AutoCAD: Relative coordinates

Remember some of the basics to make your drafting experience easier. The @ sign is your friend
Català - Castellano
Some of the basics of how AutoCAD works tend to be forgotten. One of this is the capacity to enter relative coordinates by using the @ sign before the coordinates. This will allow us to set a point, line end point, etc a certain distance from the point we clicked before.
This is specially useful when we draw rectangles using the RECTANGLE command. If we know the dimensions of the rectangle we want to draft, we can just click on the point we want one of its corners to be and enter @X,Y (being X=width and Y=height). By entering the @ sign the coordinates of the second corner will be relative to the first one, while if we didn't enter the @ sign, entering X,Y only, we would be entering coordinate points related to the UCS 0,0,0.
As a quick example, if we want to draw a rectangle 1 unit high by 2 units wide, we will do the following:

• Enter RECTANGLE command (or click rectangle icon if you use icons)
  
• click to select the point of the first corner
• enter @2,1
  

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