Getting Started With AutoCAD

ENGR 2

Week #1 Laboratory

Intent of Instruction

• It is pretty much accepted in the industry that 10% of the AutoCAD commands are used 90% of the time. We will focus on such a subset.

• The intent of the course is NOT to turn you into a well versed AutoCAD technician. You would need more training for that to occur.

• In this course you will learn just enough AutoCAD to communicate your ideas to a draftsmen, prepare sketches for technical documents, and some basic drafting.

Overview

• Starting the Program

• Screen Layout

• Working With Toolbars

• The Command Line Box

• Starting A New Drawing

• Setting The Drawing Environment

Starting the Program

• Locate and click on the AutoCAD icon or use the Start Menu to find the program and start it.

Coordinate Display

Status Line

Cursor

Drawing Name

Pull-down Menu Headings

Standard ToolbarObject Properties Toolbar

Optional Toolbar Locations

Working With Toolbars

• AutoCAD has quite few different predefined toolbars. You can access them by right clicking on any visible toolbar

• You can edit the toolbars to meet your own preferences. You can explore this option on your own.

• Can grab and drag the toolbars to different locations on the screen. – Try inserting the “Modify” toolbar and drag it to one of the

side borders.

• You can find out what an icon does by letting your cursor hover over the button.

The Command Line Box

• There are two basic ways to input a command:– The command line– Clicking on a command icon. The command icons

will execute the appropriate text based command on the command line

• Additionally some commands have a keyboard shortcut option that normally involves the “cntrl” or “alt” keys on the keyboard

• The command line box size can be changed to show more or fewer command lines.

Starting A New Drawing

• Either click on File>New then choose advanced setup. • Click thru the various dialogues, leaving the settings

at default. • On the last dialogue (area), set width to 11, length to

8.5 (standard paper size)• Either click on the “Save” icon, type “_qsave” on the

command line, or press cntrl+s on the keyboard to bring up the Save as menu.

• Select a subdirectory and enter a filename.• Click on the “Save” button.

Setting Up The Drawing Environment

• This normally involves a couple of steps.– Defining the units– Defining drawing limits– Setting grid and snap dimensions– Using other Drafting Settings

• Note that you can redefine these items at anytime.

Defining Units

• Either type “units” on the command line or use the pull-down menu for “format” and select “units”

• For LENGTH units, select the type and precision.• For ANGLE units, select the type, precision, and

direction of measure.• The drag-and-drop scale is where you select the

unit system.• Click on the “OK” button when done.

Define Drawing Limits

• This defines the extent of the drawing in the units of the object you are drawing. Since we are drawing full scale, this should be big enough to include all parts of your drawing.

• This can be changed later if you decide to go larger with your drawing.

• Type “limits” on the command line or use the “format” pull down menu and select “Drawing Limits”

Drawing Limits (continued)

• A prompt appears on the command line for you to input the coordinates of the lower left corner of the drawing limits. If the point is within the current view, you can point and click on the location of the lower limit. Otherwise, you can type in the coordinate pair for the point.

• The next prompt asks for the upper right corner coordinates. Again, you can either point and click or type in the coordinate pair.

• (Use limits of 0,0 to 6.6, 6.6)

Setting Grid and Snap Dimensions

• Drawing accuracy is extremely important in engineering graphics. Grid and Snap are two of several commands that help us to ensure accuracy.

• An input window is available by using the “tools” pull-down menu and selecting “Drafting Settings…”.

• You can also use the separate command line commands “snap” and “grid”.

• Input the parameters that you want to start with.• (Use a Grid of 0.2,and a Snap of 0.2)

More Grid and Snap

• It is very common to change the settings for grid and snap often when creating a drawing.

• Grid and Snap (and other drafting settings) can be enabled by clicking on the Status Line buttons at the bottom of the AutoCAD window. These also toggle on and off with keyboard shortcuts.

Coordinates

• At the bottom left of the AutoCAD is the coordinate display.

• Move your cursor around the drawing area and watch the coordinate change.

• Toggle “snap” on and off and watch the difference in the way the coordinates change as you move the cursor.

• Toggle three different coordinate modes with the “f6” keyboard key.– Turn off, Turn on with absolute, Turn on with relative

Let’s Draw Something!

Basic Commands

• The “Draw” Toolbar– Lines

– Polylines

– Circles

– Arcs

• The “Modify” Toolbar– Erase

– Copy

– Move

– Offset

– Fillet

– Array

– Trim

– Extend

Using the Help function

• AutoCAD has a good command reference in it’s help function.

• This presentation will not duplicate that reference. You should frequently refer to the command reference as you learn the various commands.

• Some practical pointers are added here that may not be easily encountered in the command reference.

Start the Drawing

• Open AutoCAD or a new drawing• Save the file as “Lab1a.dwg” in your student directory• Set the length type to “decimal”, precision to “0.00”,

and the drag-and-drop scale to “inches”• Set the limits to:

– Bottom left to 0,0– Top Right to 6.6,6.6

• To set the view area to drawing limits:– Enter “zoom” on the command line– Enter “e” (for extents)

Drawing Lines• Either type “line” on the command line or click

on the line icon in the draw toolbar.• Lines can be drawn by point and click.

– Can keep an eye on the coordinates display to make sure that you get what you want.

• Lines can be specified by their end point coordinates.– Type in the coordinates on the command line

• Lines can be specified by their first point coordinates, then by an distance and angle.– Select starting point, type in “@distance<angle”– Example: @5<45 would go 5 units at a 45 degree

angle

Let’s Draw a Line

• Click the line icon (or enter “line” on the command line)

• Draw a horizontal line whose left end coordinate is 0,.5 and is 5 inches long.

• Continue the line so that the second segment is starts at the end of the first line and goes vertically up 1.5 inches.

The Copy Command

• The copy command is used to make a single duplicate of an entity or group of entities.

• Click on copy icon in the modify menu and follow the instructions on the command line.

• Note that copy offsets may be independent of the actual line.

Selecting Objects

• AutoCAD has several ways to select objects. – Click on each object that you want to select.– Make a window that encloses all the objects that you

want to select.• Click on the lower or upper LEFT corner of desired window

area• Click on the opposite corner of the window area

– Make a boundary that selects every thing that is within the boundary and that CROSSES the boundary.

• Click on the lower or upper RIGHT corner of desired window area

• Click on the opposite corner of the window area

More drawing

• Follow the instructor through the process of creating the objects shown on the handout. You will learn to use several more draw and modify commands in the process.

Plotting your Drawing• Select File>Plot

• Select Plot Device and choose HP laser printer

• Select Plot Settings tab

• Under Plot Area, choose Limits

• Under Plot Scale, choose 1:1

• Under Plot Offset, choose Center

• Click Full Preview, then if OK,

R-click >Plot