before we get started into our training sessions I wanted to have you work with a small project that will incorporate some of the basic functions of AutoCAD don’t worry about understanding
everything here or anything really this project is meant as a sort of icebreaker like an activity at an opening of a party to help guests get to know one another so that they can enjoy
themselves more will start AutoCAD if you haven’t already
now press the f8 button
the command-line down here should say ortho on if it doesn’t press the f8 button again until it says ortho on this setting forces lines to be drawn horizontally or vertically now let’s start the rectangle command that’s right up here if you don’t see that box click this arrow and pick rectangle
when I say pick I mean a left click if you need to right click I’ll say right click
we’re going to pick our first point and you can pick anywhere it doesn’t matter right now pick a point and we’re going to make this rectangle 50 units wide by 30 units tall so how do I do that well as you move your mouse around you’ll see it’s asking for a second point for our rectangle we see the dynamic box there as I move it to the right what’s highlighted in blue on my screen says ten point zero eight nine nine if I go to the left it says four point two five seven eight well that’s my horizontal distance for my rectangle I want that to be five zero or 50 units I’ll press the tab key and it takes us to the other box I want that to be 30 units so type in 30 and press Enter now double click on your scroll wheel that will perform what’s called a zoom extents it zooms all the way out so that you can see everything in your file that you’ve drawn
you can use your scroll wheel on your mouse if you scroll up back and forth you zoom in and you can zoom out you’re not changing the file in any way you’re just changing the way you’re viewing it hold the scroll wheel you can pan around again you’re not changing your drawing any here just changing on how you’re looking at it now we’re going to use the offset command
come up here click on the ribbon click offset
type in
five it’s a decimal point then the number five press ENTER pick anywhere on the rectangle left click and move your cursor the crosshairs to the inside you should get a little preview of what you’re going to do or copying that line work and offsetting it or making a parallel copy of five units away click with the left click somewhere inside there and I’ll press the Escape key the Escape key will cancel a command you’re going to find out that you’re going to use it quite a bit now let’s open up the tool palettes press
is a pallet they are very useful and there are many different ones that we can use click on the architectural tab this will bring up a set of blocks blocks are sets of line work that are grouped together to act as one unit you can use them many times copy them rotate them and just copy and copy and copy so in cases like this we want to pick a door block go up to the door imperial click it once
may have to wait a few seconds
and then click again now if it comes in really big like this that means we have a problem with scale some of our units are not set up correctly but that’s okay for what we’re trying to do so we’re going to use the scale command start it up right here in the ribbon click the door
press Enter
point anywhere near the door
then put in one
/ 12
press Enter
and the problem is the drawing we’re using here was set to feet and the block for the door was set to inches and so AutoCAD automatically scaled
and then pick the door you can just pick it with your mouse if you miss and you get a little window that looks like this thing that’s okay move it to the bottom and to the left of where you picked originally so that you get this green background with the dashed lines and then cross that window across the door that’s called a crossing selection window click again so you’ve picked it
in these letters
a and D this is for an endpoint snap press enter this will grab an endpoint of an object that’s what we want to do we want to grab the endpoint of this line for the door
left click
now press the f8 button again
that will turn off our ortho setting otherwise we were locked into just moving either left right or straight up and down with your scroll wheel scroll out till you can see a rectangle and then scroll in
now type in
it’s called near press enter
and now just go somewhere on this bottom line and so that you see that little green hourglass looking glyph that’s the nearest glyph then left click we’ve put a door in here quite simple now we’re going to use what’s called the trim command so come up here select trim and pick down here to the left on the bottom of that door now move up to the right so that that blue area encloses the entire door so it’s all inside this is called a selection window to the bottom left is called a crossing window this is a selection window everything inside here will be picked now left click
pick here
press Enter
on the walls click here and click here zoom in
- click here again we’ve just trimmed our wall right-click and then press Enter
so you’ve just drawn a wall for a building and put a door into it now it doesn’t seem real fancy but these types of things are what you’re going to be doing over and over again
let’s put some text in here
click on this big black a the text command right here in the ribbon pick a point
to the right and down just eyeball it how I’ve shown you here we can adjust all of this later
left click again and type in
garage when you’re done
somewhere around outside of this area this is the text editor you can see the ribbon changed it’s called the
contextual ribbon tab it changes based on the context of the commands you’re doing it brings up a temporary ribbon tool so that you can have the tools available for what you’re doing click outside see it goes away and now we have our text but it’s kind of small
select it again just pick somewhere arbitrarily up here cross across the bottom
pick again we’ve selected that
scale button
zoom in
click right below it
and now drag your mouse up until you can see it we’re making things bigger with the scale command there you go
let’s go back to
a little tool pilot here click on the vehicle’s Imperial
pick in here again
again use the scale command
pick what looks like part of this car press enter
down here left click it
and then type in again 1/12 enter we just put in a car select the car a see if you zoom in this blue box and this blue triangle click the blue triangle and let’s go with the sports car top we have different options this is called a dynamic block this block has some preset designs to it and you can change it on the fly right now we’re set up to a side view of a sports car but if I click sports car top it changes to the top view of a sports car zoom out and press the Escape key command-click move select the car left-click it press Enter pick a point anywhere move it up a little bit as you can see here most of these Auto commands have a series of events that have to happen you start the command whatever it is and then you pick your first point type in m ID for midpoint press enter and we’re going to pick down here zoom in with your scroll wheel and get that green triangle you see a green triangle that’s a midpoint glyph that’s a no snap it’s snapping right to the middle of that line left-click in up here type in P er that’s an O snap for perpendicular press Enter
we’re going to zoom in a little you can even pan
see that little right angle looking symbol for the glyph that’s for a perpendicular
oh snap glyph left click press Enter or escape to finish your command and you just drew a line
so these are just some of the basic tools that you’re going to learn how to use you’re going to learn how to draw some lines use different shapes like our rectangle offset them copy them trim them insert other objects into your drawing and draw a line draw two lines you can even draw some circles for whatever they need to be it seems a little overwhelming right now with all of the buttons and all the panels that are up on the screen I understand that we’re going to break it down and look at one thing at a time and then we’re going to show you how to apply them to a project and we’re going to slowly build on that project more and more until we work on their final project when you make a design drawing for a small movie theater
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