Divide and Measure in AutoCAD: Tuesday Tips With Frank
Learning

AutoCAD has several commands that I like to refer to as “kissing cousins”. No, Iâm not talking about the Elvis movie from the early 60âs*, but instead what can be defined as âsomething that is of a very similar character to another thing of the same typeâ (yes, I got that off the web).
Iâve written about a few of these already in this blog. Fillet and Chamfer come to mind, along with Xline and Ray. Divide and Measure are another pair a lot of people arenât aware of. You can find them tucked away in the additional commands area of the Draw panel in the Ribbon. Of course, you can just type them into the Command Line as well.
They work in a similar fashion. Divide will create evenly spaced points or blocks along an object, while Measure do the same, but each will be a fixed distance apart. Before we look closer at these commands, youâll need to know a little about Points and their visual style.
An AutoCAD Point is a non-dimensional object that can be snapped to with the NODE osnap. It appears as a dot on the screen by default. Thatâs what these two cousins will use, and since the points will be obscured by the object youâre working on, you may want to change their appearance. You do that with the Point Style dialog, which can be found in the pulldown of the Utilities panel in the Home Tab of the Ribbon.

Choose something other than the dot or the blank and say OK. Iâll be using the circle with the X through it for my examples.
Cousin Divide
Divide will prompt you to select your object to divide, then ask for the number of segments you want. Specify your number, and points will appear indicating the evenly spaced segments. In my example, I specified 5 segments (which, in turn, makes 4 points).
You also have the option to use a defined block instead of points. Choose the Block option, and youâll be prompted for the name of the block and then whether you want to align the block with the object. Below, Iâve shown examples of all three options, and their associated prompts.

Cousin Measure
Hereâs the good news. Once youâve learned one command, youâve learned the other. Thus, their kissing cousin status. Just remember, with Measure, youâre telling it to place the point or block at a defined distance along your object. It will stop when it doesnât have enough room to place another, so youâll probably end up with a short segment on the end.
Below I show the same steps as I did with Divide, but instead specify for the point or block to be placed every 2.5 units along the arc.

In Summary
Iâve seen all kinds of ways for people to achieve what weâve just learned about, simply because they didnât know about these two commands. Just because theyâre hidden in the Draw pulldown, doesnât make them any less useful. Give them a try next time you need to divvy something up, or place something along regular intervals.
*Disclaimer: For my sharp eyed and even more sharp-witted readers (you know who you are), yes⌠I know Elvisâs movie was actually entitled “Kissin’ Cousins” with an apostrophe, not a “g.” Please grant me this bit of poetic license.
More Tuesday Tips
Check out our whole Tuesday Tips series for ideas on how to make AutoCAD work for you. Do you have any favorite AutoCAD tips? Tell us in the comments!
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