Editing Objects with AutoCAD - Section 4

CHAPTER 19: PINZAMIENTOS

In your work with Autocad, surely you have already noticed on multiple occasions that when selecting one or more objects, when we are not executing a command, they are highlighted with small boxes and, in some cases, triangles that we call grips, which, as first feature, they appear at key points on the object. In a line, for example, they appear at the ends and at the midpoint. In a circle they appear at their quadrant points and at the center. You may have also noticed that it is possible to select more than one object and that each one will display its respective grips. It should also be added that the grips disappear when we press the “Escape” key.
As you can easily verify, the work with the grips is extremely intuitive, so in many cases it exceeds the possibilities of the editing commands that we reviewed in the last chapter.
The editing options that are derived from grips are organized into two groups. The first, and present in older versions of Autocad, is called "Gripping Modes" and the second, of more recent implementation, is called "Multifunction Grips", whose characteristics depend on the type of object that we have selected.

Let's see in order the two groups of work options of these tools.

19.1 Clamping Modes

We said that when you click on an object, it presents its grips. If we in turn click on any of these grips, then the command line window will show us the option to edit by default, Stretch, unless that grip is not suitable for this task. In other words. If we select a grip on one end of a line or a bow, then we can stretch that object without restrictions. If, instead, we select the midpoint of a line or the center of a circle, we will then have a grip from which we can not perform this task. In these cases, the grip will only allow us to move the object.

However, when we select a suitable grip to stretch or move an object, we are actually in grip modes. The command line window shows the first stretch mode and its options, Base Point and Copy, but when you press the space bar on the keyboard, you can cycle through the other grip editing modes: Stretch, Rotate, Scale, Scroll and Symmetry. Its mode of operation is very similar to its pair of editing commands that are in the Modify section, so we can see them in video as a whole.

19.2 Multifunction Grips

If instead of clicking on a grip, which activates the grip modes that we have just reviewed, we simply place the cursor over it, then what we will get is a contextual menu with different editing options depending on the object in question. Now, it is important to mention that not all grips present a menu, only those we call, precisely, Multifunction Grips.

We already mentioned that the options of the menu of multifunction grips depend on the type of object in question. So let's take a look at the multi-function grips of some relevant objects.