Both the newly selected object and the object that you selected previously display grips.
4. Click one of the grips on either object.
The blue square turns to a red square. This grip is now
Grip-editing options now appear on the command line. The first option to appear is STRETCH.
5. Press the spacebar repeatedly to cycle through the five grip-editing options on the command line:
** STRETCH **
Specify stretch point or [Base point/Copy/Undo/eXit]:
** MOVE **
Specify move point or [Base point/Copy/Undo/eXit]:
** ROTATE **
Specify rotation angle or [Base point/Copy/Undo/Reference/eXit]:
** SCALE **
Specify scale factor or [Base point/Copy/Undo/Reference/eXit]:
** MIRROR **
Specify second point or [Base point/Copy/Undo/eXit]:
The grip-editing option displayed on the command line changes as you press the spacebar. If you move the cursor (without picking) in between each press of the spacebar, the appearance of your selected object changes as you display each option. As you can see, each of the grip-editing operations resembles the ordinary AutoCAD command of the same name. Choosing STRETCH, for example, causes a stretched version of the object to appear on-screen.
Pressing the spacebar a bunch of times is a good way to become familiar with the grip-editing modes, but there’s a more direct way to choose a particular mode. After you click a grip to make it hot, right-click to display the grip-editing menu. That menu contains all the grip-editing options plus some other choices, as shown in Figure 6-14.
Figure 6-14: The gripediting cursor menu.
6. Press the spacebar until STRETCH (or the option you want) reappears as the grip-editing option.
7. Move the hot grip in the direction in which you want to stretch (or otherwise manipulate) your object.
AutoCAD dynamically updates the image of the object to show you what the modified object will look like before you click the final location.
8. Click again to finish the grip-editing operation.
The selected object with the hot grip updates. The object with the cold grips doesn’t change.
9. Click the same grip that you chose in Step 4 (now in a different location) to make it hot.
10. This time, move the cursor near one of the grips on the other object. When you feel the magnetic pull of the grip on the other object, click again to connect the hot grip with the other grip.
The object point represented by the hot grip now coincides exactly with the grip on the other object.
11. Press Esc to deselect all objects and remove all grips.
Figure 6-15 shows a hot (red) endpoint grip of a line being connected to the cold (blue) endpoint grip of another line. The ghosted line shows the original position of the line being edited, and the continuous line shows the new position. Using a grip in this way as a visible object snap offers the same advantage as using single point object snaps, as described in Chapter 4: It ensures precision by making sure that objects meet exactly.
Figure 6-15: Using grips to connect two objects.
You can experiment with all the grip-editing options to find out how they affect a selected object.
Because MOVE and STRETCH are the most useful grip-editing modes, I cover them more specifically.
Back in the days of manual drafting, moving objects was a big pain in the eraser. You had to erase the stuff you wanted to move and redraw the objects in their new location. In the process, you usually ended up erasing parts of other stuff that you didn’t want to move and left smudged lines and piles of eraser dust everywhere. CAD does away with all the fuss and muss of moving objects, and AutoCAD grip editing is a great way to make it happen. The following steps describe how to move objects:
1. Select one or more objects.
Use any combination of the three editing modes — single object, bounding box, or crossing box — described in the section, “Grab It,” earlier in this chapter.
2. Click one of the grips to make it hot.
At this point in your editing career, it doesn’t matter which grip you click. As you become more familiar with grip editing, you’ll discover that certain grips serve as better reference points than others for particular editing operations.
3. Right-click anywhere in the drawing area and choose Move from the cursor menu.
4. Move the cursor to a different location and click.
As you move the cursor around, AutoCAD displays the tentative new positions for all the objects, as shown in Figure 6-16. After you click, the objects assume their new positions.
Figure 6-16: Dragging objects in the middle of the MOVE grip-editing operation.
5. Press Esc to deselect all objects and remove all grips.
If you were paying attention during “A gripping example,” earlier in the chapter, you may have noticed while pressing the spacebar that COPY was not among the five grip-editing modes. Why not? Because every grip mode includes a copy option (as the command line prompts shown in “A gripping example,” earlier in this chapter indicate). In other words, you can STRETCH with copy, MOVE with copy, ROTATE with copy, SCALE with copy, and MIRROR with copy.
The copy option leaves the selected objects in place and does the editing operation on a new copy of the objects.
By far the most common use for the copy option is with the MOVE grip-editing mode. If you think about “MOVE with copy” for about two seconds, you’ll realize that it’s just a complicated way of saying “copy.” The following steps show how to copy objects quickly by using grip editing:
1. Select one or more objects.
2. Click any one of the grips to make it hot.
3. Right-click anywhere in the drawing area and choose Move from the cursor menu.
If you want to copy objects in the normal sense of the word “copy,” you must choose the MOVE grip-editing mode first. Otherwise, you’ll be copying with the STRETCH grip-editing mode.
4. Right-click again and choose Copy from the cursor menu.
5. Move the cursor to a different location and click.
After you click, new objects appear in the new location.
6. Move the cursor to additional locations and click there if you want to make additional copies.
7. Press Esc twice — once to end the copying operation and once to deselect all objects and remove all grips.
