AutoCAD Tips, Tricks, and the Most-Dapper Drafting Techniques

DONNIE GLADFELTER: Well, hello there. And welcome to AutoCAD tips, tricks, and the most dapper drafting techniques. My name is Donnie Glatfelter. And I'm super excited to be back with everybody again this year for another edition of my class here on AutoCAD tips and tricks.

A little about me. I'm the design technology manager at Timmons Group, an ENR 500 firm headquartered in Richmond, Virginia. And I have been a speaker here at Autodesk University for a really, really long time. You can find me online at TheCADgeek and along with a number of other places online as well.

Now my goal today is to spend as little time as possible inside of PowerPoint. But first, let's take a look at the objectives that we have for today. So really, at the end of the day, our objective I think is pretty simple. We want to find ways to be a little bit more efficient, get 1% better with AutoCAD and the way that we use it on a daily basis. I think that can pretty well sum up all of these objectives.

So with that, before we do jump into AutoCAD and begin taking a look at some of the tips that I have-- and I'm super excited to share with you today-- let's set some ground rules here, let's set some expectations.

So as you well know, being an AutoCAD user yourself, AutoCAD is perhaps the most versatile piece of design software known to man. So from people from architecture, to civil engineering, people working in facilities management, survey, a whole host of industries and disciplines use AutoCAD in some capacity.

And so, with that, I know we have a very, very diverse audience with us today from many different industries and backgrounds. And so, what I've tried to do first and foremost is all of the tips, I'm going to try to present them in a little bit of an abstract way, not really focused on any one discipline, with the idea that we can apply this universally across the board.

But to that end, some of these tips are certainly going to be more valuable to people in one industry versus another. And I think that's OK. Not every tip is designed to be one size fits all.

Number two, not every tip is going to be new to you. So again, if you are here and you're looking at ways to be better inside of AutoCAD, my hope and expectation really is that you're probably already pretty darn good inside of AutoCAD to begin with.

And so, with that in mind, I'm sure some of the tips that I'm going to share today are things that you probably already know. But my hope in sharing that is while not every tip will be new to you, is that first and foremost, that hopefully I can share a slightly new perspective to maybe some of the knowledge that you already have or at least validate that approach.

Of course, not every tip will not be new to you. So I hope too that I will share some new tips with you today as well.

And then finally, your experiences are different from my own. My purpose today is to try to share some of the ways that I have found in my over 20 years of using AutoCAD at this point that I have found to make AutoCAD work a little bit better for me, ways that I have found to get things done a little bit faster, and share that.

But I also know that I continue learning every single day. And I would love for you to reach out to me. In the handout you will find my contact information as well as at the end of this presentation. I'd love for you to reach out to me with any insights above and beyond those I share with you today.

So like I said, my goal today is to spend as little time as possible inside of PowerPoint and as much time as possible inside of AutoCAD. So let's do just that. Let's jump over to AutoCAD and begin taking a look at things.

So I've tried to organize things into several buckets. And where I'd like to begin is with ways that we can customize AutoCAD. And again, these are some things you might know, some that you might not.

So my background comes from the civil engineering and survey side of things. And I'm not quite sure why Autodesk stopped doing this. But some time ago, they decided to get rid of the coordinate readout that typically shows up right down here inside of AutoCAD. So how do I get that again? I use this all the time.

Well, to get this, it's pretty simple. All we're going to do is come down to the hamburger icon is what they call it. I don't know about you. It looks more like a stack of pancakes to me. I don't know what civilized person puts their hamburgers in a panini press. But anyway, hamburger button, pancake icon, you pick what you want to call it.

But if you click on that, you're going to get a menu of all the various things that we can add to the status bar. And at the very top of that is none other than coordinates. And so, with that, when I click that on, notice I get that coordinate readout.

And more importantly, as I use that now, it of course, tracks where I am. So if I need to get a coordinate, I can just hover over it. And you'll see it gives me that readout down there in the status bar. Super easy and, I think, helpful there as well.

So with that, continuing on, another piece of the interface that, frankly, I wasn't the biggest fan of when it first came out, but it has absolutely grown on me is the dynamic input inside of AutoCAD. And the basic idea here is that we can pick on objects and I can hover over them. And one of the functions of dynamic input is that it's going to display some dimensions for me.

