All AutoCAD geometry has grips, you know, those little blue squares that appear when you select something?
Different grips do different things. For example, the centre point grip of a circle will allow you to to move the circle and the grips on the quadrant of the circle will alter the radius of the circle.
However grips aren’t just for stretching geometry, grips can be a quick and easy way of accessing the ‘Modify’ commands that are relevant to that geometry.
Loading ...Here are four tips to help you make use AutoCAD’s grip editing tools.
Tip #1
When you pick on a grip, look at the command line!
You will see a short list of options available to you including ‘Base point’ and ‘Copy’. By typing ‘B’ for base point at the command line and hitting ‘Enter’ you are free to pick another point to move or stretch your geometry by. By typing ‘C’ at the command line you will copy the geometry as you move/stretch it.
Tip #2
When you’ve picked on a grip*, right click!
Right clicking on a Grip will display a short cut menu of commands to modify that object.
Tip #3
Selecting multiple grips.
Pick an entity to highlight it. Now hold down the shift key and pick on a grip. The grip will highlight in red and you are now free to pick another grip. You can even pick grips on multiple entities. When you have picked all the grips you need to, you can now perform an operation on all of the grips at once.
Tip #4
Turn Dynamic input on!
Grips and Dynamic Input go together like melted cheese and sweet chilli sauce. To turn Dynamic Input on click on the icon in the status bar.
Select an entity and then hover over a grip. You will get immediate feedback on the properties of the Geometry.
When you click on a grip you will see options for editing the geometry right there in front of your eyes!
If the highlighted tooltip isn’t the feature you want to change, just keep hitting the ‘Tab’ key until the feature you want to change is highlighted.
You can use the ‘Down’ Arrow key to pick other options and the ‘up’ Arrow key to repeat previous input.
Loading ...Do you have a Fifth tip I can include? Why not leave a comment with your suggestions!
*Grips are will not show up for objects on locked layers.
Keep your geometry organised with AutoCAD’s polylines.
About the author
- More at
You can have the latest posts from the CAD Setter Out Blog delivered straight to you via Email.
You have simply convinced me that my view, that grips waste time, is correct. I have carefully arranged my system so I never type commands, so I can keep my left hand on the mouse and my right on the numeric pad except when typing actual text. So as soon as I see “use Shift” “type B” etc I know this tool is not for me. What no one has been able to explain to me is what problem Grips solves? None that I’ve ever seen!
I guess it depends on your drawing style. I use Grips a lot for stretching geometry when the screen is to cluttered to do a window selection. I use the new ‘add node’ and ‘convert to arc’ options for polylines a lot, and of course, there is no other way to edit a hatch that has come adrift from its boundary.
Paul