Okay, so I'm back to a blank screen now and I'm going to select the polyline.
And you might have noticed and we did mention it in the last chapter as we're drawing, you can see
when we move our cursor, we sometimes get these kind of green highlighted objects on your cursor and
you may not see them.
You may see them.
We're going to look at those and setting them up now.
We're going to see what they are and how you set those up.
Okay.
But what they're doing, they allow you to snap your cursor onto a specific point or part of an object.
So let me close that.
Let's say I wanted to draw a just this kind of shape here and it was closed.
Okay.
So it was the end of the line, met the start of a line.
Now if I didn't have those snap on, I would be doing it by eye and I'd be like, okay, that's about
on there.
But the more you zoom in, the further away you are.
And if you don't get those points exactly aligned, it's not going to work out in terms of measuring
angles and filling it with a color and that kind of thing.
You need the end to be exactly on the start.
Okay?
And the way you do that is by using things called oh snaps.
So if I just exit that your oh, snap settings are down here.
There's kind of a rectangle with a small square in the corner.
Okay.
And next to that you've got a pull down arrow.
If you click that, these are all the options you get.
So this is basically where your line can snap to.
I'm just going to turn all mine off.
You can turn them on and off by clicking them and you'll see you get a tick next to the ones that are
turned on.
So if I just wanted the end points, I'm just going to select that, okay?
And I'm going to click off here.
Now, it's not it's not on yet.
All I've done is select the points I want to snap to when the command is turned on and what will happen.
You'll turn this command on and off as you go.
So to turn it on and off, you can click that and you'll see it goes blue to be turned on.
I'm going.
It glows when it's turned off.
But most people use the do use the shortcut key for this one just because it's used so often.
And the key for this one is f three on your keyboard and you'll see if I press F three, it turns on
and off.
Okay, so I'm going to turn that on.
And again, all we've got selected is End Point at the moment.
So if I go to draw another line.
When I hover over this line, you'll see it comes up with these green squares.
Depending which end point I'm nearest to.
So all I need to do is hover over an object and it will go to its end point.
Okay.
And if I was to now just hover about there when this green square comes up, if I left click to start
a line, you'll see actually started.
On my End Point.
Exactly.
On the end point.
I don't need to zoom in, try and do it by eye.
And if I want to finish it on the end of this line, all I need to do is go nearby till that.
Square comes up and left click and it's exactly on that endpoint.
Okay.
There's no guessing.
It's exactly on there.
So that is basically what our snaps do and you can put on all these different options.
So let's look at some of the others.
We have midpoint.
Okay.
So as you've probably guessed, rather than snapping to the end, we'll also get one now at the middle
and it's a triangle and it says midpoint.
So sometimes you want to have a line exactly at the middle of something.
Exactly.
At the middle of another line.
We want a line coming off exactly the middle of this line.
We can just have that snap to endpoint and all we need do is get nearby and it will automatically do
it.
Okay.
So some of the others center, if you're working with circles, maybe you have a couple of circles you
want to draw a line from the center of that one to that one.
Okay, so we'll select the line and we'll put on the circle.
And now all we need to do is go near that circle and you get center.
Okay?
So again, if we just near that circle, as long as we get the green center symbol and click.
It snapped us right to the center of that circle.
Okay.
No guesswork involved.
We'll forget that one.
No, we're not.
We haven't done nodes.
Nodes are basically points.
We'll look at those later quadrants.
So maybe we wanted the line to be at the top of this circle.
Okay, so these are your quadrants, top right, bottom left.
And it's exactly a kind of 12:00 position, 3:00, 6:00, 9:00.
Okay.
And you know that they are exactly those positions because you snap to them intersection.
So maybe we add a line crossing there.
We want to draw a line from the intersection of these two lines.
Okay.
So when we get nearby, you'll see it's hard to see this one.
It's basically putting a green cross.
And but it will come up with a word intersection as well.
So you get nearby and it will snap.
Now, you might notice it's becoming less and less easy to snap to it.
And that's because we've got more things on.
So when you get here, you might.
It's easier to go to the midpoint intersection.