So for example, this box is 160 by 160 units in length and width. But maybe you feel like this takes up too much screen real estate. Well, that's totally fine. All we need to do is type in tool tip size at the command line. And it's going to prompt me for a new value.

Now, the interesting thing here is we can set this as small as negative three. So if I type in negative three, and let's see what happens now if I pick on that box. So if I pick on that box, hover over things, you see I still get that same dimension. But it takes up far less screen real estate. So that's super helpful.

Now, what if you are a far more experienced user of AutoCAD. And you think to yourself, oh my, I cannot see text that small anymore. I am not 20 years old anymore. Well, no big deal. If we relaunch tool tip size. We can also set this as high as six. So if I click on that now and I select on the object and I hover over things, you'll notice that those dimensions are now much, much larger.

Now I will say, this is a tip that I like to use a lot as somebody who does a lot of training on tools like AutoCAD. Because this helps people in the back of the room that I'm presenting with see the interface a little bit easier. But you can set this to the size that works best for you.

So continuing on, some other things here. If you are of the belief that the only thing that should glow is nuclear waste and not your AutoCAD objects, well, you're in luck. Now, unfortunately, perhaps, when we first install AutoCAD, by default those objects are going to glow. So here I've selected this box. You can see it has this glowing effect to it.

If that's not your style, no big deal. All we need to do is type in selection effect at the command line. We key that in. Its default value is one, which means it's turned on. However, if we set that to zero and we come back and we select these objects, you'll notice now they no longer glow. You don't need to be worried about any sort of radioactive exposure. They are simple dashed objects. Of course, if we like it the way it is, we like that glowing effect, we can go ahead and turn that back on as well.

So continuing on with the customizations that we can do. If your favorite band is rubber, and you don't like the rubber band color that we have inside of AutoCAD, well, we can change that too.

Now, if you're not sure what we mean by rubber band color, well, if I pick on one of these objects here, you'll notice that I have a dashed yellow line following my cursor. And that is what AutoCAD calls the rubber band line. It tells me where I'm coming from and where I'm going to. And by default, it's a mustard yellow-looking color.

But if your favorite bands are maybe from the '80s and you want a nice, bold, loud color, well, we can do that too. All we need to do is go into the Options command. We can get to that a number of ways. We can type in Options. Or we come up here to the application menu. We can pick on Options here as well. There's no lack of ways to get to the Options command inside of AutoCAD.

But from the options command, if you jump over to the Display tab, you'll see a button here for colors. If I click on that, and here we can change the colors of practically any element of the user interface, not just the rubber band line.

So in my case though, if I did want to change the color of the rubber band line, all we need to do is pick on 2D Model Space, since that's what I'm in. And over here with the user interface element you'll find an entry that says rubber band line.

Again, by default, it is this sort of mustard yellow-looking color. But if you wanted a nice loud color like, I don't know, cyan, well, we can go ahead and hit Apply, and Close, and OK.

And now, if I come back into AutoCAD and I run a command where the rubber band is going to display, you'll see that that line is no longer a mustard yellow. It is cyan in this case. Of course, you can set that back just the same.

So continuing on. The Quick Access toolbar. So this is something that I certainly lean into quite a bit. Now, hopefully, most people have come to accept the ribbon if not like it. I certainly wasn't a fan of it when I was first introduced to AutoCAD. But over the years, it has absolutely grown on me.

But that certainly doesn't mean that there aren't some tools that I would like to access on a more frequent basis, that I would like to have persistent access to while I'm inside of AutoCAD. And of course, to help with that, inside of AutoCAD we do have our quick access toolbar, which is this guy right up here.

And with that, we can add additional tools onto this by clicking on this little upside down eject button. I don't know what you actually call this. But with that, here on the menu there are several tools that you can choose from. So for instance, I use match properties a lot. So I could go ahead and pick on match properties. And you'll see it adds that to the list.

Now, what I think is also really helpful with this is we can do things like add workspace to this as well. If you're a Civil 3D user, you might have muscle memory that you want your workspaces to be up here in the Quick Access toolbar, since that's the default interface over in Civil 3D. And we can do that really easily.

