Object Snaps

Object snaps provide a way to specify precise locations on objects whenever you are prompted for a point within a command.

For example, you can use object snaps to create a line from the center of a circle to the midpoint of another line.

You can specify an object snap whenever you are prompted for a point.

Object Snap Modes

Endpoint: Snaps to the closest endpoint or corner of a geometric object.

Midpoint: Snaps to the midpoint of a geometric object.

Center: Snaps to the center of an arc, circle, ellipse, or elliptical arc.

Geometric Center: Snaps to the centroid of any closed polylines and splines.

Node: Snaps to a point object, dimension definition point, or dimension text origin.

Quadrant: Snaps to a quadrant point of an arc, circle, ellipse, or elliptical arc.

Intersection: Snaps to the intersection of geometric objects.

Extension: Causes a temporary extension line or arc to be displayed whem you pass the pointing device over the endpoint of objects, so you can specify points on the extension.

Insertion: Snaps to the insertion point of objects such as an attribute, a block, or text.

Perpendicular: Snaps to a point perpendicular to the selected geometric object.

Tangent: Snaps to the tangent of an arc, circle, ellipse, elliptical arc, polyline arc, or spline.

Nearest: Snaps to the nearest point on an object such as an arc, circle, ellipse, elliptical arc, line, point, polyline, ray, spline, or xline.

Apparent Intersection Snaps to the visual intersection of two objects that do not intersect in 3D space but may appear to intersect in the current view.

Extended Apparent Intersection snaps to the imaginary intersection of objects that would appear to intersect if the objects were extended along their natural paths. Apparent and Extended Apparent Intersection do not work with edges or corners of 3D solids.

Parallel: Constrains a new line segment, polyline segment, ray or xline to be parallel to an existing linear object that you identify by hovering your pointing device.

After you specify the first point of a linear object, specify the parallel object snap. Unlike other object snap modes, you move the pointing device and hover over another linear object until the angle is acquired. Then, move the pointing device back toward the object that you are creating. When the path of the object is parallel to the previous linear object, an alignment path is displayed, which you can use to create the parallel object.