Part 1 RI PY RI GH TE D MA TE Chapter 1: Exploring the AutoCAD 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 u u u u u AL The Basics
Chapter 1 Exploring the AutoCAD Interface Before you can start to use AutoCAD for Mac, 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 Interface Launching AutoCAD If you have already installed AutoCAD (see Appendix B on the book's website) and are ready to jump in and take a look, click the AutoCAD icon in the Dock. AutoCAD opens and displays a blank default document named Drawing1.dwg. If you’re using the trial version, you’ll see the Product License Activation window after you click the AutoCAD icon. This window shows you the number of days you have left in the trial version.
Taking a Guided Tour The Menu Bar Like a typical Mac application, AutoCAD displays a menu bar where you can select a command to perform a task. As you work through this book, you’ll be directed to choose commands from the menu bar where appropriate. Often commands in the menu bar are repeated as tools in the Tool Sets palette, so I’ll direct you to select a tool from the Tool Sets palette or a command from the menu bar and you can decide which method you prefer.
| Chapter 1 Exploring the AutoCAD Interface Figure 1.3 The Properties Inspector palette The Tool Sets Palette The Tool Sets palette (Figure 1.4) contains tools you’ll use to create and edit your drawings. The tools in the palette give you a clue to their purpose, and you can hover the cursor over a tool to see a tooltip showing a descriptive name of the tool. The Tool Sets palette gives you a quick, one-click method for issuing commands.
Taking a Guided Tour Figure 1.4 Tool Sets icon The Tool Sets palette Select/Select Similar Open Shapes Closed Shapes Block Explode/Erase Move/Rotate/Scale/Stretch Copy/Array Mirror/Offset Modify Parametric Distance/Area Coordinates Figure 1.5 A Tool Sets tool group and tool group arrow Click a tool group arrow. A tool group panel appears. Some of the tools in the Tool Sets palette contain more than one option.
| Chapter 1 Exploring the AutoCAD Interface Figure 1.6 Click and hold the circle tool to open the flyout menu. A triangle in the lower right of the tool tells you it opens a flyout. The Drawing Area The drawing area occupies the center of the screen. Figure 1.7 shows it without the grid for clarity. (You can turn the grid off and on by pressing F-G.) Everything you draw appears in this area. As you move your mouse around, crosshairs appear to move within the drawing area.
Taking a Guided Tour Within the drawing area, you see three items. The UCS icon appears in the lower-left corner. You’ll learn more about the UCS icon in a moment (see the section “Understanding the UCS Icon”). In the upper-right corner, you see the ViewCube. The ViewCube is primarily for 3D modeling, and you’ll learn more about it in Chapter 19, “Creating 3D Drawings.” In the upper-left corner you see the viewport controls. In Figure 1.7 they show a plus sign and the words Top, and 2D Wireframe.
| Chapter 1 Exploring the AutoCAD Interface Tools vs. the Keyboard Throughout this book, you’ll be told to select tools from the Tool Sets palette to invoke commands. For new and experienced users alike, the Tool Sets palette offers an easy-to-remember method for accessing commands. If you’re an experienced AutoCAD user, though, you can type commands directly from the keyboard.
Taking a Guided Tour | 2. Release the mouse button. Trackpad users should use a one-finger tap. The window selection disappears. 3. Try the click-and-drag motion with the mouse (or double-tap, tap gesture for trackpads) again in the drawing area. Notice that as you click and drag, a window appears, and as you release the mouse, the window disappears. If you happen to right-click (or -click or use a two-finger tap on a trackpad), a shortcut menu appears.
| Chapter 1 Exploring the AutoCAD Interface The Dynamic Input display allows you to enter dimensional data of objects as you draw them. Besides echoing the Command Line palette 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, which is connected to the cursor (Figure 1.12). Figure 1.
Getting Familiar with AutoCAD | cases, components of the current message that don’t fit in a single line. Right now, the bottom line displays the message Command (see Figure 1.8, earlier in this chapter). This prompt tells you that AutoCAD is waiting for your instructions. When you click a point in the drawing area, you see the message Specify opposite corner:. At the same time, the cursor starts to draw a window selection that disappears when you click another point.
| Chapter 1 Exploring the AutoCAD Interface Figure 1.13 The Select File dialog box 3. In the Select File dialog box, navigate to the Chapter 01 folder of the sample files you downloaded. 4. Select clip.dwg. The Preview column now shows a thumbnail image of the file. Be aware that a thumbnail may not show for files from older releases of AutoCAD. 5. Click the Open button at the bottom of the Select File dialog box. AutoCAD opens the clip.dwg file, which is shown in Figure 1.14. The clip.