Now, in addition to that, we can also pretty much add any button that we find in the ribbon to the Quick Access toolbar. And the way we can do that is just by right-clicking on it. So for example, if I wanted to add the layer dropdown menu here from the Home tab to my Quick Access toolbar, well, that's just as easy as right-clicking on the dropdown menu here and choosing Add to Quick Access Toolbar. And you'll see it has now added that to the Quick Access Toolbar.

Now, while I've sort of solve one problem of gaining access or having persistent access to some of my most commonly used tools, I've kind of created another, which is I have a little bit of a real estate problem here at the very top. So with that, if you do find yourself putting a lot of buttons on the Quick Access toolbar, click on that upside down eject button once again.

If you go to the very bottom, you're going to find an option that is Show Below the Ribbon. And if I do that, it's going to do just as its name implies and add that to the very bottom there. So you have a little bit more real estate to add those tools that you use the most.

Of course, if you'd like to simplify things down, we can move it back to the top of the ribbon. And likewise, if I don't need a tool that's on there any longer, we can just right-click on it and choose Remove from Quick Access Toolbar. So really easy to customize that.

Now, on the topic of finding tools in the user interface, the ribbon, hopefully you've learned to like it. I certainly have once I realized it was task-oriented. So insert are things outside of the drawing. Annotate is of course annotating, and so forth. But what if I apply that task-specific logic and I still can't quite find the tool I'm looking for?

So let's say, for example, I'm looking for the drawing compare tool. Where is that in the ribbon? I have no idea. So with that, if we come up here to the application menu, the big A in versions older than the 2023 version, it's a little bit smaller now in 2023. But anyway, same basic interface here.

We typically come here to create new drawings, and save drawings, and that type of thing. But notice, there's also a text entry box up here at the very top. That will allow me to search all of the commands inside of AutoCAD.

So for instance, if I was looking for the drawing compare tool, I can go ahead and just type in drawing compare. And it will show me where it is. Now, it happens to be here. And let's see, let's do a different tool here. Let's do something like dimension continue. So where is that?

Now, maybe I know it's on the Annotate tab. But notice here when I type that in, since it is only on the Ribbon tab, it tells me, it's on the Ribbon tab. It's on the Annotate tab, Dimensions panel, and called Continue Dimension.

So with that, I could launch it here from the application menu. Or knowing that now, I can come over here to the annotate ribbon tab under the Dimensions panel. And there is of course the Continue Dimension command.

So continuing on, the palette interface, this was first introduced to AutoCAD, I guess back in 2005 if my memory serves me correctly. But nonetheless, many of the dialogues that we used to have in AutoCAD are now technically a palette interface. And probably the most common among these is the Properties palette.

So with that, there are numerous ways that we can open up the Properties palette inside of AutoCAD. Probably the easiest thing is just to pick on an object and right-click. With any object selected, you will get the option to open up the Properties palette. You can also press things like control one. There is no lack of ways to open up the Properties palette.

But with that, if we click on this little gear icon, it's going to give me a bunch of options for what I would like to be able to do with this palette interface. So for instance, the Properties palette is something that I like to have docked over on the right-hand side of my AutoCAD interface.

And so, with that, if we click on that little gear icon, you'll notice one of our options is to allow docking. So that's exactly what I did. Make sure that is enabled. And with that, I can just drag this straight over to the side of my AutoCAD session here. And now that is over on the right-hand side.

But there's more that we can do with this as well. So for example, I like to use tool palettes a lot if maybe I'd like to have quick access to that. If we come over here to the View tab under Palettes, we have that Tool Palette option right here. If I click on that, it's going to open up the Tool Palette interface. And again, these are just standard tool palettes.

Now, there's some other things that we can do here. For instance, I can auto-hide this, which means when I hover away from it, it should collapse. Of course, being a live demo, it is not collapsing. But-- there we go. Now it is auto-collapsing. So as soon as I hover away from it, it collapses. And it's just sort of this floating bar on my screen.

Of course, one of my favorite things to do with the palette interfaces that I use the most is to anchor them. Not dock them, but anchor them. So for instance, if this is something I use a lot, I might want to have quick access to it but not dedicate a lot of screen real estate to it. In that case, I'm just going to do something like anchor right.

Notice what happens now. In addition to the Properties palette that I have docked, I have a tool palettes bar over on the right-hand side of my screen. And if I hover over that, it opens up my Tool Palette interface. And really, anything that is a Tool Palette interface, I can do the same treatment to.

