Autocad for Dummies

Simple steps for creating AutoCAD drawings

AutoCAD is the ubiquitous tool used by engineers, architects, designers, and urban planners to put their ideas on paper. It takes some AutoCAD know-how to go from a brilliant idea to a drawing that properly explains how brilliant your idea is.

AutoCAD For Dummies helps you de-mystify the handy software and put the tools in AutoCAD to use. Written by an experienced AutoCAD engineer and mechanical design instructor, it assumes no previous computer-aided drafting experience as it walks you through the basics of starting projects and drawing straight lines all the way up through 3D modeling.

• Conquer the first steps in creating an AutoCAD project
• Tackle drawing basics including straight lines and curves
• Add advanced skills including 3D drawing and modeling
• Set up a project and move into 3D

It's true that AutoCAD is tough, but with the friendly instruction in this hands-on guide, you'll find everything you need to start creating marvelous models—without losing your cool.

Bill Fane was a doorknob designer for many years. Then, in 1996, he began teaching mechanical design, including courses in AutoCAD, Inventor, SolidWorks, and machine design. Having used AutoCAD since Version 2.17g debuted in 1986, Bill lectured on a wide range of AutoCAD and Inventor subjects at Autodesk University from 1995 to 2012. He has written extensively for CADalyst magazine.

