Dear CAD learners and users, welcome to another article of this series! As usual, I am introducing 5 CAD commands beginning with E in detail. Keep reading and you shall excel at them!
EDGESURF
EDGESURF (edge-defined surface) serves as a positioning tool. It can help you add planar meshes to a closed entity with four edges. The edges can be arcs, lines, splines, open 2D or 3D polylines.
Steps to add meshes:
- Input [EDGESURF] and press Enter.
- Select the four edges that form the closed entity one by one.
With the reference axes on the mesh, you can easily locate a point on your entity. Surveyors and landscape designers are bound to find it useful.
ELLIPSE
You can draw ellipses and elliptical arcs with ELLIPSE. Simple as this command is, some related technical terms might be confusing. Don’t fret! I made the diagram below to illustrate them. As you can see from the image below, the ellipse has two axes of symmetry, the major and minor ones.
Steps to draw an ellipse:
- Input [EL] and press Enter.
- Specify the first end of one axis.
- Specify the second end of the axis.
- Determine one end of the other axis.
To draw an elliptical arc, simply input “A” after the above step 1, repeat the step 2-4 above to draw an ellipse, and cut it to get an arc by specifying the start and end angles.
By now you should have a better understanding of what this command can do.
EXPLODE
EXPLODE enables you to break a compound object into its components in the simplest form. In this way, you can edit the components separately.
Speaking of editing, do you remember BEDIT? When I introduced to you CAD commands beginning with B, I explained how to edit blocks with it. However, when you use BEDIT, all blocks with the same name in the same drawing will change correspondingly. If you just want to edit some of the blocks without influencing the others, EXPLODE really comes in handy!
Steps:
- Input [X] and press Enter.
- Select the to-be-exploded objects.
EXTEND
You can use EXTEND to join the lines. It is especially useful when you’re drawing grids.
Steps:
- Input [EX] and press Enter.
- Select one or more objects as boundaries and press Enter.
- Select the to-be-extended objects and then they will be lengthened to the boundary objects specified in step 2.
See? With EXTEND, I can combine all the lines with the grid labels with ease. It provides second chances to you to adjust and fit objects.
EXTRUDE
This command is similar to EXTEND, but you can use it to create a 3D solid from a surface or a surface from a line in several ways. It will save you a lot of time if you use it to draw walls.
Before you invoke this command, make sure that you’ve switched to an oblique view.
Steps:
- Input [EXT] and press Enter.
- Select the to-be-extruded entities.
- Specify the height/direction/path/taper angle of extrusion following the prompts in the command line.
As the GIF above shows, I created a surface from a line, a solid from a surface and an extrusion along a specified path.
What other CAD commands beginning with E do you find “e”fficient? “F”eel free to comment below!
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