Friday, January 18, 2013

OSNAPZ to the Rescue

Do you remember the Almond Joy/Mounds commercials?

(Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't.)

The OSNAPZ command in AutoCAD reminds me of those commercials.

(Sometimes I want elevation, sometimes I don't.)

The OSNAPZ command is an easy way to switch between snapping to an elevation and forcing an elevation when creating or editing AutoCAD objects. When drafting in both the Civil Engineering and Land Surveying fields, both options are useful.

From the AutoCAD help documentation:

With OSNAPZ set to 0, OSNAP uses the Z-value of the specified point. For a polyline, the elevation selected for the first vertex will be assigned as the elevation of the polyline.

With OSNAPZ set to 1, OSNAP substitutes the Z-value of the specified point with the elevation (ELEV) set for the current UCS. With the system variable ELEV set to 0, the elevation will default to 0 for all selected points.

Now hopefully I can finally get that song out of my head.

4 comments:

NeilJ said...

I use a right click macro to set this

^C^C(setvar 'osnapz (abs (1- (getvar 'osnapz))))

And also have the setting displayed in the Bottom Left of the Window

NeilJ said...

I use a right click macro to set this

^C^C(setvar 'osnapz (abs (1- (getvar 'osnapz))))

And also have the setting displayed in the Bottom Left of the Window

Tom Richardson said...

Great suggestion, Neil! Thank you.

Tom Richardson said...

I just added this nifty little macro to my surveyor's CUI and they are very grateful for your suggestion, Neil. Thank you again.