Coordinate entry in AutoCad 2011?

[rkent]

Ahh, I see. I haven't used Ortho in years since they added Polar tracking, except in very very very rare cases.

Polar Tracking does the same thing as ortho - only more.

 

Ortho is my setting of choice, on rare occasions I will use Polar.

[JD Mather]

Ortho is my setting of choice, on rare occasions I will use Polar.

 

I actually use Polar tracking for orthoganal tracking perhaps 99.9% of the use of Polar. The point is Ortho limits you in things you can do while Polar does not. So you get the benefits of ortho without the limitations.

[rkent]

I actually use Polar tracking for orthoganal tracking perhaps 99.9% of the use of Polar. The point is Ortho limits you in things you can do while Polar does not. So you get the benefits of ortho without the limitations.

 

I find the majority of things I draw are ortho in nature and when I do need angles I use the angle overrides. if I need to work at an angle I will rotate the ucs to match the line and work with ortho on. Where I find a problem with polar is having to look at the screen to ensure I have the angle I actually want before hitting enter. With ortho on I can work without looking at the screen, pick a point, move the cursor, type the distance, hit enter, keep on working. The other thing I find I use ortho for is changing lines to ortho and using change to bring lines to the same Y or X coordinate, which can't be done with polar, and sometimes can't be done as easily with any other command.

 

Obviously others find polar works best but I don't think anyone can make a blanket statement that polar is always better than ortho.

[Cad Monkey 2]

I've had some problems with coordinate entry since I moved to a newer version of AutoCAD. With AutoCAD 2000 - 2002, coordinate entry always did what I expected, but now there sometimes seems to be a contextual thing going in the background where AutoCAD tries to think for you. Sometimes I have to do the to coordinate entry a few times to get it right. One thing I have noticed is that when I have polar tracking on, if it "snaps" to a preset angle then it seems like it can mess up my coordinate entry. Sometimes I just toggle polar tracking off to avoid that. I notice the problem with coordinate entry the most when I'm trying to make a rectangle of an exact size by coordinate entry.

[nestly]

I always get the results I expect when entering coordinates, however what I expect depends on whether Dynamic Input is turned on or not.