How to Clip objects in AutoCAD










There is a tool named as CLIP in ArcGIS which cut out a piece of one feature class using one or more of the features in another feature class as a cookie cutter. This is particularly useful for creating a new feature class as study area or area of interest (AOI) that contains a geographic subset of the features in another, larger feature class.

It is often needed to CLIP all the objects contained completely inside a polygon to a new drawing. The type of the objects may vary from simple objects like polylines, lines, circles, text to complex objects like splines, arcs, hatches, blocks etc.


Clip Objects in Autocad


Since the release of AutoCAD 2008, a new command EXPORTLAYOUT was introduced to export all the objects in all the viewports of the layout to a separate drawing.
I am writing this article because most of the CAD users are not aware about the power of this magical command of Autocad and use TRIM command to trim all the objects one by one which are outside of the desired polygon. It is hectic and time consuming operation to trim the objects one by one. It becomes more complex when trimming composite objects like HATCH or BLOCK or in the case when there are thousands of the polylines having thousands of vertices.

Let me elaborate the workflow here:
  • Open the drawing and create the polygon, circle or rectangle you want to crop out.
  • Copy the rectangle or polygon with a base point as 0, 0, 0 and paste in to an empty layout.


  • .        Create a viewport of the Polygon shape you just copied in Layout by command –VPORTS and enter O for object selection. Select the Polygon object. Zoom the viewport to Polygon extents.


  •      Execute the EXPORTLAYOUT command. Browse the Output Drawing path and name. The output drawing will contain the objects which were needed to be clip or crop out. 



Comments

  1. Anonymous10 February 2020 at 19:07

    Thank you very much! Very informative!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous10 February 2020 at 21:53

    Welldone Dear
    Thank you for sharing

    ReplyDelete
  3. Unknown10 February 2020 at 23:32

    This is really helpful. Thank alot

    ReplyDelete
  4. fun11 February 2020 at 17:05

    Thanks Sir....very helpfull...

    ReplyDelete
  5. Unknown18 February 2020 at 20:46

    I use this command and my tip is to create the viewport in PS at a 1:1 scale, then the exported dwg file is already to true size and no scaling is needed.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

SpaTools: Import Lidar Point Cloud (LAS/LAZ) files into AutoCAD

Image
Point clouds are large data sets composed of 3D point data. These geographic point data is collected mostly by Laser scanners and drones equipped with LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) sensors. In addition to these directly collected LIDAR point cloud data, the aerial RGB images collected by drones are processed using Image Processing & Computer Vision Algorithm based software such as Pix4D, Agisoft Photoscan or DroneDeploy to produce RGB Point Clouds in LAS file format. Besides that, the well known image processing software such as ERDAS Imagine Leica Photogrammetry Suite (LPS), ENVI and PCI Geomatica produce output in LAS file format when stereo/tri-stereo satellite images (WorldView-2, WorldView-3, SOPT 5/6/7 & Pleiades) are processed.     LAS is an industry standard file format defined by the American Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS) that includes a system of point classification. A processed LAS file may have points classified as bar...
Read more

Creating Contour Maps in ArcGIS and Conversion to AutoCAD drawing

Image
A topographic map is simply the two dimensional representation of a portion of three dimensional surface of earth. Topographic maps provide the detailed information about the natural and man-made aspects of the terrain, but are best known for their series of contour lines that show elevation changes, and colors signifying varying land types and bodies of water. Contour lines are used to determine elevations and are lines on a map that are produced from connecting points of equal elevation (elevation refers to height in feet, or meters, above sea level). By reading contour lines, one can measure the steepness of a hill, the height of a mountain, and even the depth of a lake or ocean . These lines are evenly spaced apart. This spacing is called the contour interval. For example, if your map uses a 10-foot contour interval, you will see contour lines for every 10 feet (3 meters) of elevation -- lines at 0, 10, 20, 30, 40, and so on. Different maps use different intervals, dependin...
Read more

SpaTools: Extract Topographic Profile From Contours In AutoCAD

Image
A topographic map is simply the two dimensional representation of a portion of three dimensional surface of earth. Topographic maps provide the detailed information about the natural and man-made aspects of the terrain, but are best known for their series of contour lines that show elevation changes, and colors signifying varying land types and bodies of water. Contour lines are used to determine elevations and are lines on a map that are produced from connecting points of equal elevation (elevation refers to height in feet, or meters, above sea level). By reading contour lines, one can measure the steepness of a hill, the height of a mountain, and even the depth of a lake or Ocean . The contours can be generated by a DEM (Digital Elevation Model), TIN (Triangular Irregular Network) or a surface using different software such as ArcGIS.  Read the blog about How to generate contours from DEM and create a topographic map in Autocad. Most of the topographic maps used for p...
Read more

Gunter Chain / Surveyor's Chain

Image
“ What is the length of cricket pitch?”  “It is equal to 22 yards”. Cricket  is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the center of which is a 22 yard pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps.  Recalling the memories of childhood, we use to place the wickets by pacing out a distance of 22 paces by walking. At that time, we were not aware neither interested to know the exact length of cricket pitch. But this time, the question raised in my mind that why it is 22 yards!! ?? Why it is not like 22 meters or 25 yards or 20 yards? Cricket Pitch The standard length of cricket pitch is simply one Gunter chain (Surveyor’s chain) since the first known code of Laws in 1744 and it is believed this length had been in use since the introduction of Gunter's chain  in 1620 . Throughout recorded history surveyors have used ...
Read more

SpaTools: Toolbar with all tools

Image
Since January 2020, I started writing blogs about the custom tools developed for AutoCAD. All those blogs are entitled with the prefix of “SpaTools” . Currently, ten (10) different tools have been added to SpaTools.DLL . For each tool, I have published a blog with the explanation of its usability and some basic information. The readers not only appreciated it but also suggested to improve and extend it further by adding more tools such as Export CSV, KML, LAS, GPX, SHP etc and other cartographic tools. Besides that, it was suggested by some users to develop it as a Toolbar . In the response of that suggestion, I have developed it as a toolbar. The DLL file can be downloaded from the link  at the bottom of this page. Prior to loading in AutoCAD, unblock it. Right Click on the DLL file and check the unblock checkbox and apply. Load the DLL into AutoCAD using NETLOAD command.    The commands are categorized into three panels:  Import , Create Features an...
Read more