Using Grips in AutoCAD

By default, grips display as blue squares on an object when the object is selected without starting a command. 

If you hover the cursor over a grip but do not select it, the color changes to pink. 

When you click directly on a grip, it changes to a selected or hot grip (red by default).  

Depending on the grip you make hot, the default mode is automatically enabled. For example, the quadrant grip of a circle stretches it, but the center grip moves the circle, as shown in figure below. 

The grip options are dependent on the object you have selected. Such grips are called multifunctional grips. 

Hover your cursor over the multifunctional grip to display its options. The options for the endpoint grips of line segments and arcs include Stretch and Lengthen, and for the middle grip of arcs include Stretch and Radius. 

Multifunctional grips are available for lines, polylines, arcs, splines, and hatches. 

To select a different option after you make a grip hot, you can right-click to display the various editing commands in the shortcut menu, as shown in the figure below. You can also press <Spacebar> to cycle through the available options. 

To clear objects and their grips, press <Esc>.  

When using grips, their default mode and multifunctional mode only apply to the object with the hot grip. However, Move, Mirror, Scale, and Rotate affect all of the selected objects. 

You can hold <Shift> to activate multiple modes of grips. 

When using grips on a block, Stretch has the same effect as Move. This is because you cannot stretch a standard block object. 

You can change the display of grips (size and color) and other settings on the Selection tab in the Options dialog box (Application Menu>Options). 

(Dynamic Input) must be toggled on for the dimensions to be displayed. 

When you select the stretch grip of an object, you can edit the dimension instead of dragging the hot grip. For example, in the figure below, the line will be stretched by 5 units.