Part 1 RI PY RI GH TE D MA TE Chapter 1: Exploring the AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT Interface Chapter 2: Creating Your First Drawing Chapter 3: Setting Up and Using AutoCAD’s Drafting Tools Chapter 4: Organizing Objects with Blocks and Groups Chapter 5: Keeping Track of Layers and Blocks CO ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ AL The Basics
Chapter 1 Exploring the AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT Interface Before you can start to use AutoCAD 2010’s new capabilities, you’ll need to become familiar with the basics. If you’re completely new to AutoCAD, you’ll want to read this first chapter carefully. It introduces you to many of AutoCAD’s basic operations, such as opening and closing files, getting a close-up look at part of a drawing, and changing a drawing.
| Chapter 1 Exploring the AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT Interface AutoCAD References in This Book In this chapter, and throughout the rest of the book, when I say AutoCAD, I mean both AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT. Some topics apply only to AutoCAD. In those situations, you’ll see an icon indicating that the topic applies only to AutoCAD and not to AutoCAD LT. If you’re using AutoCAD 2010 LT, these icons can help you focus on the topics that are more relevant to your work.
Taking a Guided Tour Quick Access Toolbar Figure 1.1 Info Center A typical Application arrangement of Menu the elements in the AutoCAD Ribbon window. The Sheet Set Manager palette (or Info palette for LT) is closed for clarity. Drawing Area UCS Command Window Status Bar The Initial Setup Dialog Box: Customization Based on Your Industry Before we move on, you may want to know a little about the Initial Setup dialog box you saw in step 2.
| Chapter 1 Exploring the AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT Interface •u Command window •u Status bar Figure 1.1, shown earlier in this chapter, shows a typical layout of the AutoCAD program window. You can organize the AutoCAD window into any arrangement you want and save it as a workspace. You can save and recall a workspace at any time using the Workspace Switching tool in the status bar (you’ll learn more about this tool in the next chapter). The default workspace in Figure 1.
Taking a Guided Tour Quick Access toolbar Figure 1.3 The Quick Access toolbar, featuring basic Windows file-handling functions, appears above the Ribbon. InfoCenter Ribbon tabs Ribbon panels Ribbon panel title bars The drawing area occupies most of the screen. Everything you draw appears in this area. As you move your mouse around, crosshairs appear to move within the drawing area. This is the drawing cursor that lets you point to locations in the drawing area.
| Chapter 1 Exploring the AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT Interface 2. Move the highlight cursor slowly down the list of options in the left column. As you highlight the options, additional options appear in a column to the right. 3. Highlight the Export option to see the different formats available for export (see Figure 1.5). Figure 1.
Taking a Guided Tour Figure 1.6 The Open Documents and Recent Document tools Open Documents Recent Documents List of Recent Documents Communicating with the Command Window and Dynamic Input Display AutoCAD is the perfect servant: It does everything you tell it to and no more. You communicate with AutoCAD by using tools and menu options. These devices invoke AutoCAD commands.
| Chapter 1 Exploring the AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT Interface Finally, the Dynamic Input display allows you to enter dimensional data of objects as you draw them. Besides echoing the command-line messages, the Dynamic input display shows temporary dimensions, coordinates, and angles of objects you’re drawing and editing. As you enter coordinate or angle values through the keyboard, they appear in the Dynamic Input display.
Taking a Guided Tour the circle shows that the tool draws circles; and so on. For further clarification, the tool tip gives you the name of the tool. As a new user, you’ll find these tool tips helpful because they show you the name of the tool and a brief description of how to use it. Typically, when I ask you to select a tool, I’ll use the name shown in the tool tip to help you identify the tool. In the case of a tool with flyouts, the tool name changes under different conditions.
| Chapter 1 Exploring the AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT Interface example, AutoCAD lets you draw circles in several different ways, so it offers a flyout for the Circle tool in the Home tab’s Draw panel. If you click the arrowhead next to the circle icon in the Draw panel, you’ll see additional tools for drawing circles (see Figure 1.9). Figure 1.9 Flyouts Click the flyout arrowhead to display additional tools. If you select a tool option from a flyout, that option becomes the default tool for that icon.
Taking a Guided Tour General Tool Names vs. Tool Tip Names Since the tool tip names of tools with flyouts can change, describing them by name can be a bit problematic.―The name may have changed based on the last tool you used from a flyout. For this reason, if a tool has a flyout, I’ll refer to it by a general name that is related to the set of tools in a flyout rather than by the tool tip name. For example, I’ll call the circle icon tool the Circle tool rather than the Center, Radius tool.
| Chapter 1 Exploring the AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT Interface 2. Place the cursor in the middle of the drawing area, and click the left mouse button. Move the cursor, and a rectangle follows. This is a window selection; you’ll learn more about this window in Chapter 2. You also see a coordinate readout following the cursor and a message asking you to Specify opposite corner:. This display at the cursor is called the dynamic input. You’ll learn more about it a little later in this chapter.