So Layer Properties Manager, this too is technically a Palette Interface. Again, it's that same basic looking bit here. And so, with this, maybe I don't want this up all the time, but I need to get to my layers quite quickly and easily. No big deal. We'll go ahead and pick on that gear.

And once again, we can choose to anchor it to the left or right. I like to go ahead and put it over on the right side personally. But with that, I now have access to properties. So if I pick on an object, I of course get the properties of it.

In addition to that, if I want to add new objects to my drawing, I can pick on Tool Palettes. Or if I need to manage the layers and whatnot of the existing objects, I can just hover over Layer Properties Manager. And all of that is set for me. So I find that super handy there.

So let's continue on and take a look at some of the things that we can do with grips. How can we get a grip inside of AutoCAD? So with that, I think one of the first ones here, a lot of folks know this. But I also run into just as many people who don't seem to know this trick.

Now, typically, when we grip edit things in AutoCAD, we pick on the object. We display the grips. And then we pick on one of the grips, the dark blue items that appear on that object. And it allows us to modify it or manipulate that object in some way. Easy peasy, right?

However, what if I wanted to make sure that this line here stayed the exact same length that it is right now. But I wanted to grip edit it. What can I do? Well, same thing. Again, we're going to start this just like I would any other grip editing by picking on an object. So I display their grips.

But if I press and hold the Shift key, this is going to allow me to select multiple grips. And I can pick as many grips as I want. Notice the selected grips are what we call hot. They turn hot. And so, they turn red.

But with that, I can now pick on any one of the red grips and grip edit that. Notice that that eastern edge of that box stays the exact same length. And so, I could stretch that over here, as an example, and keep all of that intact. So super awesome.

Now, probably my favorite grip shortcut is what we can do with the space bar. So what do I mean by that? Well, typically, when we pick on an object, again, we get our grips. And if I grip edit, the command that I'm technically using here is stretch. Notice down here at the command line, it says stretch. And I can, of course, stretch this object. No big deal.

But what if instead of stretching I wanted to move it, maybe to the end of this arc over here? How could I do that? Well, if you press the space bar, it's going to toggle you into the Move command. And I can come over here and move this box to a different location. Again, just pick on it, hit spacebar. Now I am moving that object like so.

But there's a bit more we can do with this too. So again, getting back into editing this. I'm in the Stretch command. If I press space, I go to the Move command. If I press space again, I start rotating the object. If I press space yet again, I get into the Scale command. So I can scale this object up and down.

If I press space again, I begin mirroring this object. And if I press space again, well, I don't have any more tricks up my sleeve. There are no more rabbits in the hat. I'm back to the Stretch command.

But nonetheless, we can continue cycling through this in whatever way that I want. And I have gotten in the habit, if I need to move an object, I just pick on the grip, hit spacebar, and move it to where I need using that trick there.

So continuing on, multi-function grips. So what the heck are these? So there are numerous objects inside of AutoCAD that in addition to the basic grip editing behavior, which we just took a look at, have some extra superpowers associated with them.

So for example, if I pick on this line down here, if I hover over the line, not click on it, but I hover over the end grip in this case, I get a couple of options. I have stretch and I have lengthen. So lengthen, for me, is super valuable. Because let's say I want to modify this. I want to make this line maybe 100 units longer than it is right now.

Well, I don't have to come up to the Modify command and find the Lengthen command up here wherever it is in the ribbon. Instead, all I need to do is just hover over the grip. Let's try that again. Hover over the grip, choose lengthen. And especially if I'm using this in concert with dynamic input, notice I get two dimensions. I get the delta and I get the overall. And I can tab between these.

So in this case, if I wanted to add, I don't know, 150 units to this line, I could type in 150. That line is now exactly 150 units longer than it was before. And again, I could lengthen things. If I wanted to make things exactly, I don't know, 250 units, we can tab into the overall dimension and make that line exactly 250 units.

Now, what's awesome is this extends to things like arcs as well. So if I hover over my arc, I can do things like stretch and lengthen. And that keeps the center point intact right there and allows me to update that as well.

If we take this a little bit further, polylines also have some extra functions associated with them. For instance, if I needed to extend this polyline, I could say add a vertex. And I could add a vertex in here. I can extend the vertex, which is going to lengthen the line.

