Overview

After all that effort to master dimensioning, why not take some time for something different (and much easier than the last two lessons)? Lesson 16 will deal with some nifty techniques that, although not often used by anyone other than well-trained CAD operators, can enhance your drawing speed even beyond the techniques you've already learned!

We'll begin with some fairly simple techniques that you may have (indeed, probably have) stumbled across already. (Have you noticed that selecting an object before picking the Erase button produces the same result as if you had picked the button first?)

Knowing how to use these techniques can help you draw faster; knowing how to turn them off if you don't want to use them can save your sanity!

We'll spend most of the lesson discovering grips. These are the culprits responsible for those little blue squares that dot an object when you select it at the command prompt instead of a select objects prompt. But mastering grips will make you the envy of any CAD environment.

First, however, let's take a look at some advanced object selection methods.

16.1 Object Selection Settings

There are...