Transcripts
1. Intro to AutoCAD Masterclass Training Series: hi and welcome to our auto cad masterclass training course on this course I'm joined by, my colleague wrote, Who is an exceptional cab designer and instructor. World will take you from knowing nothing about AutoCAD to a level where you can tackle pretty much any cat project. There is no doubt that auto Cat is the best and the most popular technical drawings off their out there today, And on this course you'll learn how to navigate the ultra cat interface, draw basic and complex shapes and plans some off the most useful commands. Work with layers at dimensions, print and publish your project. This course will also prepare you for the official certification exam for also can, which will give you the competitive edge when you apply for AutoCAD jobs. Even if you are an existing AutoCAD user, this course will give you the extra skills to speed up and optimize your workflow alongside the training videos. You will also have access to the training files used during the course so you can follow along at your own pace. So if you're ready to learn AutoCAD, let's get started
2. Welcome: Hi. Welcome to our AutoCAD training videos. I'm really pleased you've decided to join us on the journey into or card, which is the leading CAD software anywhere in the world. Order. Cat has millions of users across the globe. Wherever you go, cad jobs ask for AutoCAD experience. Architects, engineers and designers all recognized the importance of water Cat on the ability to exchange data easily and freely. That makes economic sense on business. Loves it. If you have all declared on your CV, you're halfway there.
3. Why AutoCAD: you may ask, why auto cad? That is why I oughta cad in particular. Well, that's an easy question to answer. AutoCAD has been going for close on 40 years. The software has millions of users worldwide. The program is refined regularly and updated every year. It's easy to use and it's reliable, and I'm gonna show you how to get really good at using the world's favorite CAD package.
4. Download Files: So we've produced a series of videos to help you journal to cut on. We've also made drawings for you to follow at your own speed. So if you have a copy of or cat, have it open and you can work along with me, download the drawings and have them ready. Practice is a great thing, and we'll help you build up your kinetic muscle memory and improve your speed of operation and get you really good at order. Cad. So when you're ready, let's get going.
5. Version 2019: So I'm using AutoCAD 2019. Yeah, and, Ah, that's certainly the current version available right now. But you could also have a work alongside me using version 2015 or 16 or later on. There would be little appreciable difference. There might be some minor changes to the interface on graphics on the buttons, but that's about it. So let's press on.
6. Tips About the Interface and Keyboard Shortcuts: So I want to tell you how we're going to use and learn order, Kid. During these training videos, we're going to mainly rely on the command line than that's down here. This is the command line here. Now, some of you may have an interface where the command lines being moved and you can move the command line around and you can accidentally close it down. So don't don't do that about mainly, the command line appears at the bottom here. We're gonna be relying on typing in air commands at the keyboard on Whenever you type in a command, you have to finish with the enter key. So if the command was copy, you do copy, Enter. Now, of course, What we could do is we could use all of these buttons up top here. Okay, But really, all days do is to issue the command that weaken issue at the keyboard on The reason for that is the AutoCAD was designed before Windows was even available. So Windows came in around about 1990. Auto cad came in about 1980. So you can imagine Alter cat was around and designed before windows, so these buttons at the top here are just a convenient way of issuing the commands. Now, yes, there are a little bit more to the buttons than just the commands that we can issue. But in the main, the fastest way of using AutoCAD is through the keyboard. Now on the top Here, we've got a whole bunch of menus on. If I click through here, you can see that the ribbon changes as I go through. Of course, what that would mean is that you have to remember every single instance of every single but and every single menu. Now, of course, you could do that and you could go through and you could have a look at all of these extra pull down items. But really, once you know what the commands are, you can go for the commands on the keyboards very easily and very quickly, So that's the quick way of using AutoCAD. So I'm going to teach you what the commands are so you can hear the commands. The commands are in English so that they make sense so you can understand the logic. Most commands have a short cut so that you don't have to worry about typing errors. Okay, so, for instance, move is m okay. And it raise is E. So they're really easy. They're not really difficult shortcuts. And what we need to do is we need to take those short cuts on board, because typing in em for move avoids typing errors. Okay? And it also reduces time. And if you know what the command is and you get straight to it, it speeds up your drafting inside order card. Okay. So you could be quick and fast and accurate if you learn the keyboard.
7. BC Getting Around the Interface: so looking at the interface inside AutoCAD right the way across the top. Here, this is the button bar. As we said before and over here on the top left hand corner. We've got two tabs on these tabs. Allow us to go to the start menu and this is the start drawing menu. These are previously Lee used drawings and this is your online presence on any of the other drawings that you've got open Appear in a tab across the top here. And over here on the right is the properties dialog box. Now, you probably started order card without this. Actually, um, where this properties dialog box wasn't open. Probably like this on DA The Properties dialog box is a fantastic dialog box to have open. And it's just easy to get hold of the properties dialog box You've got Ah, right click menu here. So you can select Properties dialog box here, Onda, we're gonna be talking about that later. How you access it, how you use it and why it's important. And down here on the right hand side, there's a whole bunch of buttons here. You can see them. Some of them are turned on some of the grey graze turned off. Okay, Now I'm going to suggest that you don't fiddle with these buttons at all because these buttons alter the way in which order cared operates on Until you know what these buttons do , you could be turning on or off something absolutely fundamental. So I'm going to suggest that you don't change these buttons, Atal, until we've discussed them on duh, you know exactly what's going on. So there's a whole bunch of things that you could do Great. There's all sorts of little menus that you can access. Uh, but when you know what those menus are on, why you're going for them? Brilliant. But until that, avoid those buttons down in the bottom, right hand corner completely. And over here on the bottom left hand corner, we've got some buttons and tabs that allow you into paper space. So here we've got the A four layout and you've got a a one lout. So I'm just gonna open up each of those just by clicking on the tabs. Those tabs are a little bit like the tabs that you might find in Excel, for instance, if you know, excel on that just allows you to separate pages. Okay. And then this is paper space on. Then we can go back to model space. Okay, Now, paper space is used for printing and saving. Okay, So you could save out to pdf, for instance, or you could print out to your printer, and we're gonna cover all of that in a later video. But, um, if we come back to model space, okay, Right at the bottom. Here. We have something we mentioned earlier. The command line. Okay. Now, this is probably the most important area off water card. And this is how you talk to order card and how autocad talks to you. You type in at the keyboard and press enter, and that's your way of talking toe order cared, and it appears in the command line. And then AutoCAD responds. So what you want to do? Great eso, for instance, if you typed in a raise, great. Enter that. We are. There's theories command in the command line. And then auto card says Okay. Would you want to do please select some objects game so we'll do that was select some objects. And then when you finished selecting you just press enter okay on the objects of being erased. So that's a pretty straightforward way of operating. Okay, now, you can also get all of that stuff back, right? Don't worry about the fact that you've just done something. If you've made a mistake you can undo on, there's a lot of different ways that you can undo. For instance, you enter. So that's the you on the keyboard. The letter u ah percent and that's under You've got control said that which is a standard Windows command. That's undue. And up here in the top left hand corner, can you see this button that's pointing over to the left? That's also undo Brilliant. So you've got a lot of control over what's going on, okay? And auto cad has got around about 20 undoes that it could remember. I think you can alter in preferences, I think, alter how many undoes it could go back through eso. There we go. That's the interface on that. That's how we're going to be using water kids. So quick. Summary. Okay, Although these buttons air useful, we're not going to be using very many off them the properties dialog box is absolutely essential. Once you get used to it, it's brilliant. So we're gonna have that open on the right hand side. Don't touch these buttons down here until we've discussed how to use them. And right in the middle of the command line, we're gonna be typing our commands in at the keyboard. We're gonna be using short cuts on DA When we find out what those shortcuts, I'll tell you as we go, then learning the short cuts will make you more efficient. Okay? And avoid things like spelling mistakes. Okay, great. So that's the way we're going to be using AutoCAD in these tutorials.