If maybe this needs to be an arc, we can hover over that rectangular grip at the center of each segment and do things like convert that into an arc. And again, just really, really easy to manipulate this geometry.

But there are many other places that we find multifunction grips as well. And among them is with multileader. So here's an example. I have a multileader. And maybe I want to label the box corners. I don't know why we would. But just in case you did.

In this case, all we need to do is pick on the multileader. If I hover over this grip right here of the multileader, notice I get the option to add a leader. And just like that, I can come in here and pick right there. I'm not quite sure why it added a leader way down there.

But nonetheless, you get the idea there that we're able to add additional leaders to things. Of course, if it did do something like that, I should be able to zoom out-- oh boy, and get rid of it. Well, apparently not. But anyway, we're not going to let that slow us down here, if I come back in here.

In addition to multileaders, we have dimensions. So maybe I have a series of things that I need to dimension in some way. And rather than coming up and doing dimension, and dimension this object, and dimension the next object, just pick-- just dimension one of the objects, in this case, the first segment of things.

And I'm going to hover over the grip here. And one of the options I get is that Dimension Continue command. So if I can say, Continue Dimension, and I can pick the end points right there.

Of course, maybe I need to have an overall dimension in some case. Well, I don't have to go up and add a new dimension. What I like to use is the baseline dimension. So I can go ahead and add that here as well. And it will add another row of dimensions.

It typically stacks things. However, in this case, it did not. But that's not a big deal. I can just go ahead and pick on that dimension and move things up like so. So really easy to add those additional dimensions that we might have.

So that's a look at getting a grip inside of AutoCAD. But how can we get our control of AutoCAD? Well, let's take a look at that now. So first things first-- blocks, specifically blocks with attributes. Now, we probably have a lot of these. So here is an example. It is just a random block that I've got. Maybe I need to change the value of the double x there.

Typically, what we would do is just double-click on that. This is going to open up probably everyone's favorite command inside of AutoCAD, the Enhanced Attribute Manager, otherwise known as the Batman command. And with that, I could type in a value, let's say 10. And just like that, I have updated that value.

But again, I had to double-click on it, I had to have the dialog pop up. I had to pick on the attribute that I wanted to change. I then had to enter the value that I wanted it to be. Then I had to click OK. And then I finally got back to my drawing.

But if I just need to make a super simple edit like this, what can I do? Well, what I'm going to do is just press and hold the Control key. If I double-click on that, it is going to allow me to edit just that one item.

So here's an example. I'm in this. I can now type in 20. And just like that, I have now updated that as well. So here is an example. If I wanted to update this block attribute as an example, I can just press and hold Control. I can click into here. And maybe I want this to be 10.00, as an example. Easy peasy there.

Layout tab-- so in this drawing, I have a layout tab, like so. And with that, if I needed to create another one, well, what can I do? Well, if I press and hold the Control key and then left-click on the Layout tab, I can just drag this over.

Let me try that again. Drag over. And just like that, I have a new layout tab. Again, just click and hold it with your left mouse button. Press Control. And then just drag it over.

In addition to that, if you press Control Page Up or Page Down, you can cycle between the different layout tabs all the way back to Model Space. So we can cycle between things like so. And that can be a super handy bit right there. And as a bonus, this tip also works inside of Excel.

So let's continue on here. So drawing arcs inside of AutoCAD can be a bit of a tricky endeavor at times. So specifically, let's say I needed to add an arc at the end or between these two lines here. Well, I might come up here to the Arc command inside of AutoCAD. And in this case, maybe I'll choose center start end as the method that I would like to use to create this arc.

So with that, it's going to ask me for the center point of the arc. As a quick little bonus with the control, you can press Control and right-click and get the Object Snap menu.

And one of my favorite Object Snaps is mid between two points. So we've got that right here. I'm going to pick mid between two points. I'm going to pick the endpoint here and the endpoint here. And that's going to find the midpoint there.

Of course, now it's going to ask for the start point. So let me go ahead and pick this point right here. And then I want to draw up here. But notice, the arc is going towards the east. Maybe I want and need it to draw to the west.

Now, I can certainly restart this command and start by drawing at the top and then picking the endpoint on the bottom. But we don't want to do that. All I need to do in order to have AutoCAD draw the arc in a different direction is press and hold the Control key. You'll notice that's going to flip the direction. And now I'll pick the exact same point. And that arc is drawn just as I would like it. Awesome.

