CHAPTER 1 Getting Familiar with AutoCAD If you are totally new to AutoCAD, you’ll want to read this chapter. It provides an D MA TE RI AL overview of AutoCAD’s layout and shows you what to expect when you start to use it. Even if you’ve had an AutoCAD class or have used an older version of AutoCAD, you’ll find this chapter useful. You’ll start by taking a tour of the AutoCAD window to get familiar with the menus, toolbars, and other components.
■ chapter 1: Getting Familiar with AutoCAD Understanding the AutoCAD Window Autodesk has completely redesigned AutoCAD 2008’s 2D drafting interface, and to show it off, AutoCAD’s default opening window prominently displays these new features. If you’ve used AutoCAD before, it will appear as though AutoCAD has completely changed. Don’t worry; it hasn’t. Through AutoCAD’s workspace feature, you can easily change AutoCAD’s interface to display the old, familiar toolbars.
understanding the autocad window ■ 3 The opening greeting, called a splash screen, appears momentarily; then if this is a new installation, AutoCAD will display the Workspaces message box. This message box offers an option to select 2D Drafting & Annotation, 3D Modeling, or AutoCAD Classic. 2. Click 2D Drafting & Annotation. You’ll see the AutoCAD window with a blank default document named Drawing1.dwg, as shown at the top of Figure 1.1.
■ chapter 1: Getting Familiar with AutoCAD If this is a completely new installation, you may see the Autodesk Impressions toolbar in the middle of the AutoCAD window. Autodesk Impressions is an adjunct program to AutoCAD which lets you edit your drawings in a way similar to Adobe Illustrator. You can close this toolbar as I will not discuss this Autodesk product in this book.
understanding the autocad window 2. Choose File ➔ New. The Select Template dialog box appears. 3. Select acad3D.dwt from the list, and click Open. A new file, called Drawing2.dwg, appears. Notice that this drawing is in a 3D space. You’ll learn more about 3D modeling in Chapter 6.
■ chapter 1: Getting Familiar with AutoCAD 4. Select 2D Drafting & Annotation from the Workspaces toolbar. You’ll be working in this workspace for most of this book. 5. Exit the 3D Drawing2.dwg file by choosing File ➔ Close. You have AutoCAD set up for 2D drawing, so you’ll now take a more detailed look at the AutoCAD window. You’ll find that, for the most part, it is a typical Windows-style graphics program window with a few twists.
understanding the autocad window ■ 7 anywhere on the screen. When toolbars are away from the edge of the window and appear “free floating,” they are said to be floating toolbars, as opposed to docked. Many other toolbars are available but are not displayed in the AutoCAD window. Later in this chapter, you’ll learn how to find and retrieve these hidden toolbars. In the middle is the drawing area where you’ll do your actual drawing. One difference between Figure 1.
■ chapter 1: Getting Familiar with AutoCAD Properties palette You can also easily retrieve these palettes by clicking buttons on the Standard Annotation toolbar at the top of the AutoCAD window. Tool palettes Now let’s look at some important parts of the AutoCAD window. The drawing area, the status bar, and the command line work together to give you feedback while you create and edit your drawing. As you move your cursor over the drawing area, you’ll see the cursor appear as a crosshair cursor.
understanding the autocad window CONTROLLING THE STATUS BAR DISPLAY To the far right of the status bar, you’ll see a downward-pointing triangle, or arrow; click this arrow to open a menu that controls the display of the status bar. You use this menu to turn the items in the status bar on or off. A check mark by an item indicates it is currently on.
■ chapter 1: Getting Familiar with AutoCAD When the drawing area is in the Restore Down position, it appears as a separate window within the AutoCAD window. You can then resize the window to any rectangular shape you need. This is helpful when you have multiple AutoCAD drawing files open. Clicking the UCS Icon The UCS icon is the L-shaped icon you see at the lower-left corner of the drawing area (shown earlier in Figure 1.4).
understanding the autocad window “CHATTING” WITH AUTOCAD AutoCAD communicates its needs to you through messages in the command line. These messages often tell you what to do next or offer options, usually shown in square brackets. Commands often display a series of messages, which you answer to complete the command. If you aren’t sure what to do, check the command line for clues. As an additional aid, you can right-click to display a contextsensitive shortcut menu.
