What’s the use of Grids in CAD?

When opening the CAD system, the system creates a new empty drawing, we can see in the drawing there are points(in lower version of CAD) or lines(in higher version of CAD) that are equidistant from each other, which is called grids. So what’s the use of grids in CAD? OK, let me explain this in detail.

Grid is a matrix of points or lines that is all over the grid area. Using a grid is like putting a piece of coordinate paper under the graphic to align objects and see the clear distance between objects. Grids will not be printed since they only show within the drawing limits, or they can go beyond the drawing limits, as shown in the following picture:

After setting proper grid spacing and limits, we can use the grid snap to precisely draw without entering coordinate values. Nowadays, many people can proficiently use the keyboard, so directly entering distance or coordinates is obviously faster and more precise than counting points and lines. For example, if you need to enter the 12.5-lone distance, then we’ll need to set the grid space to 0.5.

Grid style

In higher versions of CAD, lines are set by default in a grid, but we can change the Grid Style and set points in a grid. For example, in GstarCAD 2019, the default grid is shown as the following picture,

We can change the default grid style by checking 2D model space in the Drafting Settings, as shown in the following picture,

Grid snap

Grid snap is not commonly used these days, but there are a handful of drafters that are confused by grids. The Grid Snap will function whether the Grid mode is on or off. Many drafters turn off the Grid Mode with the Grid snap still on. They may find that their cursor has difficulty constantly moving, making positioning very hard in a drawing. If you encounter the same problem when drawing, you can check if the Snap mode is still on in the bottom status bar.

Disable grid in newly-created files

Many people don’t like the idea of grids and they tend to disable grids in CAD. The templates in CAD have grid mode on, so when creating new drawings, there would be grids. We can disable grids in CAD, but first, we need to know which templates we are using. Some CAD versions directly show a dialogue box when creating new drawing files while other CAD versions show a dialogue box to choose between the metric system and the British system. Normally *cadiso.dwt is metric system while *cad.dwt is British system. GstarCAD metric system uses templates whose filename is gcadiso.dwt.

We have known the difference between the metric system and the British system. The solution is very easy: creating a new blank drawing, disable the grid mode in the bottom status bar, and click Save as set *.dwt as the file format and replace the original template files. OK, since the original template files have been replaced, there would be no grids in any newly-created files.

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