Next, working with text. So we can nudge objects. We can technically do this with any object in AutoCAD. I typically reserve this or limit this just to text, because we typically don't have to have that super precisely placed inside of a drawing.

But I'm just trying to figure out where to put things, I can select that text. If I press and hold Control and then use the arrow keys on my keyboard, I can move that text around. So that can be handy for placing text in our drawing.

Next, oftentimes we want text to be title case like I've got here. But other times, we want this to be all uppercase or all lowercase, whatever the case might be-- no pun intended. Or maybe I did intend that. I don't know.

Anyway, if I needed to change the case of this, maybe I wanted this to be uppercase or lowercase. I'm going to double-click into this. Now, this happens to be multi-line text. So when I double click into this, it's going to open up the text editor. I'll get that tab here at the top of AutoCAD.

And with that, I can select all the text here. And if I press Control Shift L, as an example, it's going to make all that text lowercase. If I press Control Shift U, it's going to make all of the text uppercase-- maybe. No, whoops. My drawing pen apparatus got in the way there. So let's see if I can get this to work.

I should mention that there is also a uppercase lowercase function here as well. So we can turn that on and off there as well. And let me come down here for a second.

Now, while being able to do uppercase and lowercase just with a quick keyboard shortcut is handy, again, we do have that button inside of the text editor. But what if I'm working with single line text? Single line text in AutoCAD or D text doesn't have such an interface. And so, how can I do this?

Well, same shortcut applies. I can do Control Shift L and make it all lowercase. Or I can do Control Shift U to make it uppercase. Of course my little drawing apparatus is also getting in the way because there is a keyboard shortcut that is also mapped to that. But again, if my little cursor thing here was not getting in the way, it would allow that to work as well. But anyway, Control Shift U, Control Shift L will change the case of your text.

So let's continue on-- shift override. So if you thought the Control key was really awesome, the Shift key is equally awesome as well. Now, I should mention that with that Object Snap, you can press Control and right-click or you can press Shift and right-click and get that same menu. Both open it up the same way. So control and shift are close cousins in that regard.

So with that, something I often find myself doing, especially in Civil 3D with things like profiles, I want to maybe move a manhole up and down or maybe a PVI on a design profile up or down. I want to move something orthogonally.

Now, we of course know that we've got ortho down here. It's one of our drawing modes that we can enable or disable at the status bar. But what if I just need it just real quick? I need it temporarily?

Well, with that, I'm going to go ahead and grip edit this label that I've got here. There are two grips here. Let me make sure I get the right one right here. And if I wanted to move this straight up or down, how can I do that? Well, I can just press and hold Shift.

And you'll notice there's a little half-filled circle that appears in the upper right quadrant of my cursor. That is telling me that I have ortho turned on temporarily. So with that, for one click and one click only, I can go ahead and move that object orthogonally just by pressing and holding Shift.

Continuing on, fillet, or fillet, if that is your style. Nonetheless, however you say the command, I say fillet. I know some will say fillet. Anyway, if I open up the fillet command, typically when we're using the fillet command we are going to set a radius so we can put a curve between two objects.

So maybe here I want to do a radius of 100 units as an example. I can come in and go ahead and pick those two. And now I have a fillet between those two items.

But what if I don't want to use a 100 foot radius? I typically have to come in here, choose radius, set that to zero. However, if you press and hold the Shift key, whatever your radius is, notice mine is currently set to 100.

Whatever your radius is, while you have the Shift key selected, it's going to set your radius to zero, which is going to allow you to create that mitred edge with your geometry.

So continuing on, some other commands that have this shift toggle built into them. So fillet from whatever the radius is to zero. The others are Trim and Extend command. So trim and extend are close cousins to one another. If I go ahead and launch the Trim command, right now I can't really trim anything because it's just going to delete the objects.

If I press and hold the Shift key, I can now extend objects. And notice, I'm still in the Trim command right here. So if I press and hold the Shift key, I'm now extending. As soon as I let go of the Shift key, I am now trimming. So I can come in here and trim those objects. If I press and hold Shift again, I can then begin extending the objects yet again, just like so.

