AutoCAD Object Snap

By Anite Ramgi 

Object snaps are a great tool to precisely and easily input objects onto a drawing without manually pinpointing them to the exact location. This is ideal if you want to place an object accurately to a point such as the endpoint, midpoint or perpendicular of another object. You can also effortlessly snap to close geometric shapes, so that hatches cannot “leak out”.

Objects snaps can be turned on or off by pressing the F3 key, or by pressing the object snap button on the status bar.

There are numerous types of object snaps available. These can be activated from the status bar, or from the Drafting Settings, or by typing OSNAP on the command bar and choosing from the snaps available from the pop-window.

You can also turn Object Snap Tracking on and off by pressing F11 or from this pop-window. This feature shows a visual tracking representation of the snap.

The current activated snap can be temporarily disabled and overridden by another snap. You can do this by right clicking and choosing the required snap.

Below are the various of snaps available and how they can be used:

Endpoint: snaps to the endpoint or a corner of a geometric object

Midpoint: snaps to the middle point of a geometric object

Center: snaps to the centre point of a circle, ellipse, arcs or an elliptical arc

Geometric Center: snaps to the centre point of closed polylines and splines

Node: snaps to points, dimensions definition point or a dimensional text origin

Quadrant: snaps to the quadrant or “corner” points of a circle, ellipse, arc or elliptical arc

Intersection: snaps to the intersection points of geometric objects

Extension: shows temporary extension line or arc when move the cursor over the endpoint of the object

Insertion: snaps to the insertion point of objects which have an insertion point defined

Perpendicular: snaps perpendicular to geometric objects

Tangent: snaps tangent to an arc, circle, ellipse, elliptical arc, polyline arc or spline

Nearest: snaps to the nearest point of objects

Apparent Intersection: snaps to a visual intersection between two objects which do not intersect in current view

Parallel: constrains parallel to the reference line