Specifying Polar Coordinates

Specifying Polar Coordinates
To enter the exact distance of 3 (or 9 metric) units to the right of the last point you selected, do
the following:
1. Type @3<0. Metric users should type @9<0. As you type, the letters appear at the Command
prompt.
2. Press ↵. A line appears, starting from the first point you picked and ending 3 units to the
right of it (see Figure 2.3). You’ve just entered a relative polar coordinate.



The “at” sign (@) you entered tells AutoCAD that the coordinate you’re specifying is from
the last point you selected. The 3 (or 9 metric) is the distance, and the less-than symbol (<) tells
AutoCAD that you’re designating the angle at which the line is to be drawn. The last part is the
value for the angle, which in this case is 0 for 0°. This is how to use polar coordinates to communicate
distances and directions to AutoCAD.
TIP If you’re accustomed to a different method for describing directions, you can set AutoCAD to
use a vertical direction or downward direction as 0°. See Chapter 3 for details.
Angles are given based on the system shown in Figure 2.4, in which 0° is a horizontal direction
from left to right, 90° is straight up, 180° is horizontal from right to left, and so on. You can specify
degrees, minutes, and seconds of arc if you want to be that exact. I’ll discuss angle formats in more
detail in Chapter 3.