Learn/Drafting/2D Sketch Editor
Context Menu Operations
At a glance
- Copy / Paste — clipboard with small offset at cursor position
- Join — merge collinear lines or concentric arcs into one entity
- Chain Select — flood-fill all connected line/arc entities
- Convert to Polyline / Convert to Spline / Explode to Lines & Arcs
- Group, Ungroup, Ungroup All
- Text on Arc — curve a text group along any arc or circle
- Properties — set color, line style, and construction flag per entity
Right-click any entity in the sketch editor and the menu adapts to what's under the cursor and
what's selected — the counts in the labels (Copy (12), Delete (3)) tell you exactly how many
entities an action will touch.
Clipboard and selection
Copy and Paste work on whole selections; paste drops the geometry at the point you
right-clicked and leaves it selected, ready to drag (Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V work too). Chain
Select flood-fills from a line or arc to everything connected end-to-end — one right-click grabs
an entire imported contour. Pressing Space chain-selects from whatever is already selected.
Rebuilding geometry
- Join merges collinear line segments into one line, or arc segments on the same circle into one arc — the antidote to chopped-up DXF imports.
- Convert to Polyline turns splines, connected chains, or circles into arc-fitted polylines (you set the deviation); Convert to Spline goes the other way; Explode to Lines/Arcs breaks a polyline back into individual entities.
Organizing
Group, Ungroup, and Ungroup All manage groups; the Layers submenu moves the selection between sketch layers; text groups offer Text on Arc…; polylines and splines offer Manipulate….
Properties
Properties opens a per-entity readout — start/end, length, and angle for lines, radius for
arcs and circles, perimeter and enclosed area for closed polylines — plus Color and line
Style pickers (solid, dashed, dotted, dash-dot, center, phantom; see
Entity Styling). Construction toggling is faster from the
keyboard: X flips the construction flag on the current selection.