Drawing a Jack in the Box w/ AutoCAD & MSCAD Questions

[tribdog]

I have a bunch of points and I need to turn them into a drawing of a Jack in the Box. The guy who shot it in couldn't get quite a few points, but he did measure them with a tape and gave me the dimensions. I've been using the offset command to put in lengths he supplied, but that involves a lot of drawing and erasing. My question is is there a way to tell AutoCad how long of a line you want? Also I'm using MSCad not AutoCad but I think the commands are all the same.

 

[WaR]

Well, you could use the "@" comand.
For example, let's say you want to draw a line that is 10 units long at an angle of, say, 45 degrees. What you would do is specify the beginning point of the line, just like you would normaly, then you type on the comand box $$@10<45$$ (no spaces in between)
The @ symbol tells AutoCAD that the next instructions should be followed. the 10 is the length, the < signs tells AutoCAD in what angle the line should be drawn. This is handy when you need to draw specific lines at various angles with respect to something else than the grid.

 

[Gokul43201]

If what you're doing is essentially drawing lines between co-ordinates, you could use the line command with absolute co-ordinates. If you know the co-ordinates of some of the points relative to others, you can use the line command with relative co-ordinates (line from x,y,z to @x1,y1,z1 draws a line from (x,y,z) to a new point that has distances of x1, y1 and z1 from the first point, along the 3 directions).

I suspect you problem is actually more tricky than this. WaR's suggestion is good for drawing lines of a certain length.

 

[enigma]

As the others have said, the '@' key tells autocad that to use coordinates relative to the last entry.

 

[mattmns]

This is somewhat off topic.

Is there a big difference, other than price, between the student and the regular(or professional I guess) version of autocad?

 

[WaR]

I am unaware of a big difference performance wise. The real difference comes when you plot (print) your work. You have "AutoCAD student version" printed out at every side of the paper.

 

[mattmns]

Ok cool, thanks. Having "AutoCAD student version" shouldn't bother me too much