Draftsight question

Sleddog

Sleddog

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Oct 24, 2016
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Something happened!
I did something & can't figure how to get it back.

I want to draw a triangle, using Ortho. Ortho is on & 15* is selected. I click on the screen, move curser down & right, push 3, enter. The line goes straight to the right. If I angle down & to the left push 3 enter the line goes straight left. If I don't enter any dimension, just click on the screen it draws the angled line.

What did I do?
 
I'm not familiar with the command you just did. I tried it by selecting line command, put in 15*, enter, 3, enter, 3 enter, last connected the line with the first end point creating a right triangle. If you want a triangle with equal sides or equilateral triangle, select the polygon command, select the number of sides, then inscribe or subscribe, center of the polygon, last the distance from the center.

Now, if I want to draw a line at an angle, I select line command, do the @ sign along with the length of the line segment, then "<" and the angle in degrees.

Ken
 
In my search for an answer. I came across this video. He's drawing a triangle using the same method I normally use. Now, When I try doing what he does my lines are straight horizontal or vertical.


Look at about the 6 minute mark of this video.


 
First thing you have to do is go under the "tools" drop down and go down to "options" click on "user preferences" then click on "display", then click on "polar guides", and at the right of "incremental angles---" set to 15 degrees or whatever angle you want in there. last, click on ok at the bottom of the menu and you are ready to use polar coordinates. When you click on "polar" at the bottom of the screen, it automatically takes you from "ortho" to "polar". now try it and see if that's works for you.

This is stuff I don't use and never have learned over the years. Draftsight is a little different from Autocad that I used to use. Been using Drafts sight for nearly 10 years now. And yet opened up a tutorial or any reference stuff. I have two seats of Draftsight Professional that I've bought in the past and failed to keep either one up to date. If I upgrade my computer next year, I'll probably buy a upgrade seat of Draftsight Professional then. I aso have a computer that belongs to one of my customers that has Solidworks on it. It's a whole different world to work in! I doubt I'll ever get proficient in using it, but I have to have it for the stuff I do for that particular customer.

I hope I was of help, if not, let me know and together we'll get it figured out.

Ken
 
I do have Polar guides set up as you suggest. I just went back to verify. I appreciate your help. It's not that big of a deal, I can work around it.

Jack
 
I'm with you, work around it. I do a lot of that. A lot of the stuff I do is repetitive and to try to do something out of my area of knowledge in Draftsight will throw me for a loop! And triangles, I don't ever recall drawing a triangle per say. I deal with circles, and lots of them, squares, and rectangles, and a few hexes and that's it.
Sorry I couldn't help much more that this. Ken
 
I started using AutoCad back in the late 80's. When that got too expensive to maintain I switched to AutoCad LT and have been happily using that since the late 90's. Now that's gotten too expensive to maintain. I was going to check out AutoSketch, which used to be a decent little CAD package, but apparently that has gone away.
I just downloaded the latest DraftSight to check it out.
I can't even figure out how to turn on the blasted scroll bars! The Help claims you need to hit "Tools" to turn on the scroll bars, and to change just about everything, but guess what, there is no "Tools" that I can find.
Can anyone help me get off the dime to start navigating this blasted program?
And while you're at it, can you advise how to make the menus resemble Classic AutoCad LT? I would've thought there would be a config option for doing so. Probably in the Tools menu!
 
The old AutoCad LT classic menus are pretty much history, even with Autodesk software. Everything is starting to change to the menu system used in SolidWorks. There is a couple things you can try that let me change the menus to something closer to that used in LT.
At the very top left hand corner you will see a drop down that probably says "Drafting and Annotations". Drop down that and select "Classic Default"
This will get you as close as you are going to get in Draftsight to AC LT.
 
BTW, if you ever typed commands into acad or acad lite, those same typed in commands will work in draftsight too (at least in my experience). For example acad "LIST" will function as "GET PROPERTIES" in draftsight.
 
Thanks for the input guys.

I hear you about the menus changing. Everyone is going to the "terminally trendy" ribbons in favor of the old drop-downs. I hate 'em.

Same is true with my new electronics CAD software as well. The underlying dialog boxes and functions are the same, but the entire main menu structure is changed up. "You can't get there from here". I guess this old dog has to learn some new tricks!

I feel like the old Space Cowboys movie where Clint Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones, James Garner and Donald Sutherland are old long-retired jet-jocks and astronauts that are called upon to save a failing satellite, because they are the ones that launched it decades earlier, and are the only ones left that understand it, but they can't stand the way that NASA operates nowadays. Funny movie.
 
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