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With AutoCAD 2010 you can significantly increase 2D drawing productivity
without disturbing your creative work flow.
Create a rough design using typical drawing tools
and then easily apply geometric constraints to define
and maintain relationships between objects, key object points and the coordinate system.
For example, you can ensure that lines are parallel to each other,
perpendicular or co-linear.
An icon at the cursor indicates which constraint you are about to apply
and AutoCAD will prevent you from over-constraining the geometry.
You can automate the process of applying geometric constraints
using the auto-constraint tool.
Settings option enables you to control which constraints are available
and what order they are applied, and under what conditions they are applied;
including the tolerance distance and angle.
Based on the criteria, geometric constraints are automatically applied
to the selected geometry and the constraints bars are displayed.
Pass your cursor over the constraint bar icons to view the associated geometry.
You can drag constraint bars to change their position
and you can easily hide or show all of them.
If you want to display only specific constraint bars
you can hide all of them and then use the show tool,
to select the objects for which you want the constraint bars to be displayed.
Even after you use the auto-constraint tool, you may want to apply additional constraints.
For example, you can apply an equal constraint to ensure the selected lines maintain
an equal length or the selected circles or arcs maintain an equal radius.
You can also apply geometric constraints between key points and objects.
For example, you can specify that the centre of an arc remain co-incident
not with a particular point, but anywhere along a selected object
or even the extension of the object.
Additional tools enable you to constrain the geometry relative to the coordinate system.
Apply the fixed constraint to ensure that a particular point
on the geometry maintains its location in space.
The horizontal constraint ensures that geometry remains horizontal relative to the coordinate system.
As you edit the geometry it maintains the geometric relationships.
To regain design flexibility you can easily delete individual constraints
or delete all the constraints for selected objects.