From the course: AutoCAD 2024 Essential Training

Rectangles and polygons - AutoCAD Tutorial

From the course: AutoCAD 2024 Essential Training

Start my 1-month free trial Buy for my team

Rectangles and polygons

“

We're starting a new chapter now and we're going to take a look at some further drafting techniques that you can use in AutoCAD. Now we've got another drawing for you for this particular chapter it's called ground floor plan REV2 revision 2. So you'll see the title of the file at the top of the screen there ground floor plan underscore REV2 dot DWG. Make sure you download this particular version of the drawing to follow along with the videos. When you open up the drawing just make sure you're in the model tab and that you've zoomed extents so that you've got a view like the one you can see on your screen. Now make sure you're using the furniture layer, there's our little fly out there on the layers panel on the home tab on the ribbon and you want to be using A-700 MFFE, that particular layer there. Now you'll remember in the previous chapter we placed this landscaped area didn't we on the right hand side of the building we're gonna zoom in on that now and just pan a little bit get it roughly central on screen like that and we're gonna place some outdoor furniture for the staff to use in the landscaped area when the weather's good so we'll put some tables in now I'm gonna use the rectangle command for the first table I'm gonna place it up here just near the door so people can come out of the door, grab a seat at the table, have their lunch, have a meeting, even just sit and relax for a coffee break or a lunch break. So we go up to the draw panel here on the home tab on the ribbon and there's a little fly out just there, you've got rectangle or polygon, select rectangle and come into the drawing area. Now we've used the rectangle command before, I'm going to show you a couple of little methods of using it slightly differently. So first corner point and I pick a point near the door about there and left-click. So as you drag upwards to the right you can see obviously you've got the distances the vertical and horizontal distances the sizes of your rectangle. Now previously we use direct distance entry didn't we and then we just tabbed between each distance for our rectangle. This time I'm going to use a relative coordinate so I type at like so and can you see the input method changes on the dynamic input. So we're going at and we want three five zero zero comma type comma as if you're writing the coordinate down and then two thousand like that. So what that means is we're going to go from the first point of the rectangle that we clicked and then we're going to go 3,500 to the right along the x-axis and then 2,000 upwards on the y-axis. When I press ENTER you'll see that rectangle looks remarkably similar to other rectangles we've created other tables. Now you can do a quick sanity check there as well so staying in the Home tab on the Ribbon we can go to the Measure tool on the Utilities panel there, select distance on the fly out and you can measure. Endpoint click, endpoint click. That's 3,500. Select distance again on the menu, click on it and go endpoint click, endpoint click. And you can see that it's 3,500 by 2,000. When you want to come out of the distance command just click on exit at the bottom of the menu there. So that's another way of placing a rectangle. You start with the first point and then give a relative coordinate of the second point and AutoCAD then calculates the sizes of the rectangle for you. Now select that rectangle again click on it, right-click and erase it. Now we're going to draw the same size rectangle but we're going to use a slightly different method which is quite clever. So we're going to jump to the rectangle command again. Now a little trick I'm going to show you is if you right-click anywhere and go to recent input on your shortcut menu there's your rectangle command so any recent commands that you've used appear in that list so just right-click recent input rectangle there we go now it's asking us to specify the first corner point I'm gonna left-click about there near the door again like I did previously and there's my rectangle waiting to be placed now you'll notice down on the command line at the bottom of the screen I can specify an area dimensions or rotation as well. So if I right-click those input methods obviously appear on the shortcut menu as well. Select dimensions and you'll notice now that you're prompt for the length of the rectangle now that is the X axis distance so that's going to be your three five zero zero. Press ENTER and you then want the width of your rectangle that is the Y distance that will be 2,000 and press enter again and there's your rectangle now notice it's kind of waiting for another input and that other input is that you can now rotate the rectangle around the original origin point the point that you clicked so you can go in each quadrant around can you see a rotating as if that point is the zero zero of your rectangle so when you've got the position you want it to be in which is going to be there near the door just left click and it places it at the appropriate location. So if you've got a rectangle that you need to place and you know the size of the rectangle but you're not sure which rotation you want to put it in, which orientation, use that dimensions tool. Incredibly useful. Okay we're going to jump to the draw panel again, go to the circle command this time and select center radius. We're going to come over here to the top right area of the landscaped area. Pick a point about there, left-click and just drag outwards and type in a radius of 1,700 1 7 0 0 and press ENTER to confirm. Just make sure that your circle is inside the green landscaped area. I'm going to show you now how to create an octagonal table using the polygon command. So what we'll do we'll zoom in a bit so that we can see what we're doing that's always useful and then we're going to go up here to the draw panel again click on fly out here where you've got rectangle and polygon select polygon this time come into the drawing area prompts you for the number of sides now here's the thing about AutoCAD you can have three sides which is the minimum you can't have two sides think about that for a moment you can't have a two-sided polygon doesn't work three sides you can it's a triangle so as we go up the number of sides you can have a maximum as well so you can go from three all the way up to 1024 sides in the polygon command. Now I've never used 1024 sides and I don't know what the name of it is, you might need to google that. The maximum I've gone to is 12 sides which is a dodecahedron, but this time we want an octagonal table so that's going to be eight sides for our polygon. Press enter once you've typed in eight and it will now ask for the center of the polygon, that's why I placed the circle first. So hover over the edge of your circle and you should see see the center snap appear, move into the center and left click on the center snap. Now just before we do that you will need your object snaps set like so, make sure that center snap is on, click on the arrow again to lose the menu, you're still in the polygon command by the way. So center a polygon, use the center snap, left click. Now it gives you two choices when you're using a circle to create a polygon you can have it inscribed within the circle or circumscribed about the circle quick little memory aid for you here inscribed has the word in in it so you're in the circle circumscribed is about the circle going around the edge of the circle circumference of a circle circumscribed there's the word relationship you can use so if I go inscribed and select that on the menu Can you see now I'm going from the center of the circle out to a vertex on the polygon? So if I just go vertically upwards utilizing my polar tracking there, I get an intersection there left click There's my octagonal table using the inscribed polygon method Now I'll just go up to undo click on undo once there on the quick access toolbar. I Can then right-click? recent input there's polygon and and then number of sides again I did an undo so it won't remember the number of sides type in 8 and enter. Specify center of polygon same workflow touch on the edge of the circle into the center left click on the center snap. I'll select circumscribed this time and notice it now goes out from the center to a midpoint on an edge of the polygon if I come up here like so can you see there the intersection it places the polygon differently. That's the orientation I want so I don't need the circle anymore so I click on the circle, right click, erase the circle, if I zoom out a bit now I've got a nice rectangular outdoor table and a nice octagonal outdoor table using the rectangle command and the polygon command.

Contents