Object Snap is a very commonly used tool to help design and locate using existing points.

There are different ways to pinpoint the point such as using coordinates, drawing auxiliary lines, and object snap, but using the Point Filters is no doubt the easiest of the snapping methods.

How to use Point Filter through right-click menu and command line

Let’s say we’re going to make the two end points above center of a circle:

Snap using right-click menu

1. Make sure the Object Snap (F3) is on, then execute circle command.
2. When prompted to specify center point for circle, press SHIFT+ right-hand button to open the right-click menu, and select Point Filters, shown as below,

3. Move the cursor to where the X coordinate lies, click the mouse when the snapping mark shows,

4. When the command line prompts NeedYZ, move the cursor to where the Y coordinate lies, click when the snapping mark shows,

Now we have specified a center point for circle at the right place, we can move the cursor to specify the radius of the circle, shown as below,

Command Line

If you take a closer look at the Point Filters in the right-click menu, you’ll see .X/.Y/.Z instead of X/Y/Z, that’s because we can enter .X/.Y/.Z in the command line to use the Point Filters.

Using the Point Filters doesn’t have to be in the order of X > Y > Z, we can enter .Y to specify the coordinate of Y axis and then the X and Z axis.

Though we often pick one or two coordinate values based on points from the drawing, we could actually directly enter the coordinate values, for example, the Y-coordinate of a point is 10, the X-coordinate of the point is the same as a point, we can firstly enter .Y and press Enter key then input 10, after pressing Enter key, we can snap to that point, shown as below,