Introduction 1
About This Book 2
Foolish Assumptions 3
Conventions Used in This Book 3
Using the command line 3
Using aliases 4
Icons Used in This Book 5
Beyond the Book 5
Where to Go from Here 6
Part 1: Getting Started with AutoCAD 7
Chapter 1: Introducing AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT 9
Launching AutoCAD 10
Drawing in AutoCAD 11
Understanding Pixels and Vectors 14
The Cartesian Coordinate System 15
Chapter 2: The Grand Tour of AutoCAD 17
Looking at AutoCAD's Drawing Screen 18
For your information 21
Making choices from the Application menu 22
Unraveling the Ribbon 24
Getting with the Program 27
Looking for Mr Status Bar 28
Using Dynamic Input 28
Let your fingers do the talking: The command line 29
The key(board) to AutoCAD success 30
Keeping tabs on palettes 34
Down the main stretch: The drawing area 34
Fun with F1 35
Chapter 3: A Lap around the CAD Track 37
A Simple Setup 38
Drawing a (Base) Plate 43
Taking a Closer Look with Zoom and Pan 51
Modifying to Make It Merrier 52
Crossing your hatches 53
Now that's a stretch 54
Following the Plot 57
Plotting the drawing 57
Today's layer forecast: Freezing 60
Chapter 4: Setup for Success 61
A Setup Roadmap 62
Choosing your units 62
Weighing up your scales 65
Thinking about paper 68
Defending your border 68
A Template for Success 69
Making the Most of Model Space 71
Setting your units 72
Making the drawing area snap-py (and grid-dy) 73
Setting linetype, text, and dimension scales 75
Entering drawing properties 76
Making Templates Your Own 77
Chapter 5: A Zoom with a View 83
Zooming and Panning with Glass and Hand 84
The wheel deal 84
Navigating a drawing 85
Zoom, Zoom, Zoom 87
A View by Any Other Name 89
Degenerating and Regenerating 91
Part 2: Let There Be Lines 93
Chapter 6: Along the Straight and Narrow 95
Drawing for Success 96
Introducing the Straight-Line Drawing Commands 97
Drawing Lines and Polylines 98
Toeing the line 100
Connecting the lines with polyline 100
Squaring Off with Rectangles 105
Choosing Sides with POLygon 106
Chapter 7: Dangerous Curves Ahead 109
Throwing Curves 109
Going Full Circle 110
Arc-y-ology 112
Solar Ellipses 114
Splines: Sketchy, Sinuous Curves 115
Donuts: Circles with a Difference 117
Revision Clouds on the Horizon 118
Scoring Points 120
Chapter 8: Preciseliness Is Next to CADliness 123
Controlling Precision 124
Understanding the AutoCAD Coordinate Systems 127
Keyboard capers: Coordinate input 127
Introducing user coordinate systems 128
Drawing by numbers 129
Grabbing an Object and Making It Snappy 131
Grabbing points with object snap overrides 132
Snap goes the cursor 134
Running with object snaps 135
Other Practical Precision Procedures 137
Chapter 9: Manage Your Properties 141
Using Properties with Objects 142
Using the ByLayer approach 142
Changing properties 144
Working with Layers 146
Accumulating properties 148
Creating new layers 149
Manipulating layers 156
Scaling an object's linetype 158
Using Named Objects 159
Using AutoCAD DesignCenter 161
Chapter 10: Grabbing Onto Object Selection 163
Commanding and Selecting 164
Command-first editing 164
Selection-first editing 164
Direct-object manipulation 164
Choosing an editing style 165
Selecting Objects 166
One-by-one selection 167
Selection boxes left and right 167
Tying up object selection 169
Perfecting Selecting 170
AutoCAD Groupies 173
Object Selection: Now You See It 173
Chapter 11: Edit for Credit 175
Assembling Your AutoCAD Toolkit 175
The Big Three: Move, COpy, and Stretch 178
Base points and displacements 178
Move 180
COpy 181
Copy between drawings 182
Stretch 182
More Manipulations 186
Mirror, mirror on the monitor 186
ROtate 188
