how to find breaks in a path

[JoeS09]

Is there any way of finding discontinuities or breaks in a path of a drawing?  e.g., I  am drawing two circles and have drawn  tangents  between the circles, one at the top, and one at the bottom of the circles. I  can only find out it the tangent line actually meets the circle by magnification to the nth degree. In most cases it doesn't, so I ended up drawing diameters on the circles to create a defined intersection, and drew the lines between these  intersection points. Seemed to work, but I there are other examples where UI  need to find if there are breaks in, say, a polygon or other odd shape

[steven-g]

If you use osnap for placing the ends of lines, arcs etc. then you are guaranteed they will not have gaps (providing you do it properly). For existing geometry you could use the join command to connect geometry together into a single polyline, then selecting that polyline will show you if it is indeed a single object. For a line touching a circle the join command wouldn't work but for thinks like that you should always use osnap and not guess.

[eldon]

If a tangent line does not touch a circle, then it is not a tangent line.

 

Perhaps you need more instruction on how to draw tangents. Post your drawing and you will get precise information.

[CyberAngel]

If the specific issue is that a tangent line is not precisely tangent, consider using the TAN snap, as Steven suggests. With the OSNAP command, you can set your snaps to stay on permanently. If you're connecting two circles, you can use TAN on both ends of your line to make it doubly tangent.

 

If you use a snap or FILLET or some other command, you don't have to wonder if your objects connect to each other. Let AutoCAD do the math for you.

 

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