Any location in a drawing has its unique coordinates (Cartesian or Polar System) and can be described in X, Y and Z coordinate values. Those values are shown at the left side of the drawing status bar.

Cartesian & Polar System

Cartesian co-ordinate system is the standard system that it is used in AutoCAD. In 2 dimension drawings the first value is expressed as the X co-ordinate measured along the horizontal axis, the second value is expressed as the Y co-ordinate measured along the vertical axis, while the third value, Z will always be zero. It has to be mentioned that the origin is always 0, 0.

Polar co-ordinate system is used to express the position of point in drawing space. The main difference between Cartesian & Polar is that the second one uses one distance and one angle in order to describe the position of a point. Both the distance and the angle are measured from the origin (0,0) as shown below. The angles in AutoCAD starts at X axis (0 or <360 degrees) going anticlockwise. In the positive Y axis the angle is 90 degrees, in the negative X axis is < 270 degrees and finally c

Co-ordinate system in 3D drawings:

In 3 dimension drawings the points are expressed in X, Y, Z coordinate values and there are always separated by a comma.