AutoCAD For Dummies

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 4

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 52

Modifying to Make It Merrier 53

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 69

A Template for Success 69

Making the Most of Model Space 72

Setting your units 72

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

Setting linetype, text, and dimension scales 76

Entering drawing properties 77

Making Templates Your Own 77

Chapter 5: A Zoom with a View 83

Panning and Zooming with Glass and Hand 84

The wheel deal 84

Navigating a drawing 85

Zoom, Zoom, Zoom 87

A View by Any Other Name 88

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 99

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 128

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 editing 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 183

More Manipulations 186

Mirror, mirror on the monitor 186

ROtate 188

SCale 189

-ARray 190

Offset 192

Slicing, Dicing, and Splicing 194

TRim and EXtend 194

BReak 196

Fillet, CHAmfer, and BLEND 197

Join 200

Other editing commands 202

Getting a Grip 203

When Editing Goes Bad 206

Dare to Compare 207

Chapter 12: Planning for Paper 209

Setting Up a Layout in Paper Space 212

The layout two-step 212

Put it on my tabs 215

Any Old Viewport in a Layout 216

Up and down the detail viewport scales 216

Keeping track of where you're at 218

Practice Makes Perfect 219

Clever Paper Space Tricks 219

Part 3: If Drawings Could Talk 221

Chapter 13: Text with Character 223

Getting Ready to Write 224

Creating Simply Stylish Text 226

Font follies 227

Get in style 228

Taking Your Text to New Heights 230

Plotted text height 230

Calculating non-annotative AutoCAD text height 231

Entering Text 232

Using the Same Old Line 232

Saying More in Multiline Text 235

Making it with mText 235

mText dons a mask 238

Insert Field 239

Doing a number on your mText lists 239

Line up in columns - now! 242

Modifying mText 243

Turning On Annotative Objects 244

Gather Round the Tables 247

Tables have style, too 247

Creating and editing tables 249

Take Me to Your Leader 251

Electing a leader 251

Multi options for multileaders 254

Chapter 14: Entering New Dimensions 255

Adding Dimensions to a Drawing 256

Dimensioning the Legacy Way 257

A Field Guide to Dimensions 260

Self-centered 263

Quick, dimension! 263

Where, oh where, do my dimensions go? 264

The Latest Styles in Dimensioning 266

Creating dimension styles 269

Adjusting style settings 271

Changing styles 274

Scaling Dimensions for Output 275

Editing Dimensions 278

Editing dimension geometry 278

Editing dimension text 280

Controlling and editing dimension associativity 281

And the Correct Layer Is 282

Chapter 15: Down the Hatch! 283

Creating Hatches 284

Hatching Its Own Layer 287

Using the Hatches Tab 287

Scaling Hatches 290

Scaling the easy way 291

Annotative versus non-annotative 292

Pushing the Boundaries of Hatch 292

Adding style 293

Hatches from scratch 294

Editing Hatch Objects 296

Chapter 16: The Plot Thickens 299

You Say "Printing," I Say "Plotting" 300

The Plot Quickens 300

Plotting success in 16 steps 300

Getting with the system 304

Configuring your printer 305

Preview one, two 307

Instead of fit, scale it 307

Plotting the Layout of the Land 309

Plotting Lineweights and Colors 311

Plotting with style 311

Plotting through thick and thin 316

Plotting in color 320

It's a (Page) Setup! 321

Continuing the Plot Dialog 322

The Plot Sickens 325

Part 4: Advancing With Autocad 327

Chapter 17: The ABCs of Blocks 329

Rocking with Blocks 330

Creating Block Definitions 332

Inserting Blocks 336

Attributes: Fill-in-the-Blank Blocks 340

Creating attribute definitions 341

Defining blocks that contain attribute definitions 343

Inserting blocks that contain attribute definitions 343

Editing attribute values 344

Extracting data 344

Exploding Blocks 345

Purging Unused Block Definitions 345

Chapter 18: Everything from Arrays to Xrefs 347

Arraying Associatively 349

Comparing the old and new ARray commands 350

Hip, hip, array! 351

Associatively editing 356

Going External 358

Becoming attached to your xrefs 360