■ chapter 1: Getting Familiar with AutoCAD Another menu bar feature is the command description in the status bar. As you open a menu from the menu bar and point to options, you’ll see a brief description of the option in the status bar. Try the following exercise to get a feel for how the menu bar works: 1. Click Modify in the menu bar. The list of items that appears includes the commands and settings that let you control the way AutoCAD displays your drawings. 2.
understanding the autocad window Starting Commands Another type of item you’ll find in a menu is a command that directly executes an AutoCAD operation. Try this exercise to explore a typical command: 1. First, turn off the Dynamic Input display by clicking the DYN button in the status bar. It should look like it is in the off position, or that it is not pressed down. You’ll start your exploration of commands with this feature turned off, because it can be somewhat confusing to first-time users.
■ chapter 1: Getting Familiar with AutoCAD Figure 1.5 Selecting the first point of a rectangle Click here to start the rectangle. Figure 1.6 Once you’ve selected the first point of the rectangle, you’ll see a rectangle follow the motion of your mouse.
understanding the autocad window ■ 15 In step 1, AutoCAD shows you exactly what the cursor is pointing to by highlighting objects that will be selected with the next click. In drawing and erasing the rectangle, you were exposed to the most common processes you need to know about to work in AutoCAD: you selected a command from the menu bar, and then you selected points in the drawing area while following the messages in the command line. Commands from the toolbars work in the same way, as you’ll see next.
■ chapter 1: Getting Familiar with AutoCAD Figure 1.8 Click and hold the downward-pointing arrow to open the fly-out toolbar. Click and hold here. The toolbar expands to show more options. Besides the visible tools, a few tools are hidden from view. You can expand the list of tools to select more tools. Click and hold the downward-pointing arrow to the far right of the row of tools (see Figure 1.8). The set of tools expands into a fly-out toolbar.
understanding the autocad window ■ 17 Using Other Toolbars I mentioned earlier that not all the AutoCAD toolbars are open and visible. If they were, you wouldn’t have any room for a drawing area. Table 1.1 provides a brief description of the toolbars that are available in AutoCAD. Table 1.1 COMMAND DESCRIPTION 3D Navigation Tools for controlling 3D views (not available in LT).
■ chapter 1: Getting Familiar with AutoCAD continues COMMAND DESCRIPTION Standard The most frequently used commands for view control, file management, and editing. This toolbar is ordinarily docked below the menu bar. Standard Annotation An abbreviated version of the Standard toolbar. Styles Tools for controlling style options such as text styles and dimension styles. Text Tools for creating and editing text. See Chapter 9. UCS Tools for setting up a plane on which to work.
starting a drawing You can dock toolbars to the top, bottom, or sides of the AutoCAD window to keep them out of the drawing area. If you do not want the toolbar to dock but instead want it to appear “floating” near the border of the AutoCAD window, you can press the Ctrl key before you click and drag the toolbar into position. This prevents toolbars from automatically falling into a docked position. AutoCAD remembers your toolbar arrangement between sessions.
■ chapter 1: Getting Familiar with AutoCAD 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 new drawings using the acad.dwt drawing template. Point here… …and read the coordinate here. 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.
starting a drawing Figure 1.9 Click here for the center of the circle. Click here to complete the rectangle. Click here to “fix” the circle’s radius. Click here to start the rectangle. 2. Click a point in the lower left of the drawing area, as shown in Figure 1.9. Don’t worry about the exact location. You’re just practicing right now. After clicking, notice that one corner of the rectangle follows the cursor. 3. Click a point in the upper right of the drawing area, as shown in Figure 1.9.
