Master the art of annotating a curve, aligning elements, and creating a new three-point UCS in CAD with this intricate guide. The article provides a detailed walkthrough on how to manipulate and present geometric data effectively.
Key Insights
- The article illustrates the process of annotating a curve in CAD, including precise steps to copy and move data, and to insert specific measurements such as radius, length, and angle.
- The instruction focuses on the use of the align command to systematically position text and other elements in the design, ensuring clarity and readability.
- Finally, the author introduces the concept of creating a new three-point UCS (User Coordinate System) which helps to align the data with the final presentation, thus simplifying the process of preparing the deliverable AS 1.0 file.
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I would like for us now to focus on annotating the curve. So I'm going to type list, and I will select the curve, and I can see that its radius is 78. So I will CTRL+C this, close the interface, go to text, give it a starting point, accept the height, accept the rotation angle.
I will type in R =, CTRL+V, Enter, Enter. So that's the radius. Now if I go back and press F2, you can see here's the length.
So I will CTRL+C this, close the interface, go to Mtext. I'm just going to hit the End key and go down one more line. You can see it just continues the text, and I will type in L =, CTRL+V, and I will put in the foot mark.
Enter, Enter, CTRL+S to save. Now, I remember that the angle was 78, but we also have our No Plot guidelines here. So I can always go up to Annotate, and I can go to Dimension Angular, and I can say from this line to this line, place it there, and you can see that it's showing right here 78 degrees.
So I can once again return to the Home tab, go to Mtext, you can see the length is highlighted, go to the End key, Enter, and I can type A = 78°, Enter, Enter, CTRL+S to save. If I want to keep this information here, I can go to my Match Properties icon, choose one of these lines, place it here, and so I've now put that angular measurement on the No Plot layer, CTRL+S to save. Now, I want to move some things around.
One thing I see is that when I look at the handout, and I look here, I see that I did not include all of the minutes and seconds. So I'm going to double-click on this, press the End key, type 0 minutes, 0 seconds, Enter, Enter, and now I'm going to move this A up to there, move the length down to there, and move the radius down to about here. I'm going to move this down a little bit farther.
I'm going to use the Align command, A-L-I-G-N, choose this item, Enter, here's my first point, click to place it, I'm typing N-E-A for Nearest to here, the other point would be here, N-E-A for Nearest to there, Enter, Enter. Do you see what happened? Do you see how it messed up? Well, the running object snaps are turned on. So I'm going to press F3 to turn my running object snaps off, and I'm going to choose this item, select the text, go to Properties, and I will give it a rotation angle of E for East, close the interface, hit Escape, go back and type Align, here's the text, Enter to say I'm done, take this base point, place it near the bottom here, choose this point, place it near there, Enter, Enter. Hit the Space bar to repeat the Align command, choose the text, Enter, here's my base point, click to place it, N-E-A for Nearest to there, choose this point, N-E-A Nearest for there, Enter, Enter.
Hit the Space bar to repeat the command, choose the length, Enter, base point here, destination Nearest to here, second point here, N-E-A for Nearest, place it there, Enter, Enter, CTRL+S to save. Now I have all of my annotations around the site, but I need to move them so they're consistently placed around the property. So I'm just going to go to Move, choose this item, and move it to the outside, choose this item, move it to the outside of there, choose this, move it to the outside of there, choose this, move it to the outside of there, and I tend to prefer putting it closer to the more solid component of the line, then move this to the outside of there, and move this to the outside of there, zoom out, CTRL+S to save.
Now, what we know, though, is that everything we have drawn has been relative to True North. If I look at the North arrow, I see that North is up. I see my title block, but I know that I'm going to need to present this information on a sheet.
I know that I've made my text ten times larger because the scale factor will be 1:10. I've made my Point of Beginning annotation ten times larger. I've made my North arrow ten times larger.
So everything is scaled up appropriately, and I know that this is a metes and bounds drawing, and again, metes and bounds drawings themselves must be created with North going up. But what I'd like to do is to start thinking about my A-S-1.0 sheet, my architectural site plan sheet. So I've brought the No Plot view in so I can start using that for my A-S-1.0 sheet.
What I'm going to do is to align my No Plot view with the right-hand side of the property. So I'm going to type Align, A-L-I-G-N, select the title block, Enter to say I'm done. I'm going to press F3 to get my running object snaps on.
I want my first alignment point to go from the corner of the No Plot view to the lower-left corner of the property line. My second point will be the top-right corner of the No Plot view and will align to the location here. Are there any other points? No.
Enter, Enter. So you can see what I've now done is I have made the No Plot view align properly with the site. So I'm going to move the No Plot view so that the site itself is relatively well centered within my No Plot view, CTRL+S to save.
One of the next things I'd like to do, because again this is a metes and bounds drawing, the geometry must always be maintained in the world coordinate system with decimal units and northing angles relative to True North. But one of the next things we're going to start doing is to prepare the information on this sheet for our deliverable A-S-1.0 file. So instead of rotating anything, I'm going to create a new three-point UCS.
So I'm going to go to View and choose New UCS. So again what I did was I went on top of one of the panels, I selected Show Panels and chose Coordinates, and I'm going to select Three-Point UCS. My origin will be the end of here, positive X the end of here, positive Y the end of here.
Again you can see looking at the icon I have created a new UCS. I see it says "unnamed, " I will right-click and rename it with the name ALIGNED. So again, all I'm trying to do is to create a new UCS which is aligned with my final presentation.
I will then type Plan, Enter, Enter and you can see that what's happening is I'm in this UCS but the view now reflects the expected final presentation. If you would please get caught up to this point and then we'll continue on from here.