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"Smart" Stretch command?


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This is possibly a stupid question, but is there any AutoCAD command that can do what the Stretch command does without having to select the entirety of what you want to stretch?

 

I have a large drawing with lots of polylines close together (it's a one-line/riser diagram), and I'd like to stretch the polylines around to clean things up and minimize crossings. Problem is, the drawing is so large that I have to zoom out a lot to get the lines into view, at which point I can't select them accurately because there are a bunch of other lines in the way.

 

The constant process of zooming in, selecting the lines, zooming out, and clicking on each grip point I want to move is rather tedious, so I'm wondering if there's some other acad command (or LISP routine) I'm unaware of that would let you "stretch" polylines by simply clicking on them, if that makes any sense.

 

Thanks

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You can stretch them with the grips (you can stretch multiple lines at one time with a grip by selecting the lines then select the grips while holding shift) or place them on a separate layer and isolate them.

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That's kinda what I'm hoping to avoid doing, lol. Because the vertices are so far away that I can't "cleanly" select them with the Stretch command, I select each line and then shift-select all the grips I want to move. It just takes a long time because I have to keep zooming in and out and panning all over the place. It would be a lot faster if I could simply stretch the polylines, but the size of the lines is interfering with that process.

 

Would it be possible to write a LISP routine that, say, automatically selected the closest 2 grip points with equal x or y coordinates from where you clicked on the line to select it?

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I would draw a line across the area to define the crossing window. Zoom out and use that as a guide. Maybe there is more to what you have than that, but just in case.

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I would draw a line across the area to define the crossing window. Zoom out and use that as a guide. Maybe there is more to what you have than that, but just in case.

 

Nice, clever, and yet simple, old school solution rkent. :beer:

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Somewhat along the lines of rkent....

 

Would it be easier / possible to draw long crossing lines and use extend?

 

This is probably the easiest but probably not good for all situations. When I'm doing one lines, I do a lot of grip editing.

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You know that you can stretch with the grip in the middle of a line as well? I don't know if it will help in this particular situation though.

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It sounds like you mgiht find it easier to do the old fashioned STRETCH command where you enter the command, select a bunch of stuff and stretch it, rather than trying to use grip?

 

dJE

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You know that you can stretch with the grip in the middle of a line as well? I don't know if it will help in this particular situation though.

 

AutoCAD calls it "stretch" but it doesn't stretch the object. It's more like a move.

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AutoCAD calls it "stretch" but it doesn't stretch the object. It's more like a move.

 

Ah yeah, for a Line, as I wrote, you are right. But in my mind I meant to write Polyline - then it works like Stretch.

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You know that you can stretch with the grip in the middle of a line as well? I don't know if it will help in this particular situation though.

 

I always ignore those grips, but from now on I shall take them into account and give it a shot, heh.

 

Thanks a lot for the help, everyone.

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