Working with AutoCAD | Working in the Command Window As mentioned, at the bottom of the screen, just above the status bar, is a small horizontal window called the Command window. Here, AutoCAD displays responses to your input. By default, it shows two lines of text. The bottom line shows the current messages, and the top line shows messages that have scrolled by or, in some cases, components of the current message that don’t fit in a single line.
| Chapter 1 Exploring the AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT Interface A message appears, asking whether you want to save the changes you’ve made to the current drawing. Click No. 2. Click the Open tool in the Quick Access toolbar to open the Select File dialog box. This is a typical Windows file dialog box, with an added twist: In the large Preview box on the right, you can preview a drawing before you open it, thereby saving time while searching for files.
Working with AutoCAD | Figure 1.12 The Layout1 view of the clip.dwg file Getting a Closer Look One of the most frequently used commands is Zoom, which gives you a closer look at part of your drawing. This command offers a variety of ways to control your view. In this section, you’ll enlarge a portion of the clip drawing to get a more detailed look. To tell AutoCAD which area you want to enlarge, you use what is called a zoom window. You’ll start by switching to a Model Space view of the drawing.
| Chapter 1 Exploring the AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT Interface 2. Type PLAN↵W↵. Your display changes to a two-dimensional view looking down on the drawing, as shown in Figure 1.14. Figure 1.14 Placing the zoom window around the clip First click here… And then click here. 3. Click the Zoom tool in the status bar. You can also click the Window tool from the Zoom flyout in the View tab’s Navigate panel or type the command Z↵. Click the flyout arrowhead. Select Window.
Working with AutoCAD | 4. The Command window and the Dynamic Input display show the Specify corner of window: prompt with some options. Look at the top image in Figure 1.14. Move the crosshair cursor to a location similar to the one shown in the figure; then, left-click the mouse. Move the cursor and the rectangle appears with one corner fixed on the point you just picked; the other corner follows the cursor. 5.
| Chapter 1 Exploring the AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT Interface 4. You’re still in Zoom Realtime mode. Click and drag the mouse again to see how you can further adjust your view. To exit, you can select another command besides a Zoom or Pan, press the Esc key, or right-click your mouse and choose Exit from the shortcut menu. 5. Right-click now and choose Exit from the shortcut menu to exit the Zoom Realtime command. Figure 1.
Working with AutoCAD | Making Changes You’ll frequently make changes to your drawings. One of AutoCAD’s primary advantages is the ease with which you can make changes. The following exercise shows you a typical sequence of operations involved in changing a drawing: 1. Use the Save As option in the Application menu to save the current Clip.dwg file under the name MyFirst. For convenience, you can save your files in the My Documents folder. 2.
| Chapter 1 Exploring the AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT Interface Figure 1.16 Erasing a portion of the clip Click here. Working with Multiple Files You can have multiple documents open at the same time in AutoCAD. This can be especially helpful if you want to exchange parts of drawings between files or if you want another file open for reference. Try the following exercise to see how multiple documents work in AutoCAD: 1.
Working with AutoCAD | Notice that the Command window and the message at the cursor now shows the following prompt: Specify first corner point or [Chamfer/Elevation/Fillet/Thickness/Width]: AutoCAD is asking you to select the first corner for the rectangle and, in brackets, it’s offering a few options that you can take advantage of at this point in the command. Don’t worry about those options right now. You’ll have an opportunity to learn about command options in Chapter 2.
| Chapter 1 Exploring the AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT Interface Figure 1.18 After you’ve selected the first point of the rectangle, you see a rectangle follow the motion of your mouse. Figure 1.19 The Zoom flyout gives you an overall view of your drawing. 6. Click the 2D version of the clip at the bottom of the drawing to select it. A series of squares and arrows appears on the drawing. These are called grips, and you’ll learn more about them in the next chapter (see Figure 1.20). Figure 1.
Working with AutoCAD | 7. Right-click and select Copy. 8. Click inside the other drawing window to make it active. 9. Right-click and select Paste. The clip appears at the cursor in the new drawing. 10. Position the clip in the middle of the rectangle you drew earlier and left-click the mouse. The clip is copied into the second drawing. 11. This ends the exercises for this chapter. Save the file and then exit AutoCAD. Note that you’ve had two files open at once.
| Chapter 1 Exploring the AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT Interface Figure 1.21 The tool palettes offer predrawn symbols that you can easily place in your drawings. Select a tab containing predrawn symbols you want to use. Click on a symbol. The symbol appears at the cursor ready to be placed in the drawing. The Bottom Line Use the AutoCAD window. AutoCAD is a typical Windows graphics program that makes use of menus, toolbars, Ribbon panels, and palettes.
