Commanding and Selecting

AutoCAD offers three styles of editing:

• Command-first editing
• Selection-first editing
• Direct object manipulation (grip editing)

Command-first editing

With command-first editing, you start a command and then select the objects on which the command works. This style of editing may seem backward to you at first unless you're a longtime AutoCAD user. Command-first editing works well for power users who are in a hurry and who are willing to memorize most of the commands they need to do their work. It's also the only way to use some of the editing commands (such as FILLET and BREAK). It's no surprise that command-first editing is the traditional editing style in AutoCAD, and the one method with which you need to be most comfortable.

Selection-first editing

In selection-first editing, you perform the same steps — in the same order — as in most Windows applications: Select the object first, and then choose the command. Selection-first editing tends to be easier to master and makes AutoCAD more approachable for new and occasional users.

Direct object manipulation

With direct object manipulation, you perform common editing operations by using the mouse to grab the selected object and perform an action on it, such as moving all or part of it to a different place in the drawing. No named command is involved; the act of moving the mouse and clicking the mouse buttons in certain ways causes the editing changes to happen. AutoCAD supports direct object manipulation through a powerful but somewhat complicated technique called grip editing. Grips are the little square, rectangular, or triangular handles that appear on an object when you select it. You can use the grips to stretch, move, copy, rotate, scale, or otherwise edit the object.

Choosing an editing style

This book emphasizes command-first editing, but I also discuss grip editing in the section “Get a Grip,” later in this chapter. AutoCAD, in its heart of hearts, is a command-first program. In fact, it started out offering only command-first editing and later added selection-first methods; AutoCAD 2012 inherits this ancestral trait. I stress command-first editing for the following reasons:

• It's the editing style that's been in AutoCAD the longest, and the one with which experienced AutoCAD users are most familiar.
• It works consistently with all editing commands — some editing commands remain command-first only.
• It provides added object selection flexibility, which is useful when you work on complicated, busy drawings.

After you know how to do command-first editing, you can simply reverse the order of many editing operations to do them selection-first style, instead. But if you don't get familiar with command-first editing in the beginning, you'll be bewildered by a few useful AutoCAD commands that work only in the command-first style; commands such as these ignore any already-selected objects and prompt you to select objects before you can continue.

Much of the information in the rest of this book assumes that you're using the default AutoCAD selection settings. If you find that object selection or grip editing are working differently from the way I describe them in this chapter, click the Application button, choose Options from the bottom of the Application Menu to open the Options dialog box, and then check the settings on the Selection tab. The eleven check box settings listed next should be selected, as shown in Figure 10-1. (All other check box settings should be deselected.)

Figure 10-1: Setting selection options in the Options dialog box.

• Noun/Verb Selection
• Object Grouping
• Implied Windowing
• Selection Preview When a Command is Active
• Selection Preview When No Command is Active
• Show Grips
• Show Grip Tips
• Show Dynamic Grip Menu
• Allow Ctrl+Cycling Behavior
• Show Single Grip on Groups
• Show Bounding Box on Groups