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Practical method for entering angles: POLAR TRACKING

11 Comments Jan-26-2009 | Posted by Erhan Toker | Printable Version | Level |

Everyone has used the famous F8 button ( ORTHO ON/OFF ) of AutoCAD. Whenever we need 4 main angle directions we press F8 or we used to press. I haven’t been using F8 button since AutoCAD 2002®. Because I prefer using F10 ( POLAR TRACKING ON/OFF ) button, which is more useful than that. In this article, I would like to explain this to you.

Parallelogram drawn in Fig. 1 has 60 degree angles. As soon as we want to draw another line near it with the same angle and length, we will get use of OBJECT SNAP TRACKING and POLAR TRACKING. As you know, ORTHO only works with 0, 90, 180 and 270 degrees. However, we need 60 degree angle. To achieve this, we should enter POLAR TRACKING settings.

Fig. 2.

You can enter settings by right clicking with your mouse on the box with POLAR written on it, which is over the status field on the bottom of AutoCAD main window (Fig. 2). When you enter settings, window seen in Fig. 3 will open up.

Fig.3.

I will suggest you to choose 30 degree as ‘Increment angle’ in this window. With this setting, you adjust 12 number of main angles in your working area as 0, 30, 60, 90, 120, 150, 180, 210, 240, 270, 300 and 330. As you like, you can add degrees like 45, 135, 225 and 345 to these angles. POLAR TRACKING workes with the properties of OSNAP TRACKING at the same time. For example, if you come close to end of a line with the mouse cursor, a small ‘+’ sign ( BLIP ) will form up and you will see dotted extensions as you move towards a certain direction (Fig. 1). In order to explain ‘Track using all polar settings’ option, I am leaving this subject with this much information; because OSNAP TRACKING will be the subject of another article. Leaving ‘Polar Angle measurement’ option as ‘Absolute’, will enable you to get 0, 30, 60 … angles at the end. The other option enables you to add 30, 60 … on the finally catched angle. After you complete the settings, you can close the window by ‘OK’ button. After this stage, you can see the effect of changing these settings, by simply drawing a line.