LibreCAD tutorial 8 - polygons and select functions Video Lecture - LibreCAD

hello we are going to do another
tutorial today this one is going to be
about some new line functions actually
well you'll see and also a whole lot
about the Select functions this is
leading up to the next tutorial which
has to do with a hatchet but basically I
ran out of time trying to do it all in
one tutorial okay we're at the main menu
right now you see I've already started
up and did quite a bit of drawing
everything is just nothing is really to
scale I'm just drawing shapes and stuff
I have two layers one of which is zero
and it's the default it's black and then
I have a red layer and you'll see why I
just did to the scale is in millimeters
and that right there a line is at 20
millimeters so you got an idea of what
the scale is it really doesn't matter on
this this particular tutorial okay we're
going to talk about line functions first
there's this new function here called
polylines and I'm going to do some with
it and I create a polyline to put on
free positioning and the biggest thing
about a polyline is that if you go back
to delete it's basically drawn as a
block so if you delete it it deletes the
whole block there are some other
functions in there with polyline how you
can change what they call nodes you can
add nodes and you can have delete nodes
out of the middle of the line and so
that connects two opposite lines
together I have not seen a lot of use
for that but I thought I'd bring it up
okay now we're gonna get into the meat
of this tutorial we're going to the line
menu and you'll see that there's a
couple of different new lines here one
of them is the poly or the rectangle so
if I draw a rectangle all I do is draw
the two opposite corners and it draws a
rectangle there is a little detail about
that we'll be talking about that in a
minute
okay we also have some polygons and
there's the polygon with Center and you
see that I've got now set up for five
edges when I draw that you draw the
center of it and then I draws me a
perfect Pentagon and if I go back do
that again I set this to seven now that
will draw a seven sided polygon and I'm
not I'm not real sure what the D was
that is if I were to have drawn a line
there I could actually move these two
concentric right now it's just a guess
okay the other kind of polygon you can
draw is this one with two corners I want
to show you something
it didn't this number up here the number
of edges is different than the number of
edges on the previous one and so it
didn't carry over my seven it picked six
which is what it was the last time I did
it on this one you draw a corner and
then you draw the second corner and then
it finishes it up I used that one time
playing with angles as if I was going to
build a gazebo and that was back at one
of my one of my posts on my blog where I
was talking about the way that sides
things get bigger as you cut pieces of
wood and angles okay
now I'm we're gonna go to the select
function and I'm gonna pretend that
we're going to move things so I always
choose the move function we're not
actually gonna go that far and first
thing I want to point out is that
actually these polygons are series of
lines they're not blocks so when you
select it you have to select each and
every individual side if you're going to
do something with it
the second thing I want to point out
about the Select function and someone
pointed this out to me in the comment to
one of my stories and that is I control
K D selects everything and that's really
handy sometimes
so remember control K there's probably
other hidden quick commands in Libra CAD
but I don't know them yet I played with
it one time I think I found one other
one but I can't remember what it was
okay on the select menu up here you got
deselect all which is the same as ctrl K
you also have a select all and that's
pretty obvious what it doesn't selected
everything and that's a handy way to
delete the host screen at one time you
got select entity and deselect entity
and I'm not sure where select entity is
that's embarrassing that's what I'm
using all the time I guess it's just by
default that you got some select entity
but the one that I use real often is
select window and there's too little
there's a little trick with that if I
select window I need to do select window
not deselect window and that's that one
right there okay if I select window and
I go from left to right anything that's
completely enclosed in that window gets
selected anything that's partially
enclosed does not so you see it's
selected those two outer ones but if I
do a deselect or a select window and I
go from right to left if I just touch a
line and get selected so you see it
selected these two year even though they
were not completely enclosed so it's
real important to remember whether
you're going left to right or right to
left okay another one that they have
will do a deselect all another one they
have is this select intersected in a
tease and deselect intersect in a decent
and what that is is if you draw a line
anything that that line touches get
selected and so that's kind of handy
sometimes and it doesn't matter whether
you go left or right it does the same
thing and here there is a select layer
so right now I'll go to red layer and I
go select layer and I think it doesn't
matter which one I go to
and once I pick a color so I picked
black this time everything is in black
here my layer that's called that's zero
so basically I selected layer zero which
I use
different colors so I can know which
layer is which everything that's on
layer 0 gets selected it wouldn't matter
what the color of it was so matter of
fact let's do that we're gonna go back
run a change that's still layer 0
continue action but I'm gonna change its
color let's make it something different
we'll make it blue so I got a blue line
right there
and with doing that with a blue line now
when I go back to you select yakked like
we're going to move i go select layer
and click the black layer even or layer
0 even though this lines blue is still
selected i can now do a deselect by
intersection and I could deselect a
couple of those so now if I was going to
move things it wouldn't move those two
and move everything else I see I think
that's pretty much it you have a
deselect window and it works exactly the
same as the other window if I left to
right it only does the ones that are
completely closed right to left it does
the ones that are even touched anywhere
at all in the window so that's pretty
much I think all of the deselect and
select functions you've seen them all
there and there are these little
reminders I figured what they call a
there's a name for that but when you
hold leave your mouse over top of a
particular thing that tells you what the
function is when you're doing a big
drawing that slows you down more key
clicks more time and you're sitting in
front of the computer and like to get
your work done but that's the way it
works there until you memorize all of
those you're pretty well stuck having to
wait to the little
dad pops up there okay one other line
function I forgot to talk about let's go
back two lines to main menu lines
there's this by bisectors what that does
is if you have an angle you click on one
line of the angle and then you click on
the second line of the angle and it
draws a bisector and your current layer
of the length that you've got there you
can also do it let's undo that one yeah
I've undone it and let's make three
bisectors inside that and choose
bisectors first line second line and you
see I got three evenly spaced angles
within that big angle that could be
handy sometimes let's say you want to do
30 degree angles and you have two lines
that are perpendicular to each other
one third of 30 90 is 30 and so you've
got your 30 degree angles it's also
handy in the case of like this right
here if I was wanting to draw a
perfectly where the cut would be between
those boards and unfortunately I may
have not drawn those two concentric with
each other but that's only one do one
right now and that line right there
would be what the cut would be between
those boards then I'd have to just drawn
too long I'd have to trim it
and often when you do things like this
you need two hits and I did the wrong
direction and that trimmed it anyhow
that's pretty much the main stuff I
wanted to talk about in this tutorial
it's probably pretty short but hopefully
it was good thank you for listening