UCS

If you have understood everything till this point from the Interface and Model Space, well Congratulations! You have already learnt UCS…!

Everything that we tried to list in the previous chapter contributes to and forms the UCS – User Co-ordinate System for you. As the name suggests there can be more than one UCS in a single drawing and the default one is referred as World Co-ordinate System. Being completely customizable, user can change any or every element of the UCS.
For e.g. –
1. Shift the Origin(Base) from 0,0,0 to any desirable point
2. Change the orientation of X / Y axis (angle and direction) to any desirable position
3. Change the Elevation of the XY plane and so on…

But why we need to change the UCS is the question in first place. Well, good question I must say…! Although it certainly has its reasoning and philosophy, we will have to wait for some time before we get into that. Why, because we are supposed to understand the World Coordinate System first and it’s indication, nature and behavior.

In the World Co-ordinate System –
1. The Origin is at 0,0,0
2. The X axis is Horizontal and points in the right / East Direction with angle 0
3. The Y axis is Vertical and points in the up / North Direction with angle 90
4. The Z axis is perpendicular to the XY plane and points to the user
5. The angle calculation is counterclockwise and BASE is 0,0,0
6. The projection is orthographic and the view is TOP or PLAN

How will you determine which UCS is the current? Well AutoCAD has thought of that and provided you with a little guiding friend called UCS ICON. This is the symbol placed in the lower left corner of the drawing area which looks like TWO pointing Arrows stuck to each other in a tiny square at their start points. This icon again is fully customizable, why; you can even make it disappear…! Although I would never recommend tweaking with UCS Icon for the reasons you will discover in due course, AutoCAD has been generous enough to offer you the freedom to play with UCS Icon for allowing the users to make them comfortable as habits are the most idiosyncratic things, AutoDESK agrees!

To experiment with appearance of your UCS ICON go to –

View – Display – UCS Icon.

Try to change the visibility, position and structure of your UCS Icon as long as you are satisfied with the way it displays.

Note – Don’t try to Turn it ‘Off’ though as it would be too early and too overconfident to try to work without a guiding friend. It could prove as bad as getting off to a voyage without the compass…!
Tomorrow we will see some more tweaking we can do to the interface before we start the actual work.

Stay tuned…!