One for Micheal

I am assuming this feature is not already in there . .. when drawing a line, circle, square etc you can see the current dimension appearing in the info bar and the tool properties. I would like to see a way of setting a snap so that say with the shift key pressed it would draw in say 1mm or 5mm units. A bit like a grid snap. For me ideally it would be on 1mm increments. Say I draw a 32mm circle, i always have to select circle after drawing and type in 32 or type in the info box at bottom. I would like to remove this step so its all done in the drawing action.

Hope thats clear. If it can already be done I hold my head in shame and marvel at how dam good this software is!

Matt

Hi Matt, there is a "distance constraint" where you can make the point that you're drawing to be a specific distance away from the previous point, for like drawing a line of a specific length, but no "distance snap" that snaps the distance to different increment steps like I think you're asking about.

I would like to add that in, I'm a little bit unsure about where to put settings for it and how to activate it. Also it may be a bit tricky to get it to work on rectangles how you probably would like - the easiest way (that would just slide in to the current picking mechanism without many per-command changes) would be for the diagonal length (the length between the 2 points actually being picked) to get the snapping done to it but I don't think that's what you are looking for with rectangles.


I'm not quite following along with this part of what you wrote though:

you wrote:
> Say I draw a 32mm circle, i always have to select circle after drawing and type in 32 or type in the info box at bottom.

When you draw a circle, you can enter the radius directly at the second stage of the command, after you have picked the center point.

So for example, if you want to draw a 32mm circle, pick the center point and then type in 32 and push enter - your keystrokes will go into the Radius field in the upper-right command options area and then you will have drawn a 32mm circle right in the circle command.

You only need to use distance constraint for commands that do not already have a radius field built into them, like in line or polyline for example you can use it to control the length of the line segment since it controls the current endpoint distance from the previous point. When you want to enter in distance constraint in these cases you can just type in the number and push enter without needing to click on any specific control. If you just start typing in numbers for a command that does not have its own input fields your keystrokes will go into the x/y/z input control in the bottom command bar, and when you type in a single number into that x,y,z input control it does the same thing as if you had entered into the distance field below it.

- Michael