Subtitles of the Movie

We're now going to look at Polar Tracking in AutoCAD and again this is controlled by the Status Bar in AutoCAD and by the Status Bar icons down at the bottom here in AutoCAD 2009. Now what you will find is the Ortho setting as soon as you switch on Polar Tracking or switch off. Watch the Status Bar, as soon as I click on Polar Tracking switched it on; you'll see that Ortho sends itself off here. You cannot run Ortho and Polar Tracking at the same time. What we're also going to do is we're going to switch off the Grid Display and we're going to switch off the Snap Mode. We do not need those particular settings when we're using Polar Tracking, what we do need are our Object Snaps here which are already presets for this particular example and we need our Polar Tracking. We will cover Object Snaps later. Right clicking over the Polar Tracking icon, again you can go into settings, this takes us into the Drafting Settings Dialog Box into the Polar Tracking tab, make sure that Polar Tracking is on and you can then change your Polar Angle Settings. In this case we're going to replicate the Orthogonal or Ortho setting by setting increment angles of 90 degrees, left and right, up and down in this particular case. Notice you can also add new angles if you need to, particular angles. Let's say for example 79 degrees or 58 degrees. Notice that with the Object Snap Tracking settings here when you use Object Snap Tracking you can change the settings of the Polar Tracking if required. These are switched ON with the buttons here and the same with the Polar Angle Measurement. We're going to use the absolute angle measurement which works to the current user coordinate system. If we set it relative to the last segment the Polar Angle will be measured relatively to the last segment regardless of which angle that last segment was drawn in. For simplicity we're going to use the absolute settings there. Once all our settings have been set, we click on the OK button. We now have Polar Tracking ready to go, now what we're going to do here is use a different Partitions Layer, you'll notice the existing partitions are already in place. What we're going to do here is use the Object Snaps off of the existing partitions and use the Polar Tracking to place our lines on the drawing and [00:02:21 ] we're going to use the Dynamic Distance Entry Option as well. So let's go to the Line Command over here on the Ribbon again and I'm going tOSNAP to this end point here on the partitioning and I'm going to left click. As I drag across there's my distance entry on the Dynamic Input, all I do there is type in the distance I require which is 500 and press Enter. There is my line segment drawn at 0 degrees because I'm using the Polar Tracking. Can you see that dotted line there? That is the Polar Tracking. If I now go upwards it'll click in at 90 degrees because the Polar Tracking is set to 90, so as I track outwards it stays at 90 degrees and just the distance changes. In this case I finish with my line so I press Enter again and you can see the new partition line in place. What I'm going to do now is utilize a little bit of Object Snap Tracking as well. I'm going to place a line that is 500 from the end point of this line here to the right horizontally again using the Polar Tracking. I click on the Line Command, I ensure that Polar Tracking is on, down here and Object Snaps and Object Snap Tracking. I'm going to hover over this End Point Snap and then I'm going to drag to the right. Can you see the dashed line that appears? That is my Extension Snap and my Object Snaps which we'll cover later. But if I now type in a distance of 500, what that will do is utilizing the Polar Tracking at 0 degrees; it'll place the start of the next line at 500 units to the right from the end of the existing line. Notice now my line starts 500 units away. I track to the midpoint of the window there and I left click, Enter to finish and you can see there that my partitions are now in place. The Polar Tracking also allows me to work with other angles, so I may want to place a partition at say 45 degrees. I can go into the Line Command; I can then inside the command, right click on the Polar Tracking and notice the default angles are available on a fly-out menu. This is available only in AutoCAD 2009, previous versions of AutoCAD I would have to go down to settings here and go into the dialog box. But I'm going to switch it now to 45 degrees and now I can place a line from this end point here and coming up there's my 45 degrees and what I'm going to do is track it to there like that and I'm then going to hit Enter. That is an Entrance Partition and what we have there is a partition that basically stops people coming in the front door seeing into the office environment, a privacy partition.