Draft with snaps, picked corners and move, copy, rotate

New in 0.9: when you draw, the cursor lands on the points and corners that are already in the plan, and a pad, parcel or feature-line corner can be typed or picked. This topic walks through the three tools.

What you'll do

• Draw with snaps, so a new alignment, pad, parcel or line starts and ends exactly on something that exists.
• Set a corner's easting and northing by typing it or picking a place in the plan.
• Turn an alignment tangent toward two picked points.
• Move, copy or rotate a whole object.

Steps

1. Choose a drawing tool, for example Alignment, Pad, Parcel or Feature line. Move the pointer near a survey point, an alignment PI, a pad, parcel or mass corner, a feature-line vertex or a storm structure. A marker appears with a label (PI, Corner, Vertex, Structure or Point and its number) and the easting and northing it will land on. Click to place the point there.
2. To place a point freely, hold ⌥Alt while you click. The snap turns off.
3. Select a pad, parcel or feature line. In Properties, the Corners block lists every corner with an Easting box and a Northing box. Type new numbers, or press the crosshair button beside a corner and click a place in the plan. The corner takes that easting and northing. Press EscEsc to cancel a pick. The crosshair works only in the plan: close the 3D view first.
4. To turn a tangent, select an alignment. In Properties, under Tangent from two points, choose the tangent, press First point and click in the plan, press Second point and click again, then press Set direction. The tangent turns to run from the first point toward the second and keeps its length.
5. To move, copy or rotate, select an alignment, pad, parcel or feature line. In Properties, under Move, copy and rotate, type Move east and Move north (negative numbers go west and south) and press Move or Copy. Or press Distance from two points and click the point to move from and the point to move to.
6. To rotate, type the angle in Rotate counter-clockwise (degrees), then press Rotate or Copy rotated. It turns about the middle of its corners unless you pick a point to rotate about with the crosshair beside the angle.

Notes

• A copy leaves the original where it is and is selected afterwards.
• Every move, copy, rotate, picked corner and turned tangent is one undo step.
• Snaps reach 10 screen pixels from the cursor. A snap marker only offers a place; nothing is changed until you click.
• The same crosshair is on an alignment's PI rows. See Alignments, Parcels and Feature lines.