Divide and Measure in AutoCAD

Divide and Measure are two often forgotten but very useful commands — they don’t actually separate objects into segments; they place points at set intervals along them, based on a specific distance or partition value. In addition to lines, these commands will place points, or blocks, along arcs and polylines, and even spline curves. These points can then be used in a variety of ways to create evenly spaced geometry or text.

If you can’t see these points once the command has completed, it’s likely that the POINTSTYLE is set to ZERO, which is often the default in many templates. Point style zero displays points as single pixels, which are nearly impossible to see when directly on top of an object. You can snap to them, using the NODE O-Snap, but they are practically invisible. To make them visible just type PTYPE at the command line.

PTYPE

Here you can select the desired symbol and size, to make those points that the command created visible.

If you remember doing this at the command line this is setting the PDMODE and PDSIZE system variables.

Another tip to help see the points in a crowded editor is to change the default color to RED (or another bright color, not common in your drawing), run the command, then change the color back to BYLAYER, or whatever it was set to. The points will then be easy to spot.

Civil 3D also has versions of the Divide and Measure commands that create Civil 3D Points rather than AutoCAD Points as discussed in this tutorial.

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