Introduction 1

About This Book 2

Foolish Assumptions 3

Conventions Used in This Book 3

Using the command line 3

Using aliases 4

Icons Used in This Book 5

Beyond the Book 5

Where to Go from Here 6

Part 1: Getting Started with AutoCAD 7

Chapter 1: Introducing AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT 9

Launching AutoCAD 10

Drawing in AutoCAD 11

Understanding Pixels and Vectors 14

The Cartesian Coordinate System 15

Chapter 2: The Grand Tour of AutoCAD 17

Looking at AutoCAD’s Drawing Screen 18

For your information 21

Making choices from the Application menu 22

Unraveling the Ribbon 24

Getting with the Program 27

Looking for Mr Status Bar 28

Using Dynamic Input 28

Let your fingers do the talking: The command line 29

The key(board) to AutoCAD success 30

Keeping tabs on palettes 34

Down the main stretch: The drawing area 34

Fun with F1 35

Chapter 3: A Lap around the CAD Track 37

A Simple Setup 38

Drawing a (Base) Plate 43

Taking a Closer Look with Zoom and Pan 51

Modifying to Make It Merrier 52

Crossing your hatches 53

Now that’s a stretch 54

Following the Plot 57

Plotting the drawing 57

Today’s layer forecast: Freezing 60

Chapter 4: Setup for Success 61

A Setup Roadmap 62

Choosing your units 62

Weighing up your scales 65

Thinking about paper 68

Defending your border 68

A Template for Success 69

Making the Most of Model Space 71

Setting your units 72

Making the drawing area snap-py (and grid-dy) 73

Setting linetype, text, and dimension scales 75

Entering drawing properties 76

Making Templates Your Own 77

Chapter 5: A Zoom with a View 83

Zooming and Panning with Glass and Hand 84

The wheel deal 84

Navigating a drawing 85

Zoom, Zoom, Zoom 87

A View by Any Other Name 89

Degenerating and Regenerating 91

Part 2: Let There Be Lines 93

Chapter 6: Along the Straight and Narrow 95

Drawing for Success 96

Introducing the Straight-Line Drawing Commands 97

Drawing Lines and Polylines 98

Toeing the line 100

Connecting the lines with polyline 100

Squaring Off with Rectangles 105

Choosing Sides with POLygon 106

Chapter 7: Dangerous Curves Ahead 109

Throwing Curves 109

Going Full Circle 110

Arc-y-ology 112

Solar Ellipses 114

Splines: Sketchy, Sinuous Curves 115

Donuts: Circles with a Difference 117

Revision Clouds on the Horizon 118

Scoring Points 120

Chapter 8: Preciseliness Is Next to CADliness 123

Controlling Precision 124

Understanding the AutoCAD Coordinate Systems 127

Keyboard capers: Coordinate input 127

Introducing user coordinate systems 128

Drawing by numbers 129

Grabbing an Object and Making It Snappy 131

Grabbing points with object snap overrides 132

Snap goes the cursor 134

Running with object snaps 135

Other Practical Precision Procedures 137

Chapter 9: Manage Your Properties 141

Using Properties with Objects 142

Using the ByLayer approach 142

Changing properties 144

Working with Layers 146

Accumulating properties 148

Creating new layers 149

Manipulating layers 156

Scaling an object’s linetype 158

Using Named Objects 159

Using AutoCAD DesignCenter 161

Chapter 10: Grabbing Onto Object Selection 163

Commanding and Selecting 164

Command-first editing 164

Selection-first editing 164

Direct-object manipulation 164

Choosing an editing style 165

Selecting Objects 166

One-by-one selection 167

Selection boxes left and right 167

Tying up object selection 169

Perfecting Selecting 170

AutoCAD Groupies 173

Object Selection: Now You See It 173

Chapter 11: Edit for Credit 175

Assembling Your AutoCAD Toolkit 175

The Big Three: Move, COpy, and Stretch 178

Base points and displacements 178

Move 180

COpy 181

Copy between drawings 182

Stretch 182

More Manipulations 186

Mirror, mirror on the monitor 186

ROtate 188

SCale 189

-ARray 190

Offset 191

Slicing, Dicing, and Splicing 193

TRim and EXtend 193

BReak 195

Fillet, CHAmfer, and BLEND 196

Join 199

Other editing commands 201

Getting a Grip 202

When Editing Goes Bad 204

Dare to Compare 206

Chapter 12: Planning for Paper 207

Setting Up a Layout in Paper Space 210

The layout two-step 210

Put it on my tabs 212

Any Old Viewport in a Layout 213

Up and down the detail viewport scales 214

Keeping track of where you’re at 216

Practice Makes Perfect 217

Clever Paper Space Tricks 217

Part 3: If Drawings Could Talk 219

Chapter 13: Text with Character 221

Getting Ready to Write 222

Creating Simply Stylish Text 224

Font follies 225

Get in style 226

Taking Your Text to New Heights 228

Plotted text height 228

Calculating non-annotative AutoCAD text height 228

Entering Text 230

Using the Same Old Line 230

Saying More in Multiline Text 233

Making it with mText 233

mText dons a mask 237

Insert Field 237

Doing a number on your mText lists 238

Line up in columns — now! 240

Modifying mText 242

Turning On Annotative Objects 242

Gather Round the Tables 245

Tables have style, too 246

Creating and editing tables 247

Take Me to Your Leader 250

Electing a leader 250

Multi options for multileaders 252

Chapter 14: Entering New Dimensions 253

Adding Dimensions to a Drawing 254

A Field Guide to Dimensions 257

Self-centered 259

Quick, dimension! 260

And now for the easy way 261

Where, oh where, do my dimensions go? 262

The Latest Styles in Dimensioning 263

Creating dimension styles 266

Adjusting style settings 268

Changing styles 272

Scaling Dimensions for Output 272

Editing Dimensions 275

Editing dimension geometry 275

Editing dimension text 277

Controlling and editing dimension associativity 278

And the Correct Layer Is  279

Chapter 15: Down the Hatch! 281

Creating a Hatch 281

Using the Hatches Tab 285

Scaling Hatches 288

