Move, Rotate and Copy commands in CAD

The biggest difference between CAD drafting and hand drafting is that drawings made by CAD system can be easily modified and reused

while drawings made manually can only have small changes. This difference has made Move, Rotate and Copy commands the most commonly used commands in CAD.

We’ll need these commands when we adjust the position or angle of some graphics or when we copy some objects in our drawings. So in this post, we’ll talk about the basics of Move, Rotate and Copy commands.

* Move

Move command is to move selected objects a specific distance in a specific direction. So we’ll need to specify the distance and direction: by using a base point and a target point or by inputting relative coordinate values.

1.Click on the Move button or enter M and press Enter to start the Move command. The command line will prompt you to select objects.

2. Point select or window select the objects to be moved and press Enter to confirm. You will see prompts “Specify base point or Displacement” as shown in the following picture.

From the prompts, we can see that there are two options: users can either specify base point or enter displacement value. We can use the base point method if there are reference points. If we specifically know the distance and direction of the Move, we can use Displacement method. By default, CAD uses base point method, but if you want to use Displacement method, just press Enter or enter D and then press Enter, both will do, and the next step is to enter relative coordinates or polar coordinates.

3. Specify a point as the base point for moving the objects. We select the bolt in the right part of the drawing and we make point 1 the base point, as shown in the following picture.

After specifying the base point, users can see prompts as shown in the following picture.

4. Specify point 2 as the target point for the move. You will find the bolt being moved and point 1 coincide point 2. So far, we have finished assembling the bolt to the axletree, as shown in the following picture.

* Rotate

Rotate is to rotate objects around a base point. Rotate command won’t change the size or shape of the objects. Firstly, we need to specify the object that we want to rotate and press Enter. Secondly, we need to specify the base point and rotation angle. Details are as follows.

1.Click on the Rotate button or enter RO and press Enter to start Rotate command.

2. Select object and press Enter.

3. Specify the base point as prompted, as shown in the following picture.

After selecting the base point, you can see that the object you just selected rotates when you move the cursor and the whole object rotates around the base point, as shown in the following picture.

4. We can directly specify the rotation angle by using the cursor or by entering the rotation angle. For example, we can enter “45” and then press Enter to get the following effect.

* Copy

Copy command is similar to the Move command, the only difference is that the selected object remains where it is. By default, the Copy command produces multiple copies.

1.Click on the Copy button or enter CO and press Enter to start the Copy command.

2. Select the object to be copied and press Enter.

3. Specify the base point.

4. Specify the second point. Before specifying the second point, we can see that the selected object moves with the cursor. As shown in the following picture where 1 is base point and 2 is the second point.

5. After making one copy, we can make more copies by move the cursor, as shown in the following picture.

Press Space or Enter to terminate this command when we don’t need copies anymore.

If you take a closer look at the command line when using Rotate command, you will find that the Rotate command includes Copy option as well as Reference option which means users can refer to other objects in order to do the rotation. GstarCAD has provided different copy mode options. After finishing the basic practice of the three command, we can try more copy mode options.

Conclusion: Although the Move, Rotate and Copy commands are easy to use and simple, knowing how to select the base point, the second point and how to make better use of more options will improve our efficiency.