So another modify command we have available to us is the array tool and the array tool.
It's good for when you want to create multiple copies of of something in a particular pattern.
So I'm going to just draw out something here.
This is going to be a floor plan and it's going to be
50mm.
Let's just make it 50mm by 50m, side by 50m, just to keep things easy.
And up here.
I'm going to go.
I'm going to draw a column.
Okay.
And again, to make it easy, it's 500mm by 500mm.
So that's a column in the corner.
Now, I want to space these columns out.
I want columns in a kind of a grid pattern all the way over this building.
So you could copy and.
And let's say there are five meters apart.
I could copy it and kind of go five metres and do it that way.
And then it's a long winded way of doing it.
And as always, without covers, usually easy ways of doing things like that.
So the easy way in this case is the array command.
So if we click on that, we now get asked to select the objects and I'm going to select that one and
right click and now it comes up.
With all these options and a new toolbar and a kind of visual.
And display of what's going on here.
So already it's done four columns and three rows.
Okay, So rows are going up that way.
Columns are this way.
And you can see that up here, it's done four columns and three rows.
And if I was to change this to six columns and.
It updates here to six.
The spacing.
It's got.
So the space between them is 750.
Now, bear in mind that's from the same similar points.
It's not when it says space between it doesn't mean this space, it would mean the space from.
But top left corner of the square to that top left corner of the square.
And you can see it's 500, which we know plus 250.
So it's it's the distance between similar points and then it's got the total distance, which would
be the distance from here all the way along.
Now, we can also drag it out here and do it with the arrows.
And we could do it that way.
Maybe we knew the distance between was five meters and same that way.
Now it's going.
Now we can just use these arrows.
Okay.
And it's not going to quite reach the end because it's 50 divided by five.
So we could move this.
Maybe I'm just going to do it by eye.
Maybe it was something like that.
Okay.
And that's our columns.
And we can set distances.
Maybe it's changed.
So we're actually four meters separation.
And that means we get an extra couple of rows.
Extra couple of columns and rows.
So it's so easy to create multiple instances of the same object and you can edit arrays.
Once you've done an array, if you click on it, you get options to edit it to replace items and all
that kind of thing.
So arrays can be really powerful.
They can save you loads of time if you're doing something like anytime you're doing things uniformly
spaced like that, you want to be thinking of arrays.
But maybe.
Maybe I add a circle and.
Something like that.
And I wanted to put these around this circle here.
It's the same thing.
It's still an array.
So with arrays, there's there's three types.
There's rectangular path array and polar array.
And the next one we'll look at is polar array.
Okay, so we've looked at rectangular array.
So if you pull that down and go to polar array.
Now, this is when you want things in degrees rather than rows and columns.
And again, it will say select objects.
So I want that one right click.
And now it needs a center point.
So where is the rotation around?
And it's going to be the center of that circle.
And now again, you'll see it's already done a visual kind of display.
It's giving it a guess, but I can change that.
So.
We have a number of items which in this case it's given us six items with 60.
This is in degrees now.
So 60 degrees between each item and it's filling the whole 360 degrees.
Well, maybe I wanted many.
Maybe I wanted like a clock face.
I wanted 12 items.
Okay.
Now it's going to update.
It's going to change the the angle between because obviously, if 360 divided by 12 is 30.
So now we've got our items there.
We don't have to go over three full, 360.
We could go just 180.
But something's always got to change.
One of these has always got to change.
If you go down to 180 and you keep 12 items, it's going to now be 16 degrees between the two.
Or you could keep it as six items and now it'll go back and it'll you see, you can fiddle around with
these.
Okay.
And you can change what you want.
You can also have rows here.
So maybe you wanted six rows going out there.
You can do that kind of thing.
Let's put that back to 360.
And so you can do these kind of patterns here and you can have levels.
You can change things, so you can replace items and reset.
Again, it's fun to just play around with and you work out what exactly how you can use it.
But that's the basic method behind it.
And you can use these arrows to change settings as well.
So you can actually snap to points on existing drawings, for instance.
So that's a polar array and this is a rectangular array.
Let me just make that smaller.
Now we have a type of array.
I'm going to do a polyline.
I'd imagine this was a fence.
Maybe it goes up and it's got, let's say, an arc and then a line.
Maybe you've got for some reason you've got a line like that and you want to put something along it.
So this is a fence.
It's a weird looking fence, but it's a fence and this is a fence post.
And I want fence posts all the way along this line.
Then we use this path array.
So we click that and again we select the objects, right click.
And now we select the path and we click that and same thing comes up here, gives us a guess about what
we want.
And usually I'd say in this case you would have something like a distance between.
So maybe you've got ten meters between.
And so you can set out these fence posts along this line and you could change that.
So maybe you just knew the total number of items or the total number.
Again, you can have rows, so you can do that kind of thing.
Levels, which is more a 3D thing going up in height and associative.
You can change base points, you can change directions measurement, you can align them.
So in this case, it was a circle.
If I can do that.
Suppose we now draw drawn a rectangle and I'll do a suppose I've drawn a rectangle.
Okay.
And I'm just going to put that rectangle there.
Suppose I've done a rectangle along here.
I do that array again.
I'll select the object.
Select the path.
Now you can see what happens is the rectangle rotates and it follows a curve and the angle of a line.
And that's because it has this line items on.
If that was turned off now you'll see the rectangle remains in its same position all the way around,
so there's different options you can use.
Again, play about with it.
There's times when this comes in very handy.
It's another of those commands that you don't use all the time.
It depends what you're doing, but I don't use it all the time.
But every now and then when I use it, I really do need it.
You can see it's a massive time saver and that's arrays.
So yeah, have a play about with them and fairly self-explanatory the old versions of AutoCAD, it doesn't
have as much of a kind of previewing and dragging with grips, so it was harder to see what was going
on.
Now with these new versions, the way it gives you that preview straight away and lets you drag things
around, it makes it so much easier to visualize.
But that's arrays.