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The bestselling AutoCAD book-revised and updated!
It takes some practice to get handy with AutoCAD-and it doesn´t hurt to have a good guide by your side to help get you through the rough spots. Updated to cover AutoCAD releases through the 2017 version, this new edition of AutoCAD For Dummies is an ideal companion when you´re learning the basics of the popular software. Written by a former engineer and AutoCAD teacher, the book walks you through the basics of setting up projects and making simple drawings all the way up to creating 3D models.

Beginning with an overview of the AutoCAD interface, drawing tools, and ways to adjust your view of your work, AutoCAD For Dummies offers easy-to-follow guidance on using straight and curved lines to manage properties, object selection, and creating layouts. Next, it shows you how to use advanced AutoCAD tools, including Blocks, Arrays, Xrefs, and Parametrics. Finally, you´ll find out how to move your work in to the wonderful world of 3D modeling.

Create an AutoCAD project from the ground up
Make and edit basic drawings starting with straight lines and curves
Jump into advanced drawing with 3D modeling
Find quick answers to your AutoCAD questions
It´s true that AutoCAD is tough, but with the friendly instruction in this hands-on guide, you´ll find everything you need to start creating marvelous models-without losing your cool.



Table of Contents

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 4

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

The Importance of Being DWG 16

CHAPTER 2: The Grand Tour of AutoCAD 19

Looking at AutoCAD's Drawing Screen 20

For your information 23

Making choices from the Application menu 24

Unraveling the Ribbon 26

Getting with the Program 29

Looking for Mr Status Bar 30

Using Dynamic Input 30

Let your fingers do the talking: The command line 31

The key(board) to AutoCAD success 32

Keeping tabs on palettes 36

Down the main stretch: The drawing area 36

Fun with F1 37

CHAPTER 3: A Lap around the CAD Track 39

A Simple Setup 40

Drawing a (Base) Plate 45

Taking a Closer Look with Zoom and Pan 54

Modifying to Make It Merrier 55

Crossing your hatches 55

Now that's a stretch 56

Table of Contents iii

Following the Plot 59

Plotting the drawing 59

Today's layer forecast: Freezing 62

CHAPTER 4: Setup for Success 63

A Setup Roadmap 64

Choosing your units 64

Weighing up your scales 67

Thinking about paper 70

Defending your border 70

A Template for Success 71

Making the Most of Model Space 73

Setting your units 74

Making the drawing area snap-py (and grid-dy) 75

Setting linetype and dimension scales 77

Entering drawing properties 79

Making Templates Your Own 80

CHAPTER 5: A Zoom with a View 85

Zooming and Panning with Glass and Hand 86

The wheel deal 86

Navigating a drawing 87

Zoom, Zoom, Zoom 88

A View by Any Other Name 90

Degenerating and Regenerating 93

PART 2: LET THERE BE LINES 95

CHAPTER 6: Along the Straight and Narrow 97

Drawing for Success 98

Introducing the Straight-Line Drawing Commands 99

Drawing Lines and Polylines 100

Toeing the line 102

Connecting the lines with polyline 102

Squaring Off with Rectangles .107

Choosing Sides with POLygon 108

CHAPTER 7: Dangerous Curves Ahead 111

(Throwing) Curves 111

Going Full Circle 112

Arc-y-ology 114

Solar Ellipses 115

Splines: Sketchy, Sinuous Curves 117

Donuts: Circles with a Difference 119

Revision Clouds on the Horizon 120

Scoring Points 122

CHAPTER 8: Preciseliness Is Next to CADliness 125

Controlling Precision 126

Understanding the AutoCAD Coordinate Systems 129

Keyboard capers: coordinate input 129

Introducing user coordinate systems 130

Drawing by numbers 131

Grabbing an Object and Making It Snappy 133

Grabbing points with object snap overrides 133

Snap goes the cursor 136

Running with object snaps 137

Other Practical Precision Procedures 139

CHAPTER 9: Manage Your Properties 143

Using Properties with Objects 144

Using the ByLayer approach 144

Changing properties 146

Working with Layers 148

Accumulating properties 150

Creating new layers 151

Manipulating layers 157

Scaling an object's line type 160

Using Named Objects 161

Using AutoCAD Design Center 162

CHAPTER 10: Grabbing Onto Object Selection 165

Commanding and Selecting 166

Command-first editing 166

Selection-first editing 166

Direct-object manipulation 166

Choosing an editing style 167

Selecting Objects 168

One-by-one selection 169

Selection boxes left and right 169

Tying up object selection 170

Perfecting Selecting 171

AutoCAD Groupies 175

Object Selection: Now You See It 175

CHAPTER 11: Edit for Credit 177

Assembling Your AutoCAD Toolkit 177

The Big Three: Move, COpy, and Stretch 179

Base points and displacements 179

Move 181

COpy 182

Copy between drawings 183

Stretch 183

More Manipulations 187

Mirror, mirror on the monitor 187

ROtate 189

SCale 190

-ARray 191

Offset 192

Slicing, Dicing, and Splicing 194

TRim and EXtend 194

BReak 196

Fillet, CHAmfer, and BLEND 197

Join 200

Other editing commands 201

Getting a Grip 203

When Editing Goes Bad 205

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 214

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 229

Using the Same Old Line 230

Saying More in Multiline Text 233

Making it with mText 233

mText dons a mask 236

Insert Field 237

Doing a number on your mText lists 237

Line up in columns - now! 240

Modifying mText 241

Turning On Annotative Objects 242

Gather Round the Tables 245

Tables have style, too 245

Creating and editing tables 247

Take Me to Your Leader 249

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 256

Self-centered 259

Quick, dimension! 259

And no