Well it’s Monday and the start of a new week, so here’s the next tutorial for you……

The Basics to AutoCAD

Part 3

 

Well I hope you managed to complete the drawing at the end of part 2, we are going to move the circles around this lesson. Should be fun…….. Oh the illustration below is the one from the last part and you should have something similar but without all the numbers, letters and arrows. If not then have another go at drawing it now, remembering to enter all the details onto the command line. If you remembered to save this drawing then open the file from within AutoCAD and let’s get to it………………….

Ok then moving stuff………

As you may have noticed if you have been here from the beginning, none of the circles are where they should be. We are now going to move them; first one at a time and then all together………… should be a laugh.

From the toolbar to the right select the move icon, it looks like a plus sign with little arrows on the points. Then with your mouse select your smallest circle by left clicking on the circle. The circle will change to a dotted line and your curser is still the small box. This is because we have not told AutoCAD anything yet apart from the fact that we want to move the small circle.

But where do we want to move the circle from and to? Well we are going to move it from its present position to somewhere near the WCS (the X,Y thingy bottom left).

Right click your mouse and the cross hairs of the cursor re-appear. Move the cross hair somewhere near to small circle and left click. Now when you move your mouse the small circle will be attached to the cross hair and a line showing from where you have collected it appears. Don’t panic as this will disappear shortly.

Move the cursor, with the circle attached towards the WCS, when you are near to it, left click. There you go, easier than moving house…………

Now select the next size circle and move it so it sits above the small circle you just moved. Continue to move all the circles until they are in a line above each other from smallest at the bottom to largest at the top.

You should have something similar to the illustration above but without the circle radius details.

Ok now we are going to move the circles to a specific point on the drawing. This is done by entering details on the command line. First select the move icon from the toolbar. The command line is asking for Select objects, the part in the brackets will be talked over in another  lesson, select the small circle with your mouse, left click on it, then right click to tell AutoCAD this is the object we want to move.

Now in the command line we are being asked Specify base point or [Displacement], we will specify the centre of the circle by typing center on the command line, press enter.

Here’s a special note for all the British people using these tutorials. AutoCAD is an American piece of software and as some of you may know they spell some words in the English language slightly different to us Brits. So you must remember if you are entering full words into the command line to use the American version of spelling, not the British way.

Ok so now we have used the correct spelling the command line is asking of.

What? I hear you asking…….we have asked for the centre, now we need to show AutoCAD “of” what centre we want. Move the cursor towards the small circle, as you get closer to the circle a small cross hair and a coloured circle appear inside our small circle. This is called the node; we will cover them briefly next time. Once these have appeared left click your mouse, the small circle now moves to the intersection of your mouse cross hair.

The command line is now asking Specify second point. Rather than picking a random point with the mouse, we are going to tell AutoCAD a specific point to put the circle. So type 0,0 and press enter. The circle is now centred on 0,0 and the WCS.

Now do the same for all the other five circles, positioning them all at 0,0 and you should end up with something like the illustration below………….

Ok now we are going to move all the circles at the same time to the point of the drawing to the top right…………..gulp!

Select the move icon as normal, then select each circle individually or drag a box over the circles with the left mouse button held down, once they are covered by the box that you make using the mouse, release the button. All the circles should be inside the box, left click and they all become selected in one go. This is the easiest and quickest way to select items that you may need to move that are close together.

Now your circles are selected, they should all be dotted lines, we need to select their centre again, so in the command line type center and press enter. Move the cursor close to the circles and when the small cross hair and little coloured circle appear left click your mouse. All the circles should now be attached to your cursor ready to be put in their new position.

From when you originally draw the shape, we know that the top right hand corner has a reference point of 897,897 so go ahead and type those values into your command line, press enter.

The circles should now be centred on the top right corner of your drawing. If they are then well done, if not, go back and start again, do not pass go and do not collect £200……………..

Save your drawing as lesson pt3 in the same place that you save your first drawing, we may use them both next time.

So now you know how to move objects in drawings. Again, go and have a play and get used to single picking and multi picking items you want to move………………… oh, while you’re at it, try moving some of the lines around as well.

moving       the-basics-to-autocad-pt-3

So that’s part 3 done and dusted.

Next week will be a little in depth as we look at the AutoCAD interface.