Scaling the easy way 288

Annotative versus non-annotative 289

Pushing the Boundaries of Hatch 290

Adding style 290

Hatches from scratch 291

Editing Hatch Objects 293

Chapter 16: The Plot Thickens 295

You Say “Printing,” I Say “Plotting” 296

The Plot Quickens 296

Plotting success in 16 steps 296

Getting with the system 301

Configuring your printer 301

Preview one, two 303

Instead of fit, scale it 303

Plotting the Layout of the Land 305

Plotting Lineweights and Colors 307

Plotting with style 307

Plotting through thick and thin 312

Plotting in color 316

It’s a (Page) Setup! 317

Continuing the Plot Dialog 318

The Plot Sickens 321

Part 4: Advancing with AutoCAD 323

Chapter 17: The ABCs of Blocks 325

Rocking with Blocks 326

Creating Block Definitions 328

Inserting Blocks 332

Attributes: Fill-in-the-Blank Blocks 336

Creating attribute definitions 337

Defining blocks that contain attribute definitions 339

Inserting blocks that contain attribute definitions 339

Editing attribute values 340

Extracting data 340

Exploding Blocks 341

Purging Unused Block Definitions 341

Chapter 18: Everything from Arrays to Xrefs 343

Arraying Associatively 345

Comparing the old and new ARray commands 346

Hip, hip, array! 347

Associatively editing 353

Going External 354

Becoming attached to your xrefs 356

Layer-palooza 358

Editing an external reference file 358

Forging an xref path 359

Managing xrefs 361

Blocks, Xrefs, and Drawing Organization 363

Mastering the Raster 364

Attaching a raster image 365

Maintaining your image 366

You Say PDF; I Say DWF 367

Theme and Variations: Dynamic Blocks 369

Now you see it 370

Lights! Parameters! Actions! 374

Manipulating dynamic blocks 375

Chapter 19: Call the Parametrics! 377

Maintaining Design Intent 378

Defining terms 380

Forget about drawing with precision! 381

Constrain yourself 381

Understanding Geometric Constraints 382

Applying a little more constraint 384

Using inferred constraints 389

You AutoConstrain yourself! 389

Understanding Dimensional Constraints 390

Practice a little constraint 392

Making your drawing even smarter 394

Using the Parameters Manager 396

Dimensions or constraints? Have it both ways! 399

Lunchtime! 401

Chapter 20: Drawing on the Internet 403

The Internet and AutoCAD: An Overview 404

You send me 404

Prepare it with eTransmit 404

Rapid eTransmit 405

FTP for you and me 407

Increasing cloudiness 407

Bad reception? 408

Help from Reference Manager 408

The Drawing Protection Racket 410

Outgoing! 411

Autodesk weather forecast: Increasing cloud 411

Your head planted firmly in the cloud 412

AutoCAD Web and Mobile 413

Part 5: On a 3D Spree 415

Chapter 21: It’s a 3D World After All 417

The 3.5 Kinds of 3D Digital Models 418

Tools of the 3D Trade 419

Warp speed ahead 420

Entering the third dimension 421

Untying the Ribbon and opening some palettes 422

Modeling from Above 423

Using 3D coordinate input 424

Using point filters 425

Object snaps and object snap tracking 425

Changing Planes 426

Displaying the UCS icon 426

Adjusting the UCS 426

Navigating the 3D Waters 431

Orbit à go-go 432

Taking a spin around the cube 433

Grabbing the Steering Wheels 434

Visualizing 3D Objects 435

On a Render Bender 437

Chapter 22: From Drawings to Models 439

Is 3D for Me? 440

Getting Your 3D Bearings 441

Creating a better 3D template 441

Seeing the world from new viewpoints 446

From Drawing to Modeling in 3D 448

Drawing basic 3D objects 448

Gaining a solid foundation 449

Drawing solid primitives 450

Adding the Third Dimension to 2D Objects 451

Adding thickness to a 2D object 451

Extruding open and closed objects 451

Pressing and pulling closed boundaries 452

Lofting open and closed objects 452

Sweeping open and closed objects along a path 453

Revolving open or closed objects around an axis 454

Modifying 3D Objects 454

Selecting subobjects 454

Working with gizmos 455

More 3D variants of 2D commands 456

Editing solids 457

Chapter 23: It’s Showtime! 461

Get the 2D Out of Here! 462

A different point of view 466

Additional 3D tricks 467

AutoCAD’s top model 467

Visualizing the Digital World 469

Adding Lighting 470

Default lighting 470

User-defined lights 471

Sunlight 474

Creating and Applying Materials 474

Defining a Background 477

Rendering a 3D Model 479

Chapter 24: AutoCAD Plays Well with Others 481

Get Out of Here! 481

Things that go BMP in the night 482

Vectoring in on WMF 483

And now here are the lumpy bits 484

PDF 485

What the DWF? 485

3D Print 486

But wait! There’s more! 486

Open Up and Let Me In! 486

Editing other drawing file formats 487

PDF editing 487

Translation, Please! 489

The Importance of Being DWG 490

Part 6: The Part of Tens 493

Chapter 25: Ten AutoCAD Resources 495

Autodesk Discussion Groups 495

Autodesk’s Own Blogs 495

Autodesk University 496

Autodesk Channel on YouTube 496

World Wide (CAD) Web 496

Your Local Authorized Training Center 497

Your Local User Group 497

Autodesk User Groups International 497

Books 498

Autodesk Feedback Community 498

Chapter 26: Ten System Variables to Make Your AutoCAD Life Easier 499

APERTURE 500

DIMASSOC 500

MENUBAR 501

MIRRTEXT 501

OSNAPZ 502

PICKBOX 502

REMEMBERFOLDERS 502

ROLLOVERTIPS 503

TOOLTIPS 503

VISRETAIN 504

And the Bonus Round 504

Chapter 27: Ten AutoCAD Secrets 505

Sheet Sets 505

Custom Tool Palettes 506

Ribbon Customization 506

Toolsets 506

Programming Languages 506

Vertical Versions 507

Language Packs 507

Multiple Projects or Clients 508

Data Extraction and Linking 508

Untying the Ribbon 508

Index 509

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