8. Zooming and Panning: Hi. This is video number five, and it's all about zooming and panning. So if you've downloaded the drawings we've made to accompany this video, then open up drawing number five zoom and pan, and you can work alongside me. So this is all about zooming and panning around the drawing so that you can get the most out of your drawing experience. So if you're ready, let's have a look at your mouse. First at the center wheel in the middle of your mouse button is zoom, so if you want to scroll the center wheel, you can zoom in and zoom out of your drawing very easily. Okay, have a god that, and then when you're ready, the same button is also ah, hold down button so you can click with this button and hold it down so the middle button becomes pan, and you can see that by the little hand that appears on the screen when you hold down the middle button, and that means that you can then pan you're drawing side to side and up and down. Now you can do both of those operations together if you practice so you can scroll and hold down the button at the same time, which is pretty cool. Trick on. That means that you can get around your drawing really easily now, depending on where you are. Okay? Just get yourself into a nice place, okay? And depending on where you point with your mouse, that will affect where you zoom in. Can you see on pointing towards the word sheet and then I'm moving away, and then I can choose somewhere else. I'm point of these machine heads and zoom in and then assume away. So where your pointing controls, where you zoom in to on where you zoom away from. Okay, Have a practice with that. Okay, We're going to practice the pan command a bit. Mawr. Okay, so hold down your middle button and put it over to one side on. Then we're going to scroll away, hold down the middle button and pull it to the other side so you can see that all of these operations are very fluid. And when you need to get around your drawing, you need to be really fluid with your mouse. So being out of click straight into pan is brilliant. Now, if you've got the same interface as me. This is version 19. You'll see. We've got a little button bar at the side here as well, so you can see that we've got pan as a command here so you can left click that command on that, then becomes pan also, so that's a different way of getting into your pan command. And if you have a look at the same little floating button bar here, you've also got zoom extents. Okay, so if you click on that button, that's the same as typing into zoom extents, so zoom and pan on the mouse can be considered to be invisible commands. In other words, you can actually be doing something else in AutoCAD like copy or move, for instance, and you can use your mouse to usual zoom on pan. So, for instance, you might be selecting something over here to copy it over to here, and therefore you need tohave zoom and pan operating in the middle off your copy or move command on. That's fantastic, because whilst it's invisible, that means you're using it without interrupting your copy. All your move command, and this will just become instinctive after a little while. So just practice a bit more so that you feel that zooming and panning it is no big deal. Now, let's just zoom away from your drawing so just a little bit so that your, um, drawing is around about the size of a postage stamp. Now, this time, we're going to use the mouse to zoom extents with a double click on the middle button. Okay, so let's try that. So that's a double click on the middle button. And that is the same as the zoom extents option that we looked at over here. So Simic senses, let me see the whole drawing on. That's something that we do all of the time when you're working away and you're doing some details and you finish during the details and you think yourself. Okay, Now I want to see what I've done and what I've still got left to do. You can double click your middle button, okay? And that's zoom extents. Now, we can also use thes Zim command at the command line. So the command line down here, if you remember, and what we need to do is to type the commanding at the keyboard. Zed double o m. Okay, so if you just type in, said Debelo, I m like that and press enter. Then you'll see that whilst you're speaking toe order card, the command line speaks back to you. Have a look down here to see what it says and the command line says, Yeah, you can zoom. These are your options, All center dynamic extent. You can read them yourself across there all the way across to really time so you can see that you've got a number of options. So we're gonna type in P for previous on impress enter and we go to the previous zoom Whatever that WAAS and you can also type in, Zoom said. W m enter and e for extents. Enter on that soon. Extents. Now we can short cut all of those commands so we can do zoom previous just simply by typing in said into a p enter. So let's do that Zed inter p enter so that soon previous and we can short can't zoom extents as well by typing in said in tow E enter so you can see that the keyboard is extremely efficient in giving you those zoom commands now We've also got a further command that we want to look at, and that's called zoom Window. Now, zoom window allows you to choose or select on area of the drawing that you want to zoom into. It is very simple and very useful. So we're gonna short cut it again so that zed enter W and, uh, that soon window said enter W enter on Auto head is now expecting you to define a rectangle with two clicks. So here we go one corner and then the other corner. Okay, so two clicks to give you the two opposite corners of your window. Let's try that again, said into W enter on. I'm gonna zoom in here. Click, click. I'm a guy. So zoom window is a fantastic way of selecting the area that you want to zoom into. Okay, So have a practice with all of these commands on get used to him. I'm familiar with um, particularly at the keyboard. Let's go through a couple zoom extents said in tow. Ente zoom. Previous zed and P enter and assume window zed enter w enter and therefore define the rectangle that zooms you into the area that you want to look at, okay? And then I'm gonna do my zoom extents again to come out said in tow E enter so I can see the whole thing. Now the reason I've come all the way out is because I want to show you what really? Time zoom looks like, Uh, you probably saw on the command. I'm do that again, said Enter on the command line. The Zoom command says, Yeah, you can do all of this stuff. And at the end, it says, there's this thing called real time. Now when it's in those little triangular brackets, that means you can have that option just by pressing. Enter want s'more That puts you into real time zoom. And that means that left mouse click puts you into this lovely, smooth zoom, which is actually much more accurate. It's not like using the center wheel on your mouse button, and this is a lot cleaner and easier Teoh to use. Okay, so have a little play with zoom real time now, when you're finished with zoom real time, you need to right click and choose exit to come out. OK, so have a little girl that eso the short cut for zoom. Real time is zed enter. Enter. That puts you straight into real time zoom. And that means you can then practice your real time, Sam. Okay, Have a little play with that Now. You can access the pan command also while stool, uh, in your drawing, we just see him away a little bit so you can use your, ah, patent command. Okay. At the keyboard, which then produces a left mouse button pan. So if we type in p a n enter, that puts you into the pan command, which allows you to move your drawing around in exactly the same way as using the middle button of your mouse. But it's now a left mouse button operation on this particular command is not invisible. Because if you're issuing a command, then a command, the command line, uh, will override anything else that you're doing. Okay, so here we