■ chapter 1: Getting Familiar with AutoCAD WHEN YOU NEED TO UNDO Recently AutoCAD User Group International (AUGI) conducted a survey to identify the most commonly used features in AutoCAD. The group found that the Undo feature and the Esc key were at the top of the list. Everyone makes mistakes, and it would be impossible to get any work done if it weren’t for these two features. But Undo and the Esc key are just two of a set of features you can use to reverse something you have done.
panning and zooming to adjust your view Panning and Zooming to Adjust Your View One of the greatest features of AutoCAD is its ability to draw accurately through a wide range of scales. For example, you can draw a football field, zoom into a blade of grass, and draw its cell structure. With such a broad range of views to work with, you need to be familiar with AutoCAD’s view features.
■ chapter 1: Getting Familiar with AutoCAD If you have a mouse with a scroll wheel, you can use the wheel to zoom in and out of your drawing view. You can also use it to pan across your drawing. To zoom, scroll the wheel. To pan, click and drag the scroll wheel. If you have a mouse that uses special drivers, you might not be able to use the wheel to control pans and zooms. Several other Zoom- and Pan-related commands exist, but those you’ve just tried are the ones you’ll use 90 percent of the time.
understanding the layout view ■ 25 Understanding the Layout View Aside from the command prompt, you’ve probably noticed that AutoCAD behaves like most other Windows programs. But one element in AutoCAD’s window is a little different from other Windows graphics programs. Specifically, at the bottom of the AutoCAD window, you’ll see a set of tabs labeled Model, Layout1, and Layout2.
■ chapter 1: Getting Familiar with AutoCAD Figure 1.11 Your drawing as it appears in one of the layout tabs Click this outline, and press the Delete key. 3. Click the highlighted rectangle, and then press the Delete key. Your drawing disappears. 4. Click the Model tab to return to model space. You’ll see that the objects you drew are still there. 5. Click the Undo tool in the Standard toolbar twice to return to the Layout1 tab and undo your deletion of the outer rectangle.
understanding how command options work In step 3, your entire drawing disappeared when you deleted the outer rectangle. This is because that rectangle is really a viewport into the drawing you created in the Model tab. When you are on a layout tab, a viewport acts like a window into your drawing. By default, AutoCAD creates a single viewport to show your drawing, but you can have multiple viewports of various sizes, each displaying different parts of your drawing.
■ chapter 1: Getting Familiar with AutoCAD point. If multiple options are available, they appear within the brackets and are separated by slashes (/). The default is the option AutoCAD assumes you intend to use unless you tell it otherwise. 3. Enter C↵ to select the Center option. The prompt Specify center point of arc: appears. Notice that you had to enter only the C and not the entire word Center. When you see a set of options in the command line, note their capitalization.
getting help As the prompt indicates, you now have three options. You can enter an angle, a chord length, or the endpoint of the arc. The prompt default, to specify the endpoint of the arc, lets you select the arc’s endpoint. The cursor is in Point Selection mode, telling you it is waiting for point input. To select this default option, you need only select a point on the screen indicating where you want the endpoint. 7. Move the cursor so it points vertically from the center of the arc.
■ chapter 1: Getting Familiar with AutoCAD Using the Search Tab If you’re a beginning AutoCAD user looking for help, the Help window’s table of contents might not be as useful as it could be. To use it, you have to know a little about what you want to find. Sometimes it’s quicker to use the Search feature of the Help window: 1. Click the Search tab in the left panel.
getting help 4. Click the Close button, or press the Esc key. 5. Press the Esc key to exit the Move command. If you gain some confidence with AutoCAD’s Help window, you can go far in helping yourself learn basic AutoCAD commands. But if you really get stuck, this book should help you get past your barriers. Finding Additional Sources of Help The Help window is the main source for reference material, but you can also find answers to your questions through the other options in the Help menu.
■ chapter 1: Getting Familiar with AutoCAD The InfoCenter provides a way to stay informed about the latest software updates and support issues for AutoCAD. Click the Settings button to open the InfoCenter Settings dialog box. The InfoCenter works best if you use an “always-on” Internet connection such as a DSL connection or high-speed cable connection. If you don’t have such a connection, you can set the Check For New Online Content option to On Demand.
