one of the reasons we use CAD now instead of the drawing board is that the software can automatically create repetitive line work for us the array command is one such command given one object or set of objects it can create those objects in a grid of your defining let’s open up the array example file in this example we want to create a conference room display filled with chairs that are evenly spaced in rows and columns we want to make sure that we can fit them in the space available we could create construction lines for the spacing and then copy the chair over and over again it wouldn’t be that difficult to do in this case but we can do it even faster with the array command so type in the word array arr a y
to start the command or you can just use AR it’s also found in the modify panel on the ribbon right here now there are three types of arrays we’ll look at each one in a different section but they all work in a very similar way and use the same type of interface pick rectangular array as the name sounds it’s going to create an array in a rectangular shape here is our conference room and we want to create these chairs
now if you started the command through the ribbon you tell AutoCAD exactly what type of array it is
but if you type the command in you will select your objects first press ENTER and then tell it that it’s going to be a rectangular path or a polar array in this case we want a rectangular AutoCAD will automatically generate a quick grid array for you now you can change things right on the fly you can leave it the way it is or you can grab some of these grips and make it bigger
extend it out
add more rows or columns
and alter the separation distance between each one right on the fly right like that
once you’re completed just press Enter and just like that with a few quick clicks you created a whole bunch of chairs all at one time
now these arrays are associated to that means they work together in one block so that I can come back here
and make quick changes to it later on but you can say you know maybe the client says no we want fewer chairs or more chairs
you select the array you get a contextual ribbon tab that’s a special type of ribbon tab it only comes up in the proper context thus in this case it’s selecting an array when you select an array you get all of the options that you need right up here to change it some things you can’t change though is like the type but this tells you that it is a rectangular type of an array here it tells you how many columns and their spacing
the Rose in its pacing and the different levels this is an AutoCAD not an AutoCAD LT the different levels adds a three-dimensional space to it by type in three
and then we go and take a look here once I completed the command
you can see that it’s drawn three different levels
and change that on the fly to however many I want
but in this case we only want one now you can’t do that in AutoCAD because it’s only two-dimensional but everything else is the same so we select it we can change the number of columns to 8 and we can define the spacing to be whatever it needs to be
make this six rows and we can change it again
so they are equally distant
since we’ve selected the array we have different grip edits available to us we can pick move and we can move them all as a whole
we can grab this grip and change the distance between columns this one will change the distance between rows and this one will change the number of rows and this is the number of columns or we can go with a different total column spacing or even change the axis of it kind of shifts it so you can create an array very quickly and you can edit it and just as quickly
you
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