Layer-palooza 362

Editing an external reference file 362

Forging an xref path 363

Managing xrefs 365

Blocks, Xrefs, and Drawing Organization 366

Mastering the Raster 367

Attaching a raster image 369

Maintaining your image 370

You Say PDF; I Say DWF 371

Theme and Variations: Dynamic Blocks 373

Now you see it 373

Lights! Parameters! Actions! 377

Manipulating dynamic blocks 379

Chapter 19: Call the Parametrics! 381

Maintaining Design Intent 382

Defining terms 384

Forget about drawing with precision! 385

Constrain yourself 386

Understanding Geometric Constraints 386

Applying a little more constraint 388

Using inferred constraints 393

You AutoConstrain yourself! 394

Understanding Dimensional Constraints 395

Practice a little constraint 396

Making your drawing even smarter 398

Using Parameters Manager 400

Dimensions or constraints? Have it both ways! 403

Lunchtime! 406

Chapter 20: Drawing on the Internet 407

The Internet and AutoCAD: An Overview 407

You send me 408

Prepare it with eTransmit 408

Rapid eTransmit 409

Increasing cloudiness 411

Bad reception? 411

Help from Reference Manager 412

The Drawing Protection Racket 413

Outgoing! 414

Autodesk weather forecast: Increasing cloud 414

Your head planted firmly in the cloud 416

AutoCAD Web and Mobile 417

Part 5: On A 3d Spree 419

Chapter 21: It's a 3D World After All 421

The 3.5 Kinds of 3D Digital Models 422

Tools of the 3D Trade 424

Warp speed ahead 425

Entering the third dimension 425

Untying the Ribbon and opening some palettes 426

Modeling from Above 428

Using 3D coordinate input 428

Using point filters 429

Object snaps and object snap tracking 429

Changing Work Planes 430

Displaying the UCS icon 430

Adjusting the UCS 431

Orbit à go-go 437

Taking a spin around the cube 438

Grabbing the SteeringWheels 440

Visualizing 3D Objects 440

On a Render Bender 442

Chapter 22: From Drawings to Models 443

Is 3D for Me? 444

Getting Your 3D Bearings 445

Creating a better 3D template 445

Seeing the world from new viewpoints 450

From Drawing to Modeling in 3D 451

Drawing basic 3D objects 452

Gaining a solid foundation 453

Drawing solid primitives 454

Adding the Third Dimension to 2D Objects 455

Adding thickness to a 2D object 455

Extruding open and closed objects 455

Pressing and pulling closed boundaries 456

Lofting open and closed objects 456

Sweeping open and closed objects along a path 457

Revolving open or closed objects around an axis 458

Modifying 3D Objects 458

Selecting subobjects 459

Working with gizmos 459

More 3D variants of 2D commands 460

Editing solids 461

Chapter 23: It's Showtime! 465

Get the 2D Out of Here! 466

A different point of view 470

Additional 3D tricks 471

AutoCAD's top model 472

Visualizing the Digital World 474

Adding Lights 475

Default lighting 475

User-defined lights 476

Sunlight 479

Creating and Applying Materials 479

Defining a Background 482

Rendering a 3D Model 484

Chapter 24: AutoCAD Plays Well with Others 485

Get Out of Here! 485

Making a splash with PNG 486

PDF to the rescue 488

What the DWF? 489

3D print 490

But wait! There's more! 491

Open Up and Let Me In! 491

Editing other drawing file formats 491

PDF editing 491

Translation, Please! 494

The Importance of Being DWG 495

Part 6: The Part of Tens 497

Chapter 25: Ten AutoCAD Resources 499

Autodesk Discussion Groups 499

Autodesk's Own Blogs 499

Autodesk University 500

Autodesk Channel on YouTube 500

World Wide (CAD) Web 500

Your Local Authorized Training Center 501

Your Local User Group 501

Autodesk User Groups International 502

Books 502

Autodesk Feedback Community 502

Chapter 26: Ten System Variables to Make Your AutoCAD Life Easier 503

Aperture 504

Dimassoc 505

Menubar 505

Mirrtext 505

Osnapz 506

Pickbox 506

Rememberfolders 507

Rollovertips And Tooltips 507

Taskbar 508

Visretain 508

And the Bonus Round 508

Chapter 27: Ten AutoCAD Secrets 511

Sheet Sets 511

Custom Tool Palettes 512

Ribbon Customization 512

Toolsets 512

Programming Languages 512

Vertical Versions 513

Language Packs 513

Multiple Projects or Clients 514

Data Extraction and Linking 514

Untying the Ribbon and Drawings 514

Index 515