SCale 189
-ARray 190
Offset 191
Slicing, Dicing, and Splicing 193
TRim and EXtend 193
BReak 195
Fillet, CHAmfer, and BLEND 196
Join 199
Other editing commands 201
Getting a Grip 202
When Editing Goes Bad 204
Dare to Compare 206
Chapter 12: Planning for Paper 207
Setting Up a Layout in Paper Space 210
The layout two-step 210
Put it on my tabs 212
Any Old Viewport in a Layout 213
Up and down the detail viewport scales 214
Keeping track of where you're at 216
Practice Makes Perfect 217
Clever Paper Space Tricks 217
Part 3: If Drawings Could Talk 219
Chapter 13: Text with Character 221
Getting Ready to Write 222
Creating Simply Stylish Text 224
Font follies 225
Get in style 226
Taking Your Text to New Heights 228
Plotted text height 228
Calculating non-annotative AutoCAD text height 228
Entering Text 230
Using the Same Old Line 230
Saying More in Multiline Text 233
Making it with mText 233
mText dons a mask 237
Insert Field 237
Doing a number on your mText lists 238
Line up in columns - now! 240
Modifying mText 242
Turning On Annotative Objects 242
Gather Round the Tables 245
Tables have style, too 246
Creating and editing tables 247
Take Me to Your Leader 250
Electing a leader 250
Multi options for multileaders 252
Chapter 14: Entering New Dimensions 253
Adding Dimensions to a Drawing 254
A Field Guide to Dimensions 257
Self-centered 259
Quick, dimension! 260
And now for the easy way 261
Where, oh where, do my dimensions go? 262
The Latest Styles in Dimensioning 263
Creating dimension styles 266
Adjusting style settings 268
Changing styles 272
Scaling Dimensions for Output 272
Editing Dimensions 275
Editing dimension geometry 275
Editing dimension text 277
Controlling and editing dimension associativity 278
And the Correct Layer Is 279
Chapter 15: Down the Hatch! 281
Creating a Hatch 281
Using the Hatches Tab 285
Scaling Hatches 288
Scaling the easy way 288
Annotative versus non-annotative 289
Pushing the Boundaries of Hatch 290
Adding style 290
Hatches from scratch 291
Editing Hatch Objects 293
Chapter 16: The Plot Thickens 295
You Say Printing, I Say Plotting 296
The Plot Quickens 296
Plotting success in 16 steps 296
Getting with the system 301
Configuring your printer 301
Preview one, two 303
Instead of fit, scale it 303
Plotting the Layout of the Land 305
Plotting Lineweights and Colors 307
Plotting with style 307
Plotting through thick and thin 312
Plotting in color 316
It's a (Page) Setup! 317
Continuing the Plot Dialog 318
The Plot Sickens 321
Part 4: Advancing with AutoCAD 323
Chapter 17: The ABCs of Blocks 325
Rocking with Blocks 326
Creating Block Definitions 328
Inserting Blocks 332
Attributes: Fill-in-the-Blank Blocks 336
Creating attribute definitions 337
Defining blocks that contain attribute definitions 339
Inserting blocks that contain attribute definitions 339
Editing attribute values 340
Extracting data 340
Exploding Blocks 341
Purging Unused Block Definitions 341
Chapter 18: Everything from Arrays to Xrefs 343
Arraying Associatively 345
Comparing the old and new ARray commands 346
Hip, hip, array! 347
Associatively editing 353
Going External 354
Becoming attached to your xrefs 356
Layer-palooza 358
Editing an external reference file 358
Forging an xref path 359
Managing xrefs 361
Blocks, Xrefs, and Drawing Organization 363
Mastering the Raster 364
Attaching a raster image 365
Maintaining your image 366
You Say PDF; I Say DWF 367
Theme and Variations: Dynamic Blocks 369
Now you see it 370
Lights! Parameters! Actions! 374
Manipulating dynamic blocks 375
Chapter 19: Call the Parametrics! 377
Maintaining Design Intent 378
Defining terms 380
Forget about drawing with precision! 381
