- [Narrator] The offset entities tool
is pretty much one of the most powerful
and useful tools that are in the sketch tool palette.
It's going to save us a lot of time
and let me show you how it works.
Right up here under offset entities,
click on that one there. It has a few options here.
One is how much we want to offset by,
and if we want to add a dimension or not.
If we'd like to reverse that,
select the chain, bi-directional.
So let's just go ahead
and choose a circle here and notice as soon as I do
I've got this little yellow line that goes around it.
That's going to be my offset entity.
Now over here, if I click on the little arrow
notice it will flip it to the inside.
So you can switch to the inside or the outside.
If that's not what you wanted to do
we can always come back over here, offset entities again.
You can also do the same thing right over here
by flipping that inside or outside
You can go bi-directional.
You can offset to the inside as well as to the outside.
And if you wanted to just use that original sketch
as construction geometry, we can say
I'd like to make that base geometry
construction geometry, or you have the option
of making the offset geometry construction or both.
So your choice, so you can turn these on or off
depending on what you want to do.
I'm going to leave that base geometry
as construction geometry, and then click on okay.
And there you have a nice offset.
So it just saved us that time of having to go in
and create two separate circles and create some dimension.
It's all doing it in one quick command.
So really handy. Right up here, here's another,
just a basic line.
So I can offset that line. Let's just do one direction.
So if I just want to make one direction here
I can just define how far I would like to offset off.
That's fine, pretty straight forward.
And it's going to give us a dimension there, which is handy.
And if you want to change the dimension
it'll just automatically change the line
but it's always going to be an offset line, right?
So that line, I can move it up and down
but it's still attached, right?
They they're connected together by that offset. All right.
Now, if I wanted to go actually both directions
let me try doing that again.
So offset entities over here, click on the line itself.
Let's go both directions or bi-directional
and I have the option to cap the end.
So I can actually make a slot with that basic line.
Or instead of arcs, I can just use lines.
So I can create a rectangle with that line
and I can make the rectangle bigger or wider this way.
And it's pretty handy.
And I can also, if I click okay, I can then go over here
and add a dimension and make that four inches
and everything automatically grows, right.
Then you might want to make that line
in the center, construction geometry
and now you've got a nice little rectangle.
Over here same thing.
If you don't want to offset the entire thing, no problem.
Come over here, offset entities.
Maybe you want to offset just this arc, right?
And instead of bi-directional, you just want to
go a small amount, like 0.25.
Now by default it's going to choose the entire chain, right?
So the chain is going to be selected but I could turn that off.
I only want this one little section of the arc.
I can reverse it. So I'm going into the inside,
and it's another great way to use the tool.
Click okay, there's our little offset right there.
Again, the offset tool is a really great way
to do a lot of things.
I'll show you one more that's pretty handy.
So if you have a rectangle and you wanted to put something
like a circle in the corner, right?
So here's one circle and here's two circles.
And let's just go ahead
and draw a few more of these guys, right?
So we want these circles to be
in the corners or like a bolt plate.
Now you could come in here and start adding dimensions
from the center to the edge and, and so on
but we don't want to do that. That's way too much work.
So what would prefer to do is just grab something
like offset entities, grab that actual shape
select the entire chain, make something like 0.5
or else maybe a little bigger 0.75
and then we'll say we're going to make
the offset geometry just,
it's going to be construction geometry, right?
So it's only going to be used to help us out.
So now what I can do is I can grab the circles.
I can just snap those to the corners, just like that.
And it's going to save us a little lot of time
and we don't have to add all those dimensions.
Now, if we want even more fancy, let's go ahead
and select all four of these circles by holding
on control and say, let's make these guys all equal
and then add a dimension to only one of 'em of 0.75.
So really easily I can add an offset entity.
I can tie into it and use that for construction geometry
or just creating regular lines.