AutoCAD For Dummies. Ralph Grabowski

Sides with POLygon

      Rectangles and other closed polylines are types of polygons, or closed figures with three or more sides. The AutoCAD POLygon command provides a quick way of drawing regular polygons with many sides where all angles are equal. The command has nothing to do with missing parrots.

      The following steps show you how to use the POLygon command:

      1  Click Polygon from the Rectangle drop-down list on the Draw panel of the Home tab, or type POL and press Enter.AutoCAD starts the POLygon command and prompts you to enter the number of sides for the polygon.Enter number of sides <4>:

      2 Type the number of sides for the polygon that you want to draw and then press Enter.Your polygon can have from 3 to 1,024 sides.AutoCAD prompts you to specify the center point of the polygon:Specify center of polygon or [Edge]: You can use the Edge option to draw a polygon by specifying the length of one side instead of the center and then the radius of an imaginary inscribed or circumscribed circle. The imaginary circle method is much more common.

      3 Specify the center point by clicking a point or typing coordinates.After you specify the center point, nothing happens in the graphics area but the command line prompts you to specify whether the polygon is inscribed in an imaginary circle whose radius you specify in Step 5 (the corners touch the circumference of the circle) or circumscribed about the circle (the sides are tangent to the circle).Enter an option [Inscribed in circle Circumscribed about circle] <I>:

      4 Type I (for inscribed) or C (for circumscribed), and press Enter.The command line prompts you to specify the radius of an imaginary circle:Specify radius of circle:

      5 Specify the radius by typing a distance or clicking a point.AutoCAD draws the polygon. If you type a distance or you click a point with Ortho Mode turned on, the polygon will align orthogonally. I cover using Ortho Mode in Chapter 8.

      

Rectangles and polygons aren’t special object types. They’re simply regular polylines that have been constructed by special command macros.

Figure 6-4 shows the results of drawing plenty of polygons — a practice known as polygony, which, as far as I know, is legal nearly everywhere.

      FIGURE 6-4: A party of polygonal parts.