About Geometric Utilities (AutoLISP)

A group of functions allows applications to obtain pure geometric information and geometric data from the drawing.

The following lists some of the commonly used geometric related functions:

• angle – Returns the angle, in radians, between a line and the X axis (of the current UCS).
• distance – Returns the distance between two points.
• polar – Locates a point by means of polar coordinates (relative to an initial point).
• inters – Locates the intersection point of two lines.
• osnap – Returns a 3D point that is the result of applying an Object Snap mode to a specified point.
• textbox – Measures a specified text object, and returns the diagonal coordinates of the bounding box that encloses the text.

The following code example demonstrates calls to the geometric utility functions:

(setq pt1 '(3.0 6.0 0.0))
(setq pt2 '(5.0 2.0 0.0))
(setq base '(1.0 7.0 0.0))
(setq rads (angle pt1 pt2))   ; Angle in XY plane of current UCS - value
                              ; is returned in radians

(setq len (distance pt1 pt2)) ; Distance in 3D space
(setq endpt (polar base rads len))

The call to polar sets endpt to a point that is the same distance from (1,7) as pt1 is from pt2, and at the same angle from the X axis as the angle between pt1 and pt2.