Okay.
You do end up sometimes in busy joins.
It's hard to actually see what snap you've got.
So in that case you might want to turn things on and off.
So maybe let's turn midpoint off here and now we can snap easier to the intersection.
And we know that that line starts where those two lines cross.
Well.
Well, I'm just going to go through the main ones.
Use some of them you'll hardly ever use perpendicular, so we'll turn that on.
Let's say we wanted to draw a line and it was from the end there, but it had to meet this line.
Exactly a right angle that's perpendicular.
So now when I go nearby, you'll see we get this perpendicular sign, which is a right angle if I let
it snap there.
I know this line has met that line at 90 degrees.
Okay, tangent.
So let's see if we're drawing, if we've got a circle and we want a line to come off here and we don't
want it to go to the quadrant, we want it kind of to a tangent, we can have tangent selected.
I'll turn off quadrant just to make it easier and now it will get this tangent command so it meets that
circle at the correct tangent.
Okay.
Again, you don't use it a lot, but when you do, when you need it, you really do need it.
So that's tangent and nearest.
So maybe you want a line to come off this line.
At no specific point.
Not the midpoint.
No specific point.
But it did need to be on this line somewhere.
It did need to meet the line.
You can have nearest and as long as you're near that line, wherever you click will actually be on the
line itself.
Okay.
It might not it won't be the midpoint, it won't be any specific part of that line, but it will be
on that line and apparent intersection.
That's more for when you've got things in 3D.
So intersection was two lines crossing.
So that would be the intersection.
When you're working in 3D, it might be the lines are crossing in your current view, but they don't
actually cross.
The one might be higher.
It's a bit advanced to get into at the moment, but that's basically what it is.
So they're the main ones.
What I tend to have is I have mine set up at endpoint midpoint intersection.
Okay, nearest can be quite dangerous if you want.
If you have nearest on then it's, it's hard to get to endpoints midpoints because you've got nearest
turned on.
So you're always going to have that option to just be to just be at the nearest point.
Okay.
So I tend to only have it on if I need it.
Um, so endpoint midpoint, intersection and perpendicular usually have those on.
Okay.
And they're the settings kind of a default settings I'll have which allow you to just snap to end points,
but you can turn those on and off all the time with the F3 key.
So that's how I tend to work and most people tend to work.
You'll have those on and it'll just be a case of turning the whole setting off and on with F3 while
having the having it set up this way.
Okay, that will do for, I'd say a good 80% of the time.
Now, the other thing we need to look at here is something called ortho.
If we're drawing a line we've already seen, we can give it an angle of zero.
Okay?
And it will just be in that plane and maybe the next line, we can give it an angle of 90 and it will
just be in that plane.
But a lot of the time you do want to work in kind of 90 degrees.
So you do want to work.
Exactly horizontal or exactly vertical.
And you don't want to go to the hassle of putting in this angle all the time.
We have the option.
We have something called ortho, which is down here.
And if we turn that on by clicking it and you'll see it highlights.
Now, when we do a line, it will only let us go in these 90 degree planes, either vertical or horizontal.
So that comes in really handy when you want to get exactly straight lines at 90 degrees, because with
that on you, you can just draw a freehand like that or you can just put in lengths.
And press return and not worry about it being exactly 90 degrees because you've got this offer turned
on.
Okay, so a bit like, Oh snap, this is a setting you will turn on and off all the time.
And that's why we also use this as a key shortcut, which is F8.
Okay, so you'll see it turn on and off with F8 and when you're drawing you will be turning on and off
snap and offer quite a lot.
So F3 and F8, you'll be turning on and off quite a lot.
Okay.
And that's something to get used to.
So I want you now to just using your line.
If a line or polyline doesn't matter in this case, practice those ortho settings at the right angles
and the oh snap settings.
So moving from midpoints and intersections and end points and that kind of thing and get used to using
them and also turning them on and off.
Remember, it's F3 to turn.
Oh snap on and off and F8.
Okay, so that's something to practice.
Just do that with some lines and when you've got used to it, I'll see you in the next chapter.