are. We've got Pan now with the left mouse button feature on toe exit that you need to right click and choose exit from this little menu here. Okay, so we've got a lot of things that we can do, haven't may. So we've got zooming in a zooming out on the mouse. We've got panning on the mouse. We've got the panning here at the side, and we've got zoom extents at the side that you can practice. We've also got the keyboard commands. PRESUME, which is zed. Enter E enter for extents. Zed enter p enter for previous. That's do said Enter P and tough a previous okay and zoom window, which is said into W. Enter so I can choose an area to zoom into. And then we've got a real time zoom, which is said into enter on left mouse click to give yourself this lovely, smooth, real time. Zoom. Okay, toe exit, right click and choose exit from the menu. Now, if at any time any of your commands get stuck or there seems to be something going wrong, press escape twice on the keyboard. Okay, have a look for your escape, but normally on the left hand top corner of your keyboard and escape is like a get out of jail free card so you can use escape to get out of any command that might have gone wrong on highways. Press it twice costs. Sometimes commands have to levels eso I get into the habit of just pressing the escape button twice. Okay, So whilst you're here in this drawing, have a little play with the zoom commands. Get used to typing in. Get used to those short cuts on DA. Then you'll be really ready to go, and, uh, we can then move on to the next video, which is all about selecting and erasing. So once you've practiced, you're zooming and you're panning Join me in the next video for selecting Andy raising.
9. Selecting and Erasing: so welcome to video number six, which is all about selecting and erasing. If you've downloaded the drawings that we prepared, then if you'd like toe open up drawing number six, select any raise on that's going to mean that you can work along with me. Okay? And if you're ready, we're gonna try and select something on screen. So just take yourself into fresh air somewhere on click. Okay, Just click once with the mouse and drag out and click again, and you'll see that we end up selecting some stuff on screen on they get these little blue grips. Now that is a particular way of selecting. That's a pre select, and we're not going to do that quite yet. But I want you to know it exists on I want you to know how to get out of it. So if you end up pre selecting anything and getting these little blue grips or want you to press escape twice, Okay, Escape is your get out of jail free card. Andi. So escape is something that you need to be able to be doing, you know, any time anything goes wrong, but something messes up. Put the command line or you You're not sure what's happening or you get into a bit of a tangle, escape twice and start that bid over again. So blue grips are very useful, and we will be covering those blue grips. But pre selecting is not the way to start off. We want to issue the command first on, then we want to select objects. Okay, so this is the way we're going to do it. We're going toe issue. The rays command on the shortcut for that is e enter. Okay, that's pretty quick. Isn't e enter for a raise and then the command line says, Yeah, you could do that, but please go and select some objects. Now, this way we're selecting after issuing the command. Okay, so we're gonna do exactly the same as we did before. We're gonna find some fresh air. Click once, bring a mouse across and click. OK, Now those two clicks means that we've issued a special type of selection window are crossing window. That means that anything that green window crosses over it will select. And you can see that now there's no blue grips, but we have ah highlighted or grade out version of our drawing so that we know what we've selected. And in fact, you can continue using your selection method to build up a selection set. That's what Autocad calls it when you've selected a number of objects ready to do something with in this case, a raise. Okay, now there's lots of different ways of selecting eso. For instance, you can just click onto objects, onder so you can actually build up your selection set just by clicking. And there is a blue window. We've just seen what the green window looks like. And now we're gonna test out the blue window. I'm gonna go over to the left hand side of my drawing click and pull over towards the right on this time I get a blue window. Okay, so ah, blue window is different to a green window. Let me just show you the green window again. Okay. This green window means that it will select anything that it touches. But when I do a blue window, it will only select something that is entirely inside the blue window. Okay, so the blue window is called on in closing window and the green window is called a crossing window. So we got crossing window there but the blue window. If something doesn't completely fill up that blue window, then it's not going to select it. I would have to go down a little bit further. There we go. There's another item that's jumped in to our blue window because now it's completely inside the blue window, as opposed to partially inside. So that's brilliant. And when we've selected these various things and we're ready to press enter, okay, it raise will take away everything that you've selected. Now, don't worry, because we're going to use the undue command to get everything back. Okay, here's the undue command. Click on that once. That's the button up in the top left hand corner with the arrow going over to the left. And, of course, you know that we've got other undo commands as well. So the windows undo commanders, control said, and the keyboard command is you enter so U for undo, enter. Now we're just gonna go a little bit further with the selection. Okay, there are different ways of holding down your mouse button, so let's start with the arrays. Command again. E enter on this time, instead of clicking for our green window, that's the green window. Then you click. OK, we're going to drag now. That's a bit different, isn't it? So left buttonholed down drag and you get this last sue. Okay, so this time you can put a last sue around the objects that you want to pick up. So if you've got an awkward shape that you need to pick up, L. ASU's brilliant. You can get a last Sue in green and blue. And so if I go to the left hand side and pull to the right, you can see I can get alas, ooh, over here on the left hand side as well. So if I want a blue window, I pull over from left to right. If I want a green window, I pull over from right to left. Okay, good to see that. That needs a bit of practice to get your head round. So there's two types of window the square window that's click and click and the last suit, which is drag and drop. And, of course, depending on whether you go from right to left it, see the green or it's blue Okay, Have a little practice on that. And when you're ready, press enter. Okay? And that will activate the rays command. There you go. And again to come back. Okay. We're gonna do and undo this time. I'm gonna do a keyboard. Undo, which is you. Enter. So that's the auto cad you enter for Undo the rays. Okay. Now, one of the things that we often find is that we get into selecting stuff and then realize that we've accidentally selected something we really didn't mean to select. Okay, so I'm gonna issue the rays command, enter. I'm gonna put a big green crossing window over here I go are no rubbish. That's picked up all this stuff in the middle. I really didn't mean to select that. So we can issue a remove command. So whilst we're still in a raise weaken type in our enter, which puts us in to remove mode, and then I'm going to use a blue window just to go over the stuff in the middle of those circles, and I've removed them out of my erasing selection set. If I then wants Okay, Good. I've saved that. Now I'm gonna add some more stuff