Datasheet

Starting a Drawing  21
Starting a Drawing
What you do to start a new drawing in AutoCAD is a little different from what you do in
other programs, so let’s create a new file to see how it’s done:
1. From the Menu Browser, choose File

Close to close the current file. When the
message box appears asking you to save changes, click No. Notice that the toolbars
disappear and that the AutoCAD drawing window appears blank when no drawings
are open.
2. From the Menu Browser, choose File

New to open the Select Template dialog box.
3. Select the acad.dwt template file, and then click Open to open a blank drawing window.
4. To give your new file a unique name, choose File

Save As to open the Save Drawing
As dialog box.
5. Enter My First Drawing. As you type, the name appears in the File Name text box.
By default, the file will be saved in the My Documents folder.
6. Click Save. You now have a file called My First Drawing.dwg, located in the My Docu-
ments folder. Of course, your drawing doesn’t contain anything yet. You’ll take care
of that next.
The acad.dwt template file you selected in step 3 is really just an AutoCAD drawing
file that has been set up with standard settings. AutoCAD uses those settings to create a
new file. As you saw in the Select Template dialog box, you can choose from several such
templates.
The new file you just created shows a drawing area roughly 31 units wide by 13 units high.
The units can be inches, meters, or millimeters. You determine what the units are equivalent
to through the Drawing Units dialog box, which you will learn about in Chapter 2.
The drawing area you’re presented with initially is your workspace, although you’re
not limited to the 75 by 45–unit area in any way. No visual clues indicate the size of the
area, so to check the area size for yourself, move the crosshair cursor to the upper-right
corner of the screen, and observe the value in the coordinate readout in the lower-left
corner of the AutoCAD window. This is the standard AutoCAD default drawing area for
using the acad.dwt drawing template for new drawings.
The coordinate readout won’t show exactly 75 units by 45 units, because the proportions of
your drawing area are not likely to be exactly 7.5 by 4.5. Factors such as the size and resolu-
tion of your display and the shape of the AutoCAD window affect the dimensions of the
drawing area.
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