Enhance your technical drawing skills with this comprehensive guide on developing a title block and manipulating circles using the mirror, trim, and erase commands in AutoCAD. Learn how to create crop marks, manage your working files, and utilize the concepts of 'last' and 'previous' to streamline your drafting process.
Key Insights
- The article provides a step-by-step guide on creating a title block file with crop marks, starting with offsetting a rectangle inside the drawing, saving changes, and reloading the reference in the working drawing file.
- It demonstrates how to manipulate circles using the 'mirror' command and the concepts of 'last' and 'previous' selection sets to create symmetrical crop marks within the title block.
- The article emphasizes how to use the 'trim' and 'erase' commands to clean up the design, highlighting the significance of utilizing the 'previous' selection set concept for efficient trims and erasures.
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So again, right now I am in my working one drawing file. I need to go back to my title block file to start making things happen. So I'm going to go to my title block file, and this rectangle will become the crop marks that I will use at the corner of the drawing.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go into offset, and I will offset by one inch this rectangle inside the drawing. Enter CTRL S to save. If I were to go back to my working one drawing and reload the xref, you can see that I now have both rectangles in the drawing.
You can also see that this rectangle that I have put in there is definitely inside the printable area within the deliverable sheet file. When I go back to my 22x34 title block, now it's time to start working on my crop marks. So I'm going to draw a circle, and the center of the circle will be at the end of this upper left corner, and it has a radius of 0.5 inches.
Now, this circle is the last thing that I drew, because what we're going to be focusing on now is the understanding of using last and previous for selection sets. So what I want to do is I want to mirror this entity over here. So I'm going to choose mirror.
It says select objects. I will type l enter for last. You can see it's been highlighted.
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It says select objects. I have none others, so I will choose enter to say I'm done. The first point of my mirror line will be the mid of this line here, and I'll turn ortho on, drag my hand down.
You can see the circle echoing on the right, and I pick with the left button to indicate the other end of the mirror line. I read the prompt. It says erase source objects yes or no, and I will say no.
So again, before I just did this operation, this was my last item. So I said mirror last from the mid of here straight down, and it put it here. This is now my last item, and this was the previous entity that was used to create the last item.
So I'm now going to say mirror. It says what, and I will go l enter for last. You can see the one on the right's been highlighted.
I will type a p enter for previous. You see the left one highlighted. Enter to say I'm done.
The first point of the mirror line will be the mid of the outside left. Ortho is on. I drag my hand to the right.
I click with the left button to indicate the end of the mirror line. I read the prompt. It says erase source objects yes or no.
I'm going to say no and hit ENTER. Now what's happened is that one of these two entities on the bottom are the last item, but both of these entities here are the previous selection set that were used to create the circles on the bottom. So there was always only one last entity, but there can be more than one entity within a selection set.
Now I want to clean up. So I will say trim. It says select objects.
I'm going to go l enter for last, and you can see that it's the one on the bottom right. I can type p enter for previous, and both of the two entities on top were selected. And so I can now additionally select this one.
Enter to say I'm done. And so now I can pick on the parts that I want to have trimmed out. Enter.
And now I want to erase the circles. So I can go erase. If I type p enter for previous, you see that all four circles were selected, because all four circles were the previous selection set that was used in the trim command.
So I will hit ENTER, control s to save. I will go back to my working file, reload the xref, and you can see that we have our crop marks in the corner, and we have our rectangle in the middle. So what I'm going to do is undo, and just go over this one more time.
I'm going to say circle from the end of here with a radius of .5. I'm going to say mirror the last item. Enter to say I'm done. From the mid of the top line, put ortho on, pick for the other end of the mirror line.
Enter. I will go back to mirror. I will type l enter for last.
It selects the one on the right. I will type p enter for previous. It picks the one on the left.
Enter to say I'm done selecting. From the mid on the left hand side, drag my hand over, pick for the other end of the mirror line. Enter.
It's now time to trim. I will say trim. I will type l enter for last.
Again, the entity at the bottom right is the last entity. I will go p enter for previous. It selects the ones on the top, because those were the previous selection set used to create these two circles.
And then I pick this one entity. Enter to say I'm done. And now I pick on what I want to have go away.
And then I can say erase p for previous. Again, the four circles were the cutting edges used in the trim, so they were my previous selection set. Control s to save.
And I go over to my working file, reload the xref, and we can see that now all of our formatting is correct. We've gotten probably the most complicated aspects of developing a title block completed, and that is dealing with this positioning down here in the bottom left corner. If you would please get this much done, and then what we'll be focusing on in the next lesson or the next discussion topic will be the development of the contents of the title block itself.