back into my selection set to erase. I can just type in a for ad. That's a enter and I can continue adding stuff to be erased. Okay? And so I could just work around the drawing, adding stuff, and it doesn't matter if I want to use a blue window or a green window toe ad. They just behave in that different way so you can see me in selecting all of that. Okay. And then when we're ready, we've got everything exactly as we want it enter and you re raise the staff around the center. Good, good. And then just do one under here, just come back so you can practice. Um, And once you've got the hang of how those windows work, that's going to help you enormously when you're drawing stuff inside. AutoCAD being able to tease out one or two little things with the blue window is fantastic . And ah, so I'm gonna do e enter and tease out some of that stuff. Okay? So if I'm really, really careful, what I can do is I can put a blue window around here, okay? And you'll notice that I'm overlapping some stuff with the green window, and it's selecting it. I don't want that. I want to be overlapping with the blue window. Look at that. You see, Andi, Although I'm going over the big circles, they're not going to get selected. I'm only selecting the stuff in the middle. Okay, Enter toe. Activate the rays command. So I suggest a few minutes just practicing that and getting used to it so that you're completely comfortable with the way in which selection works and when you're comfortable. Okay, Then we can move on to the next video. Okay, So join me in number seven when you're completely happy with selecting and erasing.
10. Setting Units: Hi there. Welcome to video number seven on this is all about units and setting up the units within the drawing so that you know exactly how the drawing is gonna get put together. So we're gonna type in the units command at keyboard, you in I T s units, and then press enter. I am. We get this dialog box now, this dialog box is going to tell us a lot about auto cad. We're going to first check the insertion scale here, right in the middle on make sure it's set to millimeters. But before we move away from that, I'm gonna open up this list so you can see what the choices are. And you can see that I'm highlighting inches at the moment. And then we got all of these options from millimeters centimeters meters on all the way down, and you can read all the way down to the amazing light years and things like that. So it's just incredible what you can draw in AutoCAD and the units that you can apply to your drawing. However, I'd like you toe have a look at what's immediately above inches and you'll notice that you can select unit Lis on this is going to tell us a lot about Water Cat. You see, AutoCAD is a database, and in order for AutoCAD to know how to draw the items on the screen, it's got to know how to interpret the numbers that you type in. So if you have to type in 500 or 200 or 600 it's got to know that you mean millimeters. Otherwise, it would have to assume that it was a unit list roaring. You could still draw it at 600 millimeters, but it wouldn't associate it with anything. It could be MILLIMETERS. Or it could be light years or anything in between. So we've got to make sure that we get that correct. Now, the other thing it tells us is that this particular selection that you're making here is only mentioned once in the whole database right at the beginning of the database. Okay, so if you've selected millimeters, it's basically saying all off the information that comes after this is in millimeters, okay? So that when the size of an object is selected and then recorded in the database, it doesn't say 450 millimeters. It says 450 because it's already made that statement. First of all, of the top, all of the following is millimeters. Okay, so that saves a lot of space in the database, so it doesn't have to continually repeat the the unit format that you're using. Um, so not only does it save ah space, but it also makes the whole experience faster because the size of the database is directly proportional to the speed the AutoCAD reads the database. So when you suddenly get a really big drawing, if you've just got it mentioned once at the top, you can fly through the dimensions. But if it was included with the dimensions away through centimeter to centimeter, centimeters, whatever or light years all the way through, of course, that's filling up the database and taking space up in your date in your database, which is unnecessary. So once we've selected our insertion scale, do not change it halfway through, because auto cad doesn't re scale your drawing. If you've drawn in millimeters and then you suddenly change this two centimeters, it just assumes that the whole drawing is in centimeters, so you might have drawn one millimeter, and then suddenly you change over and then that one becomes one centimeter. So that's obviously wrong. So don't do it, so you choose it and you stick to it on. My advice is that once you've chosen millimeters, for instance, field Waring's, then stick with millimeters for all of your drawings so that you can easily use some of the drawings that you will make us symbols and therefore the size of those drawings that you're going to be inserting into AutoCAD will still be a predictable size. Okay, the other thing that we need to do here is we need to look at the decimal precision. Okay, so in the top left hand corner here, it does say that we're using decimals. That's true. So we're using MILLIMETERS on the precision here. The default precision is set 24 decimal places. Now you might say, OK, you know, I'm an engineer. I will probably want four decimal places, or or maybe a few more for my precision. But if you're on a building site and your builder has got JCB on a shovel, you might think that four decimal places for a millimeter is just a little bit too much, and I would agree with that. But what I'm going to suggest is this. What you need to do is you need to decide on the precision that you want on, then add two decimal places to it on, then choose that. So, for instance, on a building site, I might say, 0/2 a millimeter is plenty enough. Okay, So if I said my piece of wood was 12.5 millimeters thick, Okay, that's a far as I need to go with my timber sizes, and I can say that I've got one dismal place. But for a building site here, I would argue that you need to change this to three decimal places Now. The reason for that is error checking. So let's just say you were drawing your piece of timber and you wanted it to be 12.5 millimeters, 12.5 OK, but during the drawing process, it accidentally ended up as being 12.36 Now, if you had it rounded up to precisely one decimal place, it would actually round that up to 12.4 and Ugo, that's 12.4. I need toe. Maybe tweet that a little bit. Okay? But if you've got it set to three decimal places, you will see precisely that it says 12.360 and therefore, your girl all I actually is nowhere near what I really meant. I'm gonna have to redraw. So you've got this way of having self era checking. And in fact, if you don't have any decimal places at all, if it rounds it up to the nearest millimetre, you can have all sorts of errors hiding underneath. Um, and you need to know about those while still drawing. So three decimal places is my favorite. And also for angles as well. Three decimal places because it's really get easy to get to 11.25 because that's half of 22.5. And, um, so my own preference is for three decimal places on both when I'm doing architectural or interior work just to help me see if there's any errors creeping in. Okay, so once you've got all of that set up, you can then say OK, so down here, we're gonna click, OK? And that's our units set up. Okay. Brilliant. So if you've got your drawing correctly set up, then that's great. Otherwise, just revisit that Units command on when you're ready. Joined me in video number eight where we're gonna learn how to draw some straight lines.
