OSNAP (object snap) and OTRACK (object snap tracking) - AutoCAD Tutorial

- [Instructor] We're starting a new chapter now in our learning AutoCAD course, and we're going to be looking at creating and drawing some simple geometry. So we got a new drawing for you. It's called Geometry.dwg. And as usual, you can download it from the library to follow along with the video. So when you open up Geometry.dwg, you'll see this rectangle on the screen. And the first thing we're going to look at is Osnap, Object Snaps, and Otrack, Object Snap Tracking. Now, these tools are available to you on the status bar at the bottom of the screen. Now, we've already covered the interface, so we know where the status bar is, it's down here. And we need to look at these two icons first. So you want to make sure that Object Snap Tracking is on, it should be blue, like that. And then we're going to look at our Object Snaps here. And you can see that my Object Snaps are also on, it's blue. But you want to make sure by clicking on this little flyout arrow here, you've got the right Object Snaps switched on. These are your running Object Snaps. So basically, they're the ones that will appear all the time while you're drafting and creating your designs in AutoCAD. So you can see there's five ticks there, you've got Endpoint, Midpoint, Center, an Intersection, and Extension. Now, if I come down here to Object Snap Settings and click there, it'll open up the dialog box in the Objects Snap tab. So there's our drafting settings dialog box, Object Snap tab, you can see Object Snap is on, Object Snap Tracking is on, and there's my five object snaps, my running Object Snap switched on. So make sure it looks like that. You might need to go to the dialog box if you're using older versions of AutoCAD two, so make sure your dialog box looks like that and then click on OK. So that's our Osnap and Otrack settings switched on. Let's do a little bit of drafting with that and see how it works. So I'm going to utilize the line command which is on the draw panel on the home tab on the ribbon. So I'm going to click on the line command, come into the drawing area, and it's prompting me for my first point. Now, what I'm going to do is hover over this midpoint snap. You see the midpoint appear there? Do not click, just hover. And then we're going to come up here to the midpoint on this side here of the rectangle. And again, you'll see the midpoint snap appear, just hover. Now, as I come down, you'll see this green dashed line kick in. It's your polar tracking. And that's down there on the status bar too. It looks like a little pie with a section cut out of it. And I've deliberately left that on because you can see now with the polar tracking, and combined with the Object Snap Tracking, I get an intersection of those two green dashed lines. When I left-click now, you'll see that my line starts exactly where those two polar tracking lines intersect. That's because I had the Object Snap Tracking on but also down here, can see my Polar Tracking was on? That one there. So make sure that Polar Tracking is on as well, if you weren't successful getting that line to start in the middle. So what we'll do now is we'll take this across, and again, the polar tracking kicks in, can you see zero degrees there? And I'll just drag that and you'll see that I get a midpoint snap. When you get the midpoint snap appear, just left click once, and there's the second point of your line. Press enter or right-click and enter like that on the contextual menu to finish. So you've drawn your line there using Object Snap Tracking, and a midpoint Object Snap. Polar tracking had a bit of a hand in it, too. Now, what about regular Object Snaps? How do they work? Well, let's have a look at that. Let's see how they work. So I go to the line command again, come into the drawing area. If I just hover there, I've got an endpoint snap, I just left click to accept it. And my line starts from the endpoint. Go to the endpoint here, left-click again, like so. Or I can keep going ad nauseum, creating lines using my Object Snaps or freehand if I want to. If I come down here though, and I click there, I've placed another line. Now, that line, I might not have wanted it there, I can right-click, and on the context sensitive shortcut menu, you can see that I can click on Undo, and that'll undo the last line segment in this particular instance of the line command. So if I've drawn a line segment, while I'm drawing some line segments in the line command, and I draw the wrong line segment, it's a right-click and undo, I'll just take that back to where we were before, there's the end point snap, left-click and either enter on the keyboard or right-click and then enter on the shortcut menu. So you can see there how quick and easy it is to draw lines using your Object Snaps, using your Object Snap Tracking. What I'm going to do now is select each of these lines, get the crosshair on each one, like so. And I'm going to hit the delete key on the keyboard and delete them. There's another snap that is really, really useful in AutoCAD, and it's called Geometric Center. So if I now go to the line command, come into the drawing area and perform a shift and a right-click, that brings up my override snaps, my snap overrides. And what I can do there is I can go to geometric center, which is not switched on in the Object Snaps. And just when I hover, can you see there's the geometric center there, of that rectangle? When I left-click, my line starts there like that. So I don't have to do the Object Snap tracking if it's a nice regular shape. I can then come to here, there's the midpoint, right-click, enter to finish the line. Another little trick as well. If you press enter or the spacebar, it will repeat the last command that you did. So now I'm back in the line command, I can quickly draw my other two lines like that, back to there, end to finish and there we go. Quick and easy. Just a different workflow or process, using a different Object Snap to get the same end result. So utilize your Object Snaps, your Object Snap Tracking and your snap overrides to create the designs that you need in your AutoCAD drawings.