Lines

[Anonymous]

OK, I'm new to ACAD17. I am trying to draw a simple line from say 100,100 to 110,110. I choose line, type 100,100 as start point, then when I try to type the second point a little box pops up which will only allow the first part of the second coord (say 110) to be entered (not 110,110). I can't get it to allow me to type the second coord in the command line. Since drawing lines from point a to point b is the most basic of acad actions I think I must be doing something wrong at a fundamental level. Any ideas? Sorry for being so obtuse.

[rkmcswain · Accepted solution]

Type in DYNPICOORDS, set it to 1

Type in DYNMODE, set it to 0

Now try again and use the command line.

[Anonymous]

Thanks RKMCSWAIN! That did it. Figured there must be some obscure (to a
5 project a year cad user) solution.

[CADmonkey_UK_Building_Services]

No offense: Your problem is fixed, but you've broken Autocad for any other user of that system because you don't understand what you've done to fix it.

Read up on Relative and Absolute Coordinate Entry.

[rkmcswain]

CADmonkey_UK_Building_Services wrote:

........ you've broken Autocad for any other user of that system

How do you figure that?

[CADmonkey_UK_Building_Services]

"Since drawing lines from point a to point b is the most basic of acad actions I think I must be doing something wrong at a fundamental level. " - you are spot on. The solution you accepted is no solution at all.

The actual simple answer to your problem was to prefix your coords with an '@' symbol and probably also inform you that hitting the space bar (mostly) has the same effect as hitting the Return key.

By changing the system-level variable DYNPICOORDS you're changing the default coordinate entry from Absolute to Relative. I've seen people sacked on the spot for 'fiddling around' with system settings (albeit by an ignorant oaf of a manger that was probably just embarrassed by his own lack of knowledge.)

So if someone sits at your PC it won't work as they expect. And if you sit at someone else's PC and change their default input settings you can forget about a christmas card.

Coordinate entry is a Day 1 Autocad lesson. I don't know what industry you work in or plan to work in, but in my industry (construction) if you don't understand coord entry, you've no business getting paid to use Acad. Acad is a high-precision draughting tool, not some conceptual toy like Sketchup.

[Anonymous]

I am not a CAD professional, but I have been using the program for over
20 years, and I have never seen it do what it was doing to me. The
suggested change made it work as it always has for me, so broke or not,
its what I wanted.

[CADmonkey_UK_Building_Services]

My apologies, having booted Acad 17 and seeing for myself, looks like I got the wrong end of the stick. Not quite, though!

DYNMODE (0 or 1) turns Dynamic Input on or off and can be controlled with one of the tiny buttons on the bottom of your screen. This is your problem fixed and was probably caused in the first place by a careless click.

If DYNMODE is Off(0) then the value of DYNPICOORDS is irrelevant. If DYNMODE is On then DYNPICOORDS controls whether typed input at the cursor is relative to 0,0 (absolute) or to the last point (relative). Basically it just adds a '@' to whatever you type.

This 'dynamic input' thing seems to be the default out-of-the-box setting for at least the last few Releases, but I've never seen it because usually, whenever I install Acad (had my own copy since 2007, been setting it up since mid-90s) the very first thing I do is go through the Options pages looking for just this kind of thing to disable.

Eg: Dynamic input, Polar tracking, Selection Previews (try moving a mouse over 10,000+ objects without you or acad having an epileptic seizure), Command prompt-at-cursor, scroll bars, US english dictionaries, non-classic modeless Layer & Xref commands, small crosshairs, auto-snap magnets, and probably a fair few more.

This has been habit because:

1. long ago, when these sorts of 'visual aids' started appearing, they would quite happily bork your session, and it's not like Autocad ever needed much encouragement to crash! I use a lot of 'heavy' DWGS: Lots of xrefs, lots of 3D and all loaded up together: Architecture, Structural, pipes, ducts and cable trays.

2. they usually slow me down or else make me use the mouse more instead of the keyboard. I still don't use the Ribbon in Acad for this reason. I do in Revit, but only if I don't have a  2-letter keyboard shortcut. RSI would be the end of my career.

[rkmcswain]

CADmonkey_UK_Building_Services wrote:

"Since drawing lines from point a to point b is the most basic of acad actions I think I must be doing something wrong at a fundamental level. " - you are spot on. The solution you accepted is no solution at all.

The actual simple answer to your problem was to prefix your coords with an '@' symbol and probably also inform you that hitting the space bar (mostly) has the same effect as hitting the Return key.

By changing the system-level variable DYNPICOORDS you're changing the default coordinate entry from Absolute to Relative. I've seen people sacked on the spot for 'fiddling around' with system settings (albeit by an ignorant oaf of a manger that was probably just embarrassed by his own lack of knowledge.)

So if someone sits at your PC it won't work as they expect. And if you sit at someone else's PC and change their default input settings you can forget about a christmas card.

Coordinate entry is a Day 1 Autocad lesson. I don't know what industry you work in or plan to work in, but in my industry (construction) if you don't understand coord entry, you've no business getting paid to use Acad. Acad is a high-precision draughting tool, not some conceptual toy like Sketchup.

Each USER of the SYSTEM is free to choose his or her own settings such as these. User "A" setting these settings to a particular value has no effect on other users on this machine.

To your last point, I've been getting paid to use AutoCAD and its verticals for over 20 years also. I think I do understand coordinate entry, hence the accepted solution to the OPs question.

[CADmonkey_UK_Building_Services]

Your advice was partly correct and partly wrong:

DYNMODE (0 or 1) turns Dynamic Input on or off and can be controlled with one of the tiny buttons on the bottom of your screen. This is your problem fixed and was probably caused in the first place by a careless click.

If DYNMODE is Off(0) then the value of DYNPICOORDS is irrelevant.

Blindly changing Setvars is not a good idea.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your help everyone.