How to draw orthogonal lines between two points in AutoCad which will be redrawn automatically if the points are shifted?

Question

I was wondering how to do the following in AutoCAD:

Suppose we have two snap-points, say one at 0,0 and other at 100,50. I want to draw a line (or a polyline) between these two points such that (a) the legs are parallel to the axes (i.e. one leg of the line is between 0,0 and 100,0 and other between 100,0 to 100,50), and (b) if I drag the 100,50 to some other location then the line should get redrawn automatically while maintaining its legs orthogonal.

I have seen this happen in softwares built on top of AutoCAD (usually for P&ID drawing like CADWorkx), but never been able to do it in bare bones autocad. Thanks! Abhishek

Answer 1

To my understanding, autocad belongs to one of the first generations of computer drafting solutions, which did not cater for needs such as the one you are describing.

I think this need is cater by the later generations that try to capture the design intent, through various means (e.g. parametric feature based modelling). The progress in this domain -IMHO- coincided with the progress of solid based modelling, and as such it is more common to see these features in Solid modelling products (see Solidworks, ProEngineer, Inventor etc).

Although, I don't know of way to do what you want (I'm out of touch with its development, because I've stopped using Autocad and its clones more than a decade ago for design work). If I had to it on Autocad, I'd probably start by looking at AutoCAD macro functionality.