11. Drawing Lines: Okay, so welcome to video number 84 drawing lines. And this is obviously a key issue as far as what cats concerned. So if you'd like to open up your drawing number eight feet below eight draw line so you can draw along with me and let's let's do this together. So what we need to do is issue the line command. It's very easy. Type the command in press enter. So l i n e and, uh, and the command line at the bottom response That's his water card saying Okay, what's next? So, lion, specify first point. So here we are. We're gonna go and specify some new points along here. Just come clicking along here to draw some lines. Okay? It's very easy. It's not difficult to or you just click and click. So you couldn't do that. But look, what happens as you draw a line, Okay? Go horizontally and you see you get this green line that comes out here. This is polar tracking. This is polar tracking, saying, Oh, I can see what you're doing. We're going horizontal. Okay? And then if we come south, you get another green line at 270 degrees south on if you come across here to the west. Yeah, water cad can see what you're doing and tries to anticipate. Now, of course, it doesn't matter if you go diagonally. You just need the dent, the length and the direction. Oh, angle. And, um but if we come back here horizontally, immediately order. Cad sees that polar tracking. Now, if you're not getting this green polar tracking popping up, let's have a look in the bottom right hand corner of these buttons down here. Okay? There's a whole series of buttons. Don't click on them randomly, but we're gonna have a look at this button here. This button is polar tracking. Okay, It looks like a clock set to 10 past three Onda. It should be blue, and it's on. If you click on it in its grey, that's off. But we wanted to be on. And when it's on, it sends out this green line which dictates, um, whether we're horizontal or vertical on the course. That's a great thing to make sure that we've got this digital set square working on our behalf. Okay, Now press enter, and that finishes the line command off. But of course, we want to be in more control than that. So we're going to do a quick undo, so that's controlled said. And we're gonna come back and we're gonna draw another set of lines. We're gonna try and draw this rectangle on the side here, So Okay, this 800 by 600 rectangle, and we're gonna do that by issuing the line command and starting over here for the bottom left hand corner. And we're gonna go horizontally, first of all. Okay, we're snapped on two Polar tracking at zero degrees. We're gonna just type in the lengths that we need Here is 800. Enter and then we're gonna come north, and we're going to do that again. But 600 this time, so make sure you got the green line sticking out and type in 600 Enter. Okay, We're on the third side now, so come back west again. Look for the green line. Okay? If you can see the green line, that's polar tracking. Giving you a digital set square. So 800 and toe, and then we're gonna come back. We're going to finish this off now. There's three ways of finishing this off. The first way is just to do 600 with polar tracking. The second way is to snap using endpoint. But the third way is just a type in close. So the autocad closes the loop. So C is your short cart. See? Enter closes the rectangle off for you. Okay, so now that we've done that, let's have another go at this diamond. If you need to practice that rectangle a bit more, just pause the video and repeat the little exercise. And then we're gonna have a girl this diamond so you can see this diamond is drawn at 45 degrees on the sides of the diamond measure 600 millimeters. So we're gonna follow that lead. Here we go. Line command. The short cart for line is l. L enter gets you straight in on the line command and we're going to click on drag roughly in the direction that we want to go for the first side. We're gonna type in 600 tab 45 enter, so that tab moves across to the number of degrees. Let's go for side too side to here we are. And bring your mouse over. So you've got a rough indication for AutoCAD to know what you're intending, and we're gonna type in 600 tab 135 Enter. I'm so the said aside because we're below the horizontal, we come type in exactly the same thing. So 600 tap 135 on. Then we're gonna come back. We've got the same three choices. We can either type in 600 tab 45 or we can use the endpoint to close or weaken. Do see. Enter on that closes the diamond off forests. Okay. And then we're gonna have a go at this other diamond. This second diamond is slightly different. The sides are still 600 but the angle is 60 degrees. So this is just going to get your brain's working a little bit harder in order to work out the angles involved. Okay, so we'll start the line command l enter. We're gonna click down here for the first point and move our mouse in the right direction. 600 tab 60. Enter. Bring your mouse up for side, too. And we're gonna type in 600 tab form 20 and then down with exactly the same command because we're underneath the horizontal 600 tab 1 20 and then again weaken clothes off in any of our three chosen methods. So I'm just going to use endpoint snap here and in time. So that's our introduction to the line command. And of course, you'll find out later that there's obviously more things that you can do with the line command. But that's the basic essence off it. Okay, you've got to make sure that you know the direction that you're going in and you issue the length. And if you need to add an angle, you tab across to the angle command. Okay, So have another go at practicing that because once you practiced enough, it becomes part of your kinetic memory on that helps you. Overall, with your learning of auto cad, the more you can do it without having to think the quicker and the better you're gonna be OK. Remember the last thing the short cut key for line is l. That's all you need to type in at the keyboard
12. Snapping: Well, here we are in video number. Line on this is all about snap settings. So in order, cad, you're allowed to snap onto elements within your drawing. And they were going to investigate that. We're gonna go beyond just the defaults, and, uh, we're gonna open up drawing number nine. So if you have a look for your drawing number VW nine, snap settings, VW nine snap settings. Get that open and it should look like this, and we're gonna have a little go at testing out. Let's snap settings So the default settings are pretty basic. We're gonna have a girl finding those down here on the right hand side. You'll see that we've got a number of buttons on highlighting the snap settings. Here. It's a square box with a little dot in the corner. You can turn them on and off by clicking on them. Blue is on, and you can right click. This little list shows you what's already currently available and turned on. And at the bottom objects snap settings gives you a dialog box that allows you to have a little look at the details. Okay, so let's have a look of these details. We've got two columns of settings, some of which detect and some of which are not. Now your first instinct might be, well, let's have them all ticked. But I can tell you now that's not a good idea. That would be too messy. What we need to do, really is we need to have the ones that we need most of the time ticked on those ones that are too powerful. We have UnTech. So let me give you an example on the left hand side, Let's go down what's available endpoint. And that's the end point off any line or the end point of an arc or a poly line. Okay, so you can find endpoints and all sorts of things. Mid points, same sort of thing. You can find