Hidden UCS Options

Posted April 5, 2010 * Comments(4)

The UCS is a powerful tool in AutoCAD that allows you to control the drawing plane. It is very important to learn how to use this tool. It can be used for good and evil (for example, in a civil drawing, it is important to keep the UCS in the World Coordinate System otherwise the drawing may not line up with XREFs correctly). Every AutoCAD drafter should learn to use and manipulate the UCS correctly.

Here I will show you a couple of secret options for manipulating the UCS.

When you type UCS on the command line, you get this prompt:

Specify origin of UCS or [Face/NAmed/OBject/Previous/View/World/X/Y/Z/ZAxis] :

Right away you see a lot of options to manipulate the UCS, but there are hidden options that you can access as well. Type N (for new) at the prompt and you will see this:

Specify origin of new UCS or [ZAxis/3point/OBject/Face/View/X/Y/Z] <0,0,0>:

It looks very similar to the previous prompt, but you now have access to a couple more options called “3point” and “Face”.

3point
The three point option allows you to pick the origin and the X direction of the UCS. Type 3 to use the “3point” option. Click to place the UCS origin, click again to set the direction of the X-axis, and hit enter to end the command.

Face
Use the Face option to put the UCS on the face of a 3D solid.

4 Comments so far

  1. CadKicks.com on April 5th, 2010

    Hidden UCS Options…

    You’ve been kicked (a good thing) – Trackback from CadKicks.com…

  2. Jordan on April 8th, 2010

    IIRC those options are available without having to enter “new”, they just aren’t visible.  -cheers

  3. Josh Jones on April 8th, 2010

    Thanks for adding that Jordan! My habit is to type N, but you don’t have to.

  4. Mateo Garcia on May 7th, 2010

    Also we can use “_mo” or “de” (DESPLAZA in spanish).

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