This article reviews the use of entity grips for object manipulation.
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If you click on any entity in the drawing area while outside a command, that entity's grips, or control points, become active. Using grips, you can perform a variety of editing and manipulation tasks without entering 'formal' command mode, that is, executing a command such as 'Copy', 'Move', etc. To exit grip mode, press 'Escape' once or twice. You can manipulate Hatch Boundaries, Dimensions, Lines, Circles, Text, and PLines using grips.
The Basics:
First, double check your grip mode by going to 'Tools>Options>Selection'. This tab holds the basic settings:
The functional settings are:
1) 'Enable grips' - This controls whether or not grip editing is available. Not that there is some performance penalty for utilizing grips. Enabling grips will increase file size and drawing regeneration time. If you notice a change in system performance after enabling grips, you may wish to deactivate them to verify their effect. This is also available through the 'GRIPS' system variable,
2) 'Enable grips within blocks' - If this is not selected and you click a block, the only visible grip will be at the blocks insertion point. If this is selected then all grips for all components of the block will be visible. This is also available through the 'GRIPS' system variable,
3) The other settings allow you to set the color of the unselected('warm') and selected('hot') grips, and the grip box size. These settings are available through the 'GRIPCOLOR', 'GRIPHOT', and 'GRIPSIZE' system variables.
Another system variable which affects the performance of grips is 'PICKFIRST'. This variable allows you to select objects prior to issuing a command, if it is set to '1'. This is also known as the 'Noun/Verb' setting. If 'PICKFIRST' is set to '0' and you enable an object's grips, the grips will disappear if you then select a command such as 'Move' or 'Copy'. For editing with grips, we want 'PICKFIRST' set to '1'.
Grip Selection:
The first grip method we'll look at is entity selection, which is the same for entity selection while a command is in progress. You can add entities to the selection by single-clicking the entities or selecting by window. This will display each entity's grips which, at this point, are warm, or unselected. The number of grips displayed varies with the type of entity selected. Lines show three, one at each endpoint and one at the midpoint; single-segment polylines show two, one at each endpoint; circles show five, etc.
Any grip on any object may be selected again to become the 'Hot' grip. In a selection set, multiple hot grips may be activated by holding the shift key and single-clicking the grips you wish to activate. This will cause the editing to occur on multiple objects.
Editing with Grips:
The first grip editing we'll look at is the grips menu. This menu is activated when you right-click on any hot grip and provides many editing functions:
The first group of commands operate on all objects in your selection set, and work the same as their command line equivalents. The difference is you will not be prompted for a base point unless you specifically select that option. These commands all use the hot grip as the base point. Note that if you have activated more than one hot point, right-clicking will exiting grip editing mode.
You can also manipulate objects without using the right-click menu. This sequence shows an object being moved by clicking on its hot grip and dragging it to a new location. Again, the hot grip becomes the object's base point and can be snapped to another point as necessary:
A similar sequence to this is copying the object. Begin dragging the object, hold down the shift key until your first destination click, release the shift key, and a copy of the source object will be created at each of your subsequent click points:
Another way to copy or move an object with grips is by using the base point. When you activate a hot grip the 'Command:' prompt presents you with a choice, two of which are 'Base Point' and 'Copy'.
If you type 'B' for 'Base Point' you will enter 'Move' mode. If you want to move the object a specific distance, say 2 units, from its current location, you can enter 0,0 as the move base point and 0,2 as the second point. These are the offset coordinates in x,y format. If you wish to also specify an offset in the 'Z' direction, simply enter the offset like 0,0,2. AutoCAD presumes the 'Z' entry is 0 unless you specify otherwise.
If you type 'C' for copy, you should immediately follow with a 'B' for 'Base Point'. Now you can enter a 'Base Point' and offset just as in 'Move' mode.
Objects which share a common grip can be stretched together. This is particularly useful on a dimensioned object where the dimension will be updated as the object relocated or stretched:
Well, we hope you get around to exploring the use of grips, as you can see, in some cases, they can make things move quicker.