a midpoint in a line or an ark or a region and a spine, all sorts of things. Okay, you can find a midpoint online, and then we've got center now centers, not the same as midpoint, because the center is the center of the circle or the center of the ark, and below that we have geometric center. So we've got a geometric center that you can apply to things like rectangles that don't have a proper center. A radi ist center. A node is a point in space on this is a point the water cad makes toe hold a position on X Y said position in space. We've got a node up here now. Quadrant is quite an interesting one, because that will allow you to select Ah, position on a circle or on arc on. That would be 12 o'clock three o'clock, six o'clock or nine oclock and then below that we have an intersection, a position where any one object into sex with the mother. So we've got some intersections here and here and here. Okay. And where two arcs cross over each other, it could be in our Coraline or align anarchist matter. Any two objects crossing over each other will give you an intersection. And then on the right hand side, we have a special snapped. This is quite an interesting one. Will practice that later. This called extension. It's a bit like a delayed or an offset position. So we're gonna have a look at that together. Insertion point. This is for text or blocks or attributes. They all have insertion points, then we've got perpendicular to. So if you want to draw a line which is perpendicular to another, you can use the perpendicular. You know, that's probably you probably realize that's 90 degrees to the object. Tangent is for linking a straight line onto a curve or a curve onto a curve to make it 10 gentle. Nearest is the most powerful of all on. It's too powerful, almost because it's any point near to your cursor any point on object near to your cursor, so it tends to override any of the other settings. The apparent intersection. So that is a perceived in section in three D. So it's not for two dimensional work is for the reader three dimensional work. And from the point of view of the screen at the time that you're doing the apparent intersection, it's where two lines cross over each other on the last one is quite easy. It's parallel. Okay, so parallel. Obviously, it's like railway lines. Okay, now we've got to choose what we're gonna turn on on what we lay. What we leave turned off on what I want you to do is have a look. It down the left hand side first fall. And as we look down the left hand side weaken, Turn on most of these on DA. We're gonna turn all but node. You don't have to have no turned on because no doesn't use that often. Andi note is found at the end of things like dimension lines on. Unless you're specifically putting nodes in, you're not gonna need a node. Now you'll notice I've no ticked any of thes on the right hand side except for extension on . The reason for that is that they can actually get in the way wall stored roaring. So, for instance, nearest is so powerful that you will get nearest before you get anything else. So it's sort of tends to override endpoint in mid point because the nearest point OK is gonna be the point nearest to the object you're pointing out. And, ah, the other items like, for instance, tension and perpendicular can also jump up when you're expecting to find things like endpoints and midpoint. So it's a little bit difficult toe. Have those turned on as well as everything else. So it's a great idea toe only call up the ones on the right hand side when you need them and you can call those up with their 1st 3 letters. For instance, P er gives you perpendicular tiene gives you 10. Jim, Any a gives you nearest onda. That's actually brilliant, because when you call up those particular shortcuts, what you're gonna find is you only get the one that you've called up. You don't get any of the others. So if you look at your drawing, you think I must get that whatever it might be that say it's a node and you want to call it up and O. D the only thing you get is a node. And even if you've got something ticks like center of circle, you can choose to type in CE n toe force auto cad toe only. Look for a center of a circle and in a busy drawing, of course, that makes the whole thing a lot easier. So let's just check out tick boxes, make sure there as we have here on, then we can say, OK, when we can start using, uh, our snaps by drawing some lines. Okay, We're gonna have a girl, a line command with all of these snaps turned on. So if we start the line tool L I N e at the keyboard percenter and we hover over one of these circles as you hover over this a conference, you'll see that we get a little cross in the middle that shows us where the center of that circle is, and then we can hop over to the next circle and you'll see another little cross that shows you where the center of that circle is. So we do center to center. But now we're gonna go for some endpoints. Okay, here we are. We've got endpoints here. That's a little green square that you can see when you find the endpoint using Just wonder from endpoints endpoint Connecting together. Now here, you'll see that didn't quite work. So we'll just do you enter, make sure we're gonna haul the right over the end point. I mean, click. So now we're gonna go for into section now. In fact, if we go over here, you'll find that not only do we have an intersection, but we also have a midpoint at the same place. So, in fact, midpoint shows up first here. So we can click on that. We can come across and we're gonna find another intersection is to ox the insect. So we're gonna click on that. You'll see that the intersection is a green cross up here. We've got both an end point and a quadrant. Now the endpoint shows up before the quadrant. OK, but over here, we've only got a quadrant. Can you see? It's a green diamond So we're gonna click on the green diamond But you can come back in section and then we can come back over here toe into section Now we've also got the geometric center off a rectangle that you can see here We've got a rectangle And we got a star in the center for geometric Center where you can click on that Then let's see if we can get a tangent to this circle Okay, Now we want a force A tangent with ta en in tow tiene enter. There we go. We found the tangent critical mass that you can see. The tangent is not quite at the same place as a quadrant. Okay, on the circle, that's just a little bit out from there. So this shows us that our snaps are working. Well, we can go for a midpoint here on this line on a midpoint here. Okay, so let's have a little think as you're going around, let's see if we can get ourselves a perpendicular to Okay. Now, if we start to go perpendicular to this line, we only get intersection. But if we try perpendicular to that one, we're gonna need to force perpendicular, which is P e. R. In tow. And then, as we go for particularly in, see that little green right angle triangle. Then we go and click onto that. So have a little one around, See if you can find any other little snaps you want to snap onto. So here we are. We got a node in o D enter and it will pick up the node. Let's pick this one up over here as well. So you can see and a d enter we go is your node, and you've got plenty of opportunity to pick up all sorts of different snaps on this busy drawing. So I give it a little play and then see what you can do. Okay. Now, while still drawing most of the time the snaps will be a good thing. Onda. We can start drawing and pick up, let's say, a quadrant. But there are times when, for instance, you're trying to draw Ah, horizontal line. You're relying on polar snapping off polar tracking that you don't want any accidental overrides from any snapping. So whilst you're doing that, you compress F three F three temporarily terms off your snap mode. You can see we're not snapping on toe anything now when we can just draw our ordinary straight line. And then if we want to come back to snapping with press F three again on that terms, they're snapping back on. You can see now that we're getting snapping, okay, popping up there so F three is an invisible command. In other words, you can do it whilst you're in the middle of something else. So f three and you'll see on the command line. It says Snap off and then f three. It's a snap on, so that's enormous little toggle that you could do in the middle of drawing lines or circles or squares or what have you want to do? Okay, give that a go. Have a bit of fun
