More questions, with pictures!

I lost the "snap to line" thing that I previously thought I had figured out.

Here's what I mean:

What I want is for the line to "snap" to the line my cursor is hovering on so I can draw a line out that is connected to it. How will I achieve this?

And also,

Here, I used the Perpendicular option to start drawing from the line and I want it to move down 150mm.

Instead, this is what happens:

I am confused, why did the line jump all the way over there after I hit enter? Sometimes when I fool around in 3D and use Copy/Paste, the object that is pasted doesn't appear on my cursor but somewhere else on the screen.

I have no experience with AutoCAD and learnt it through Lynda's video tutorials.

Might have to pop by the library later for a book on this...

it would really help if you upload the images again with another url creator so as we can evaluate the problem more, i dont see the images..

Command: osnap

Ensure "Nearest" and "End Point" are selected... F3 toggles osnap on/off

KC

F3 toggles the Object Snap tool. Typing OS at the command line opens the Object Snap options, which is where you will set all the snapping tools you will want to use. "Nearest" will be the snap you want to snap to a line when you first invoke the LINE command.

And I don't know what to say about the line jumping around. That is definitely weird.

*EDIT* Beat me to it.

i think the line jumping around has something to do with your UCS.

Woo thanks for the OSNAP thing , works beautifully.

As for the line jumping around, does it have something to do with why my objects appear far from the cursor when I copy and paste? Sometimes when I paste something it appears on my cursor, sometimes it just flies off somewhere and I have to zoom out to see where it is then move it. Would both these problems have something to do with the UCS? And what exactly is UCS?

I'll find another image hoster in the meanwhile.

to get things clear, are you working on a 3D model? cause if you are then:

UCS defines the plane your working at, and is designated by the x and y coordinates at the bottom left of your model page. at top view the x and y coordinate will be the only coordinates you'll see since it is 2D or 2 dimensional, but at ortho mode, z will be added to define the height. i said it has something to do with UCS since you said you played around with 3d and pasted something and it appeared somewhere else, well thats because you pasted it at the wrong plane or coordinates, its best to paste something by pasting it with a basepoint and your snap, in that way, your sure it is where it is supposed to.

with your line appearing far from where it should, its best to be on ortho mode when drawing this line, in 3d be sure your at the right UCS, the plane your working at is always defined by the x and y, bring out your UCS 2 toolbar, in that way its easier to define where your working at by simply changing it to front, back, left or right. for example you want to draw a line 200mm in the top view but your UCS is at front view, it will look right but when twisting it or using the orbit, thats when you'll see its wrong.

hope this helps

Objects may appear far away from your cursor if you are electing to use 0,0,0 as your base point rather than pick somewhere on the object during copy.

Thanks for the replies, i'll look into it.

btw it's not 3D, though i'm experimenting with 3D since i might need to do 3D stuff later on.