Constrain yourself 381
Understanding Geometric Constraints 382
Applying a little more constraint 384
Using inferred constraints 389
You AutoConstrain yourself! 389
Understanding Dimensional Constraints 390
Practice a little constraint 392
Making your drawing even smarter 394
Using the Parameters Manager 396
Dimensions or constraints? Have it both ways! 399
Lunchtime! 401
Chapter 20: Drawing on the Internet 403
The Internet and AutoCAD: An Overview 404
You send me 404
Prepare it with eTransmit 404
Rapid eTransmit 405
FTP for you and me 407
Increasing cloudiness 407
Bad reception? 408
Help from Reference Manager 408
The Drawing Protection Racket 410
Outgoing! 411
Autodesk weather forecast: Increasing cloud 411
Your head planted firmly in the cloud 412
AutoCAD Web and Mobile 413
Part 5: On a 3D Spree 415
Chapter 21: It's a 3D World After All 417
The 3.5 Kinds of 3D Digital Models 418
Tools of the 3D Trade 419
Warp speed ahead 420
Entering the third dimension 421
Untying the Ribbon and opening some palettes 422
Modeling from Above 423
Using 3D coordinate input 424
Using point filters 425
Object snaps and object snap tracking 425
Changing Planes 426
Displaying the UCS icon 426
Adjusting the UCS 426
Navigating the 3D Waters 431
Orbit a go-go 432
Taking a spin around the cube 433
Grabbing the Steering Wheels 434
Visualizing 3D Objects 435
On a Render Bender 437
Chapter 22: From Drawings to Models 439
Is 3D for Me? 440
Getting Your 3D Bearings 441
Creating a better 3D template 441
Seeing the world from new viewpoints 446
From Drawing to Modeling in 3D 448
Drawing basic 3D objects 448
Gaining a solid foundation 449
Drawing solid primitives 450
Adding the Third Dimension to 2D Objects 451
Adding thickness to a 2D object 451
Extruding open and closed objects 451
Pressing and pulling closed boundaries 452
Lofting open and closed objects 452
Sweeping open and closed objects along a path 453
Revolving open or closed objects around an axis 454
Modifying 3D Objects 454
Selecting subobjects 454
Working with gizmos 455
More 3D variants of 2D commands 456
Editing solids 457
Chapter 23: It's Showtime! 461
Get the 2D Out of Here! 462
A different point of view 466
Additional 3D tricks 467
AutoCAD's top model 467
Visualizing the Digital World 469
Adding Lighting 470
Default lighting 470
User-defined lights 471
Sunlight 474
Creating and Applying Materials 474
Defining a Background 477
Rendering a 3D Model 479
Chapter 24: AutoCAD Plays Well with Others 481
Get Out of Here! 481
Things that go BMP in the night 482
Vectoring in on WMF 483
And now here are the lumpy bits 484
PDF 485
What the DWF? 485
3D Print 486
But wait! There's more! 486
Open Up and Let Me In! 486
Editing other drawing file formats 487
PDF editing 487
Translation, Please! 489
The Importance of Being DWG 490
Part 6: The Part of Tens 493
Chapter 25: Ten AutoCAD Resources 495
Autodesk Discussion Groups 495
Autodesk's Own Blogs 495
Autodesk University 496
Autodesk Channel on YouTube 496
World Wide (CAD) Web 496
Your Local Authorized Training Center 497
Your Local User Group 497
Autodesk User Groups International 497
Books 498
Autodesk Feedback Community 498
Chapter 26: Ten System Variables to Make Your AutoCAD Life Easier 499
APERTURE 500
DIMASSOC 500
MENUBAR 501
MIRRTEXT 501
OSNAPZ 502
PICKBOX 502
REMEMBERFOLDERS 502
ROLLOVERTIPS 503
TOOLTIPS 503
VISRETAIN 504
And the Bonus Round 504
Chapter 27: Ten AutoCAD Secrets 505
Sheet Sets 505
Custom Tool Palettes 506
Ribbon Customization 506
Toolsets 506
Programming Languages 506
Vertical Versions 507
Language Packs 507
Multiple Projects or Clients 508
Data Extraction and Linking 508
Untying the Ribbon 508
Index 509