So Object Snaps, let's continue on here. Did you know that you can temporarily toggle Object Snaps on and off? So it doesn't matter if you have Object Snaps turned on down here or not. I'll go ahead and turn them off for the purpose of this demonstration.

But if I do something like launch the Line command, and here I want to snap to the endpoint of this line, how can I do that? Typically we would press E-N-D. We type that in, do the control or shift and right-click. But if you press hold, Shift, and E, it will allow you to snap to the endpoint, just like so. And I can let go and it will do that.

Likewise, we can snap to the midpoint as well. If I press and hold Shift and M, this will allow me to snap to the midpoint of lines like so. And by the way, center is also one of those that we can do. If I want to draw things from the center, I'll just press Shift and C. And with that, I can snap to the center point.

Now, what's nice is I can toggle between any of these. So I can-- whoops. I can press Shift E. And-- oops. There we go. And snap to the endpoint. I could then press Shift M and snap to the midpoint, Shift E select to another endpoint, and whatever the case might be, I can snap between those just by pressing and holding the Shift and the first character of endpoint, midpoint, or center.

So let's keep going here. So those were the shift overrides. Now, here is another one of my favorite commands inside of AutoCAD. And it is the Cal command, the Calculator command. Now, we can type in Cal at the command line. And this is going to give me a command line calculator. We could do simple expressions, like 1 plus 1, we get an answer of 2. Easy peasy, right?

But where I think the real power of the Calculator command, the Cal command comes into play is that this is a command that we can launch transparently. If you're not familiar with transparent commands, things like the Pan command.

So if I'm in the Line command, as an example, if I type in apostrophe P, this will allow me to launch the Pan command. And this is how we had to pan before we had middle mouse buttons inside of AutoCAD. But what's also handy about this is I can launch the Calculator command. So where could that be helpful?

Well, let's say I want to draw a line at the midpoint between these two lines. Well, I'll go ahead and type the line command. For the first point, I'm going to type in apostrophe Cal for the calculator.

And with that, it's going to ask me for an expression. I'm going to type in D-E-E. It's going to be distance between two endpoints. I'll do that. I will then pick the two endpoints right here. And it snaps to the very beginning here. And let's try that again. Let's try that. Let me do D-E-E divided by 2 like so. And that should do it.

Anyway, it should find the distance between the two endpoints. Oh, I know what I'll do here. Let me do offset here for a second. Let me do the Offset command instead of the Line command. I'm going to do Offset. It's going to ask me for the offset distance. Let me do calculator again, apostrophe C-A-L.

Here, maybe I want to do three divisions between these. I need to figure out the distance between these two objects and divide it into thirds. So with that, with the expression here, I will do D-E-E divided by 3, as an example. I'll hit Enter.

It's going to ask me for the first endpoint. I'll pick this one. The second will be this one. And now, it has set that distance as the offset distance for this command all the way down to 14 decimal places. So with that, I can now come in here and offset these lines. And they are exactly 1/3 the distance or whatever fraction I did.

So continuing on here, let's say I am doing something like this. Maybe this is a road intersection. And I want to use the fillet command. But I need to set a radius. And I want to maybe create curb returns over here that matches the radius of this fillet or arc that I already have in the drawing.

How can I do that? Well, the calculator can help us with that too. I'll type in apostrophe C-A-L for the radius. And for the expression, I'll just type in rad for radius. That's going to ask me to pick another circle, or arc, or polyline segment. And it is going to acquire whatever its radius is. In this case, it happens to be 50 units. And with that, I can now fillet those lines there.

So let's say I want to create center lines between two existing objects. Now, one of the challenges I have here is, well, this one's a polyline. And these are just individual objects. And additionally, they are not the exact same length either. So how can we work on that?

Well, let's come back up here to the Offset command. And for the offset distance, let me do through here for a second. And it's going to ask me for an object to offset. Let's do this polyline I've got here. And now, it's going to ask me for a distance using dynamic input.

So if I want to find the center point between these, what I'll do is I'll type in apostrophe C-A-L for the calculator. And my expression here is going to be a near point plus a perpendicular point, close that with parentheses, and then divide that by 2, or 3, or whatever fraction that you want. I can do that.

Here, it's going to ask me for the nearest. I'll just pick somewhere on this line. Now it's going to ask me for perpendicular. I'll pick somewhere on this line. And now, it sets that distance, again, all the way down to the smallest unit.