7.3 Grip Editing

Autodesk Certified User ACU

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1 Introduction & Exam Foundations

1.1 Current Exam Facts 1.2 Candidate Profile, UI & Help 1.3 Inquiry Commands & Draw Order

2 Chapter 2: Basic Drawing Objects

2.1 Lines, Circles, Rectangles, Arcs, Polygons & Rays 2.2 2D Isometric Drawings

3 Chapter 3: Polylines

3.1 Drawing Open & Closed Polylines 3.2 Editing & Joining Polylines

4 Chapter 4: Selection Sets & Layers

4.1 Creating & Refining Selection Sets 4.2 Managing Layers

5 Chapter 5: Blocks

5.1 Creating Basic Blocks 5.2 Inserting & Modifying Block Instances 5.3 Transferring Content Between Drawings

6 Chapter 6: Draw with Accuracy

6.1 Object Snaps & Object Snap Tracking 6.2 Absolute, Relative & Polar Coordinates 6.3 Dynamic Input & Direct Distance Entry

7 Chapter 7: Properties & Transform Edits

7.1 Object Properties & Match Properties 7.2 Move, Copy, Rotate, Mirror, Scale & Stretch 7.3 Grip Editing

8 Chapter 8: Trim, Arrays, Offset & Corners

8.1 Trim, Extend & Lengthen 8.2 Rectangular & Polar Arrays 8.3 Offsetting Objects 8.4 Fillet & Chamfer

9 Chapter 9: Text & Leaders

9.1 Single-Line & Multiline Text 9.2 Leaders & Multileaders

10 Chapter 10: Dimensions

10.1 Linear, Aligned, Angular, Radius & Diameter Dimensions 10.2 Continue & Baseline Dimension Strings 10.3 Dimension Styles

11 Chapter 11: Hatch, Layouts & Printing

11.1 Hatches & Fill Patterns 11.2 Layouts & Viewports 11.3 Viewport Scale & Title Blocks 11.4 Plotting & Page Setup Manager

Key Takeaways Explain This Topic AI

Selecting an object with no command active displays its grips — small solid squares at key geometric points, such as both endpoints and the midpoint of a line, or the center and four quadrants of a circle — without needing to type a command name

Clicking an unselected grip turns it into a hot grip and immediately starts a grip edit using that grip's location as the default base point, with Stretch as the default first mode for vertex-type grips

Pressing Enter or the Spacebar while a grip is hot cycles through the five grip-edit modes in order — Stretch, Move, Rotate, Scale, Mirror — without leaving the command or typing a command name

Holding Shift while specifying the destination point in any grip edit mode creates a copy at that location instead of moving or stretching the original, and repeating Shift-clicks places additional copies in the same operation

Which action a dragged grip performs depends on the object and the grip: dragging a line's endpoint stretches that one end, dragging its midpoint moves the whole line, dragging a circle's center moves the whole circle, and dragging a circle's quadrant grip resizes its radius

Last updated: August 2026

Grip editing is AutoCAD's fastest path to the same five transform operations covered in the previous section — Stretch, Move, Rotate, Scale, and Mirror — accessed entirely through an object's own selection handles, with no command name to type and no separate Select Objects prompt to answer. ACU Objective 3.2.b tests this workflow specifically: recognizing what a grip is, how to make one hot, how to cycle between its five available modes, and how to place copies along the way.

What Are Grips?

Selecting any object with no command currently active displays its grips — small solid squares positioned at the object's key geometric points, with no ribbon click or typed command required. A line shows three grips: one at each endpoint and one at the midpoint. A circle shows five: one at the center and one at each of the four quadrant points. An arc, polyline, or block shows grips appropriate to its own geometry — vertices for a polyline, the insertion point for a block reference. Grips appear the instant you click an object in an empty command state and disappear the moment you press Esc or start a different command, since they represent a lightweight, temporary editing mode layered on top of a plain selection.