Getting Familiar with AutoCAD | Also note that the drawing area’s title bar displays the name of the drawing. This offers easy identification of the file. This particular file contains both 2D drawings and a 3D model of a typical locking clip. The layout view shows a top, front, and right-side view as well as an isometric view. Using the Model Space and Layout Views AutoCAD offers a number of ways to view your drawing.
| Chapter 1 Exploring the AutoCAD Interface Figure 1.17 The Top view of the drawing You’ve just seen how you can get into the Model Space view from a layout view and then switch from a 3D view to a 2D view using the ViewCube. Let’s take a look at a few more ViewCube options as well as some other view-related tools. Try the following to see how you can control the AutoCAD display: 1. Click the lower-left corner of the ViewCube (Figure 1.18). The view changes back to the 3D view you saw earlier.
Getting Familiar with AutoCAD Figure 1.19 The 2D Wireframe pop-up menu Figure 1.20 The drawing in a shaded view 5. Click the SW Isometric option from the Viewport controls in the upper left of the drawing area, then select Top from the pop-up menu (Figure 1.21). The view changes to a “top-down” view of the drawing, similar to the view you saw when you selected Top from the ViewCube. In this exercise, you used the ViewCube to change your view orientation to a 3D view called SW Isometric.
| Chapter 1 Exploring the AutoCAD Interface Figure 1.21 The SW Isometric pop-up menu Using Zoom and Pan 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. Now let’s continue with a look at the Zoom command.
Getting Familiar with AutoCAD | 3. The Dynamic Input display now shows Specify opposite corner:. Position the other corner of the zoom window so it encloses the lower image of the clip, as shown in Figure 1.23, and click again. The clip enlarges to fill the screen. In this exercise, you used a window to define an area to enlarge for your close-up view. You saw how the Dynamic Input display gave you messages to help you decide what to do. These messages are helpful for first-time users of AutoCAD.
| Chapter 1 Exploring the AutoCAD Interface Figure 1.25 The final view you want to achieve in step 3 of the exercise In these exercises, you used the Zoom tool on the status bar as well as the Zoom option in the right-click shortcut menu. A third option is to use the View Zoom options in the menu bar. You’ll get a chance to try the Zoom menu bar options in Chapter 2. As you can see from this exercise, you have a wide range of options for viewing your drawings, just by using a few tools.
Getting Familiar with AutoCAD | Saving a File as You Work It’s a good idea to save your file periodically as you work on it. You can save it under its original name (choose File Save from the menu bar) or under a different name (choose File Save As from the menu bar), thereby creating a new file. By default, AutoCAD automatically saves your work at 10-minute intervals under a name that is a combination of the current filename plus a number and that ends with the .
| Chapter 1 Exploring the AutoCAD Interface Figure 1.26 Click here. Erasing a portion of the clip In this exercise, first you issued the Erase command, and then you selected an object by using a pickbox to click it. The pickbox tells you that you must select items on the screen, and it shows you what you’re about to select by highlighting objects as you hover the cursor over them. Once you’ve clicked an object or a set of objects, press ↵ to move on to the next step.
Getting Familiar with AutoCAD AutoCAD is asking you to select the first corner for the rectangle. In the Command Line palette you see some additional text in brackets 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. Note that you can view the command options at the Dynamic Input display by right-clicking or by pressing the down arrow key on your keyboard.
| Chapter 1 Exploring the AutoCAD Interface 4. Let’s try copying objects between these two files. Click in the window with the clip drawing to make it active. You can also choose Window Clip.dwg. 5. Click the Zoom tool in the status bar, right-click, and select All from the shortcut menu to get an overall view of the drawing (see Figure 1.29). Figure 1.29 The Zoom All option 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.
Getting Familiar with AutoCAD This concludes your introduction to the AutoCAD application. In the next chapter, you’ll try your hand at drawing a few simple shapes and using some of the other drafting tools that AutoCAD offers. Figure 1.30 Grips shown in the 2D drawing Figure 1.
| Chapter 1 Exploring the AutoCAD Interface The Bottom Line Use the AutoCAD application. AutoCAD is a typical Windows graphics program that makes use of the menu bar and tools. If you’ve used other graphics programs, you’ll see at least a few familiar tools. Master It Name the components of the AutoCAD application you can use to select a function. Get a closer look with the Zoom command. The Zoom command is a common tool in graphics programs.
