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Coming to Grips in IntelliCAD

Grips are a fast way to edit geometry without commands. If you're not using grips, check them out today.

Draw some entities in IntelliCAD and then select each of them, one at a time. When selected, each type of entity displays a series of small squares called grips at strategic positions. The positions are different depending on the type of entity as the image below shows.

The polygon has grips at each vertex. The line has a grip at each end and one at the middle. The polyline has a grip at each vertex. The spline has a vertex at each end and one in the middle. A circle has a grip at each quadrant and in the center. An arc has a grip at each end, the middle and the center.

Successive entities picked are added to the current selection set. Holding down the Shft key toggles the PICKADD system variable and allows selected entities to be deselected and removed from the selection set.

Pressing the Esc key deselects all entities and removes them from the current selection set.

Move

Grips at the center of circles, arcs and ellipses, and in the middle of lines can be clicked to move the entity. The grip becomes the base point and a second click determines the displacement point.

Stretch

Vertex grips and end point grips can be used to relocate individual points. IntelliCAD does not support the selection of multiple grips for these operations. As with the move operation, the selected grip becomes the base point and the second click is the displacement point.

Grips are far more effective when editing polyline vertices than the PEDIT command.

Splines

In the case of splines, the middle grip controls the spline tangent. Moving this grip changes the curvature of the spline. Use of this grip is safe and not restricted to chiropractic practitioners.

Infinite Lines & Rays

Infinite lines also display three grips. In this case the middle grip is used to move or relocate the infinite line. Either of the other two grips can be used to rotate the line around the middle grip. A ray is half an infinite line and has two grips only. The grip at the end of a ray is the relocation grip. The second grip is used to rotate the ray about the end grip.

Donuts

Does anyone actually use donuts anymore? They are altogether a horse of a different color. Donuts have four quadrant grips. Two of them can be used to resize and rotate the donut around the opposite grip. The other two define a third point of the respective arcs that form the donut. Dragging these grips resizes half the donut. Weird.

Grip Aids

When using grips the most common aids are the snap and grid settings and the entity snap modes. With entity snap modes, the key tips are:

• When selected before initiating a command, the entity snap mode is toggled on and persists whenever a point is required thereafter until toggled off.
• When selected after a command is activated, the snap mode is enabled only for the next point selection. This is useful for a one-time snap use or to over-ride a running snap mode for a single pick.

The fastest ways to access entity snaps is via the Snaps toolbar or the three-letter abbreviations typed at the kbd.

Controlling Grips

Grips can be turned on and off. You can also set the color and size of grips though a dialog box. Select Settings > Drawing Settings. Select the Display tab. In the Change Settings for list box select Grips. Tune the settings to suit yourself.

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