After two weeks of talking about it finally the first of our “The Basics of AutoCAD” tutorials is here.

Hopefully every week we will be posting “idiot” proof tutorials for you. they come with a zipped PDF download and sometimes with a movie.

we have tried to keep them as short and as simple as we can so that you have time to take in all the information and then the chance to go away and practice at your own leisure.

Enjoy…………

The Basics to AutoCAD

Part 1

 

Over the next few weeks, months, years……. Oh however long it takes. I hope to help with the basic questions and answers about learning to draw in AutoCAD. These tutorials will be posted as often as I can physically produce them and I will try and keep them idiot proof for the total beginner.

What I will be aiming at in our first series of tutorials will be to draw the layout shown below and print it on a piece of A4 paper, on your home printer, and to scale!!!! Sound good? Trust me it should not take too long to get into the whole swing of it……..

Good luck and happy drawing……..

 

Let’s Draw Some Lines…….

First things first, open your AutoCAD software from your desktop icon or your start menu as you would any other programme. AutoCAD should open to a default dwg, labelled Drawing1.dwg, if it has not and is asking which template you want to open, select acad.dwt. Later in these tutorials we will show you how to set up opening your own default template automatically when AutoCAD opens.

Drawing1.dwg should now be open and ready to use in your AutoCAD software.

Ok then let’s draw some lines……..

The quickest and easiest way is simply to click on the line icon to the top left of the AutoCAD drawing space, then with your mouse, left click once anywhere on the screen (line start point). Move your mouse in any direction away from the original point and left click again (line end point).  Now right click and select enter from the drop down list. That is your line finished.

How easy was that?

Now, let’s be more accurate, Mr. Brookes has asked for a line 100 units long. First we need to remove the line you have just drawn. Select the erase icon, it looks like a pencil eraser to the right of the screen, then select the line, by left clicking your mouse on the line, then a right click to erase it.

Now we need to draw our 100 unit long line. Notice at the bottom of the window a Command Line, this is where we will draw our 100 unit line. First select the line icon as before, now instead of clicking in the drawing window, click on the command line. You should notice a command there _line Specify first point: A cursor begins to flash, it is waiting for information. The information we are going to give it is the start point of our line. Type in 0,0 and press enter on your keyboard. Another command should appear, Specify next point or (Undo). Well we need to give the line it’s next point so type in 100,0 and press enter, this is our end point. Again the command line has asked for another point but we do not need to give one as our 100 unit line is drawn, so just press enter again and your line is complete.

Your line will either be really small or too large for the screen at the minute, so we need to get it to fit in the drawing space. For now in the command line type z, enter and then e, enter. Your line should be horizontal across the centre of your drawing space.

Ok now you get the basic idea behind drawing a line, as freehand or by specific size. Mess around with these ideas a little bit just to get used to the AutoCAD interface.

 

 

The Co-Ordinate System;

Ok so you have just drawn a line……. And it was 100 units in length. Everything that you draw in AutoCAD is exact, no matter how small or large. Your model space is as big as you want it to be and is the “real world”. Your paper space, which we will pick up on later, is a window into that “real world”. The co-ordinate system helps you position your drawing in the places you require.

 

An X, Y co-ordinate system is the plane on which you will begin to draw 2D drawings in AutoCAD, this is called the World Co-Ordinate System or WCS in AutoCAD. 3D drawings use a third axis “Z”, but we will not involve ourselves with this at this stage. Below is a simple diagram showing how the X, Y system works….

AutoCAD uses this X, Y system to determine the positions of any lines that are drawn within it. Any single line that you draw has two points, a start point and an end point. As shown in the diagram above there are two points, (3,2) the start point and (11,8) the end point of our line. There is also (0,0) this is the origin point and all other references (3,2) and (11,8) are relative to this point.

99% of the time there will be no indication of where the Origin is. A line is then drawn with an end point relative to its start point.

Many times when you build a drawing it will be in the positive X,Y area (upper right). Many times will occur when you will need to add to your drawing parts that you have forgotten to include, or that you will be asked to include at a later stage. These additional features may then take you into the negative areas of the co-ordinate system. So you may come across points with references like (-4,8) or (-3,-7). This is only natural when you venture across the line!!!

 

Ok that’s all there is for now. Like I said short and sweet, but there is more than enough for you to practise with here. For a start try drawing lines freehand, even try giving lines X and Y values. Try those negative values as well and see what happens.

 

Until next time have fun drawing your lines…………………..

View the video tutorial to this lesson…
PART ONE    PART TWO

Download this lesson as a PDF file (requires Acrobat reader) AutoCAD basics Part One