CAD Tip of the Day: Hiding Objects with a Wipeout

Hiding Objects with a Wipeout

A wipeout covers existing objects in order to clear space for some annotation or to indicate that the covered objects will be changed and should therefore be ignored. A wipeout is a polygonal area with a background that matches the background of the drawing area. The WIPEOUT command creates a polygon of the same color as the background of your drawing area.

To create a wipeout, follow these steps:

1. Choose Draw ➪ Wipeout. 






2. At the Specify first point or [Frames/Polyline] : prompt, specify the first point of a shape that will cover existing objects. To use a polyline as the shape, right-click and choose Polyline. (The polyline can’t contain any arcs when you use it for this purpose.) Then select the polyline and choose whether or not to erase the polyline.

3. At the Specify next point or [Undo]: prompt, if you specified a point, specify the next point.

4. At the Specify next point or [Close/Undo]: prompt, specify another point or use the Close option to close the wipeout shape. You can also press Enter to end the command and use the shape that you specified.

By default, the wipeout has a frame around it, using the current layer’s color. You can hide the frames of all wipeouts by starting the WIPEOUT command, choosing the Frames option, and then choosing Off.

You can create a background mask especially for text. This mask covers a rectangle around
your text so that you can read the text more easily.