Making a Grip Hot

Clicking directly on one of these unselected grips turns it hot — AutoCAD highlights it, typically filled and colored differently from the unselected grips, and immediately begins a grip-edit operation using that grip's exact location as the default base point . For most vertex-style grips — a line's endpoint, a polyline's vertex — the default mode that starts is Stretch , and a dynamic tooltip at the cursor shows a live preview along with the current mode name and available options.

Cycling Through the Five Grip Modes

Once a grip is hot, pressing Enter or the Spacebar advances to the next grip-edit mode in a fixed cycle: Stretch → Move → Rotate → Scale → Mirror , and back to Stretch again if you keep pressing. Each press changes only which operation the same hot grip currently performs — it never changes which grip is active or where its base point sits, unless you explicitly override the base point. Rather than cycling one step at a time, you can also jump directly to a mode by typing its two-letter shortcut at the prompt: MO for Move, RO for Rotate, SC for Scale, MI for Mirror, or ST to return to Stretch. Additional single-letter options are available in every mode: B lets you specify a different base point than the hot grip's own location, C enables placing multiple copies without holding a key down, R activates a Reference angle or length (mirroring the option available in the full ROTATE and SCALE commands), and X exits the grip edit entirely, deselecting the object and removing its grips.

Copying with Shift

Holding Shift while specifying the destination point in any of the five grip-edit modes places a copy at that location instead of moving, stretching, rotating, scaling, or mirroring the original object. Because the Shift key can be held down repeatedly, a drafter can click several destination points in sequence — each one, while Shift is held, drops another copy, letting a single grip-driven operation stamp out multiple duplicates the same way COPY's default Multiple mode does. Releasing Shift and specifying one more point ends the sequence by placing a final copy, or, if Shift was never pressed at all, by moving or transforming the original instead of copying it.

Selecting Multiple Grips at Once

A single hot grip is the most common case, but Shift-clicking several grips before releasing Shift makes all of them hot simultaneously, and any subsequent grip edit — Stretch, Move, or another mode — applies to every hot grip together as one coordinated operation. This is useful for adjusting a connected corner: Shift-clicking the shared endpoint grips of two intersecting wall lines and stretching them together moves that corner as a single unit, instead of dragging one line's endpoint and then separately dragging the other line's matching endpoint to keep the corner connected.

What a Dragged Grip Actually Does Depends on the Object

The specific effect of dragging a grip depends on which grip it is, not just which mode is active, because some grips represent a single reshapeable point while others represent the object's overall position:

Object Grip Default drag result
Line Endpoint Stretches that one end; the other end stays fixed
Line Midpoint Moves the entire line; there's no single vertex to stretch at the midpoint
Circle Center Moves the entire circle

Circle Quadrant Resizes the radius, since a circle has no vertices to stretch — dragging a quadrant is the closest equivalent

Polyline Vertex Stretches that vertex, reshaping the adjacent segments
Block reference Insertion point Moves the entire block; blocks aren't reshaped by dragging their grip

Recognizing this endpoint-vs-midpoint, vertex-vs-center distinction mirrors the same crossing-window logic from STRETCH in the previous section: some points on an object are stretchable and some only ever move the object as a whole.

Worked Example

Two wall lines meet at a shared corner grip. Clicking that shared endpoint grip makes it hot, starting in Stretch mode with a live preview showing both connected segments reshaping together. Typing coordinates for the new corner location — or simply picking a point with an object snap — relocates the corner while the far end of each wall line, outside the selection, stays anchored exactly where it was. Pressing Enter once would cycle to Move mode instead, which would drag the whole nearest wall segment rather than reshaping the corner, illustrating why choosing the right mode before specifying the destination point matters.

On the Exam

Expect questions asking which grip-edit mode is active by default when a specific type of grip goes hot, how many times Enter or Space must be pressed to reach a target mode from Stretch, what Shift accomplishes during a grip edit, and which specific grip — endpoint vs. midpoint, center vs. quadrant — produces a reshape versus a whole-object move.