13. Drawing Rectangles: So you may have guessed from the name off this section rectangle that that's the auto cad Command, which we're going to be using to create a rectangle So we'll do some practice. Freehand rectangles, first of all. Okay, we're gonna type in the short cut R E C on the you'll see on screen. We've got our e c brackets rectangle so you can see the shortcut on Did you can see the whole command press? Enter Andi literally by clicking in the bottom left hand corner on, then the top, right and corner opposite corners. You can draw a free hand rectangle. If you press enter, you can repeat the command. And that's true for any command. So enter will repeat the last command you did. So we can then do opposite corner tow opposite corner in tow, opposite corner tow opposite corner. Okay, so it's pretty easy drawing freehand rectangles on. You can practice that as much as you like, and then we're gonna do some undoes. So I'm using controls. Ed controls their control, said, and now we're going to draw some rectangles with a bit of control. We're gonna draw the 1st 1 okay. On the left hand side. So, Ari, see, Enter is your speed key. We're gonna go for here to draw the rectangle, and we're gonna type in the two dimensions the 601st coma and then the 1200. So 600 comma 1200 enter. Whenever you finish typing, you must press enter because otherwise, autocrat doesn't know that you finish typing. Andi, if you're doing horizontal dimensions, okay, you do the horizontal first, followed by the vertical because it's the X axis first, which is left to right, followed by the Y axis, which is up and down. Okay, so that's a pretty straightforward, easy rectangle to draw. So we're gonna try the 2nd 1 Okay. Different dimensions bar. You follow the same rule you always do. The horizontal dimension first, followed by the vertical dimension, so exacts its first, followed by y axis. So let's try that again, Ari. See, enter. Click for the bottom left hand corner. Moved the mouse so you can see roughly what you're gonna get 1000 comma. 600. Enter now. I made a typing mistake there, so I didn't get the full 600 did I? So s o. I didn't get the full 1000. I'm gonna do a control, said Ari. See, I'm gonna try again. Click May've 1000 comma 600. So that's a common mistake, really, That I've just made there. When you're typing in a number of zeros, just check the number of zeros that you've used because you get a little bit but of bounce on the keyboard and you think you've typed in three and you might only have two or you might have four. Now, course, if you are making errors, you want to self era check. So I'm gonna show you how to check the size of your rectangle after you've drawn it. If you just click onto the rectangle and you hover over the top left hand corner, you'll see the AutoCAD reports back to you the size of the rectangle you've drawn on. There we go. That's fantastic. To get rid of those blue grips, move your mouse away, press escape twice and we're back into drawing. Okay, lets try the thin the long thing rectangle at the bottom. Gay that 1600 by 66. And remember, the same rules apply. The 1600 comes first and the 66 comes after a coma, So we'll type in the short cut Ari, see enter, click for the left hand, bottom corner and pull away. We're gonna type in 1600 comma 66 enter. And there we are. We've got the rectangle that we wanted. Okay, Last little exercise. Here we go. This is a portrait arrangement as opposed to a landscape, but the same rules apply. Ari. Si. Click pull away. 401st coma. 1400 inte. Okay, It's pretty straightforward is now. Now, you can also draw rectangles that go down as opposed toe up. But when you have the dimension in the Y axis going down, it must be a minus different dimension. So we're gonna hook the next rectangle onto the top right hand corner of the rectangle that we've just drawn using endpoint snap. So here we go, Ari. See? Enter. Find your end point. Snap and click on it. Pull down in the direction. You're expecting this to go on. We're gonna have a rectangle which is 600 by minus 600. Okay, so 601st coma minus 600. Enter. Okay. So you can see this square because it's 600 by 600 goes down from the point that you clicked as opposed to up from the point that you clicked on. So it's a minus y Okay, so of course, you could also do minus X and minus y if you wanted to. So let's try that. We're gonna do 600 by 600 again. So, Ari, see? Enter and we're gonna come over into this corner, click and pull down in direction. You're expecting minus 600 comma minus 600. Enter. And you could see the direction now of the rectangle relative to the point that you clicked . Okay, that's great. So we've got a nisi way of drawing rectangles. We've got a protocol which means X axis first, followed by the Y axis. We can decide whether the rectangle is going up or down by which of the two dimensions we decide are gonna be minus, and they can both be minus. The other thing we can do is self error checking so we can select the rectangle hover on the corner, and AutoCAD declares the size. So that's good on the last thing that you need to know is that once you've golden rectangle , you can hover onto the corner of a rectangle and order. Cad will tell you what it is, and this one is made with a poly line. All rectangles are made with poly lines. And if you hover, you can see that might well, hovering right on the edge. And this means that the whole rectangle is one object. So that makes it very sensible. Easy to use, easy to copy, easy to move. And, uh so we're to expect the all rectangles as they're constructed our poly lines. Now, we haven't done much with poly lines, but we're going to in some of the future videos so we can cover that detail. Have a little girl drawing some more rectangles. If you like. On once you've got the hang of it, we can move on to the next stage. That training
