyst Website, Lynn Alen's Tips and Tricks Tuesdays, that talks about the laywalk command.

Laywalk used to be an Express Tool, meaning that you had to purchase the express tools add on to get it. It also meant that AutoCAD LT users couldn't get it. Now it is a standard AutoCAD command and is available to both "vanilla" AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT.

Type in LAYWALK in the command line to start it. A window comes up listing all of the layers in your file. Pick one and all items on that layer will be displayed. If a layer is blank, nothing will show up. If nothing shows up, there is a button to purge that layer.

Watch the video to get a visual on how it works.

Happy CADDING