14. Drawing Circles: So here we are in video number 11 and this is all about circles. So you might want toe open your drawing V 11 circle. Okay, let's get that open, and you can follow me. Good. So what you'll notice is we've got some examples at the bottom, and we've got some squares at the top of some rectangles atop toe. Help us with drawing circles every time we add. Ah, detail into our drawing were making it relative to other things in the drawing. So we're using some rectangles to help us make the circles relative. Okay. And, ah, we're going to be drawing a simple circle first. Okay, on the left hand side, we're going to use the command, which you can guess from the title off. This video is circle, so type in C i r c l e enter. And we're going to use the center of the cross here on the left hand side. So find there's a endpoint in the middle, click and then pull out for your radius. Now, you could make this circle any size you like. Really? But if you have a look at the example underneath, we've got 475 is our radius, and all you've got to do is type that number in 475 Enter. And there we are. We've got a circle That's the same radius is the example below. Okay, circles pretty easy on me. But there's a number of different types of circle that you can draw. Okay, They're all circles, but you can construct them in different ways. So if you look at the title at the top here, we've got a two p a three p and a TT. Are these Airil different methods for constructing and we can have a look at those different methods by starting the circle command. Your short cut for circle is see, So that's a nice, easy shortcut to remember and then have a look at the bottom here where we've got the command line. Okay, you may have your command line somewhere else because you're allowed to move it around the drawing, but at the bottom of the drawing here it says circle specifies CenterPoint, which is the 1st 1 we did or three p two p. T tr. Okay, so a three point circle is one that where the circumference is defined by three points. A two point circle again is very similar to a three point circle. But because it's two points, it must be the diameter on. Then the last one is T tr, which, as you can see, is tangent, tangent radius. And that's a nice special circle. And we'll have a look at how to draw that. So the first circle we're gonna attempt is called two P. So that's two points on. We're going to use the midpoint on the top of the rectangle and the mid point at the bottom of the rectangle to define the diameter off our circle. Okay, so here we go. We're going to choose to pee. I'm gonna type that in to pee enter. We're going to go for the top middle point on a rectangle click and then the bottom middle point on a rectangle, and you can see we've got a circle. It's designed to fit that rectangle. The diameter is 600. Therefore, the radius is 300. Okay, so now we're going to do a different circle using a similar size rectangle. This time it's gonna be the three point circle. So we issue the command in the same way that see enter. But then we follow up with three p enter. So the AutoCAD knows our choice. And we can choose any three corners on this rectangle to define the circle that fits precisely to that rectangle. So you're doing an endpoint snap on each corner just to make sure it fits perfectly good. So that's a two piece circle, a three piece circle. And now we're gonna do a T t r. So this is easy again. See for circle enter. Then type in T T t o. And we're gonna pick up the tangent on the left hand side, off a rectangle kick on that and then the tangent at the bottom on the bottom of that rectangle. Click on that. Okay. And then it says on the command line, what's the radius? And we're gonna answer 300. Okay, so it's worked out where the circle would fit onto the two lines that you clicked. Now, we could do that in a slightly different way. OK? By changing which two lines we choose, the circle will move. So let's try that as well. Okay. We're gonna do it again. See enter t enter, click on the top and click on the right hand side on. Then type in 300 and you can see the circles moved. Now we're gonna have a little bit of extra fund because if I tell you that water cad remembers the radius of the circle that you've just drawn right, we can use T tr in one of the other rectangles that we've got here. And instead of having to type in the 300 when we get to the radius bit or we've got to do is press the enter button. So let's give this one a go see enter T enter on this rectangle. We're going to click on the bottom and on the right hand side and then just press enter. So remembers that the circle radius was 300 and it draws a circle to fit the parameters that you've defined. Okay, so that's the end of our little session on circles. Onda, we're going to move on in the next video on, have a look of arcs. So see in the next video
15. Drawing Arcs: Well, welcome back to video number 12. This is about arcs. And so if you want toe, grab the drawing that we need. Okay, you'll find that it's a V 12 drawing number V 12 arc. Get that open and you can draw along with May, and we can find out how it really works. The Ark Command. As you can see, a r c, we can just type in here i r c enter and weaken stopped by clicking any way you like on three clicks produces on arc. Of course, we need to be a bit more in control of that. So I'm going to do an undue using controls ed on on the left hand side. I'm gonna copy this arc we've got on the lower left hand corner and we're going to use this rectangle that we've got to help us control the position of the Ark. As you could see at the top here it says three p and that's the default setting. Three points on the Ark controls where the art goes. We're gonna try that with a shortcut. The shortcut for Arc is a so that's a enter and we'll start here on the left hand side. Click up to the top, find the endpoint click and then come down here. Okay, Find the endpoint. Okay. Brilliant. And that's created a three point arc. And if you want to check your work, you could hover all of that. And it says, Arc, you can click on it and then hover on one of those points there and you'll see that we've got of 475 millimeter radius. Okay, just check on that. You get 475. His brilliant escape escape. Okay, the second dark we're going to do is called center start end on. This is the construction methods. So here we are sent to start in. So we're gonna draw the ark in relationship to this rectangle here, and we're gonna issue the short cut A for arc. Okay, that's a enter and then on the command line, have a look in brackets is says one of the alternatives is center. Now, that's what we want. So we type in c enter, go for the mid point on the left hand side here, look for the green triangle and click on it. Come down to the bottom left hand corner. Okay, click on that. And as you start to draw, can you see the ark is developing as you move your mouse over the to the top left hand corner. Click on that and we've created the next arc. So as this construction method says, you can see it's his center. Start end. That's what we chose. Okay. To remind you of the way in which we got there was a for arc. Enter. See for center. Enter. Click for the midpoint. Click for the start. Click the end. Now that was pretty straight forwards. But what I want to point out was something else. When you constructed the Ark as you constructed it from start to end, the drawing of the Ark was anti clockwise. Yeah, Antico eyes. Now that's because auto cad decides to draw the Ark anti clockwise first. That's its default way of drawing. Now, if we wanted to switch that around, we couldn't do that. Okay, so let's have a go. Let's repeat the same command. I enter, See? Enter. We're gonna do it on this side of the rectangle. We're gonna click the midpoint. Okay? We're going to go down here to the start point. But of course, we want the direction to go in the opposite direction, so I'm gonna hold down the control. But this means that I then start to draw my arc clockwise, Click on the end point, and then I can let go of the control. Okay, so now we've got a method of drawing arcs in either direction. The default is anti clockwise, but control allows us to draw clockwise. So let's move across to the third method. The third method, as you can see here, is center start angle. And in this case, we're going to use the angle of 56 degrees basically, because it's quite random. Okay. Okay, here we go. We're gonna do this together. You ready? Yeah. Good. A enter for arc, see? Enter to start with our CenterPoint, click in the bottom left hand corner. That's our center point for the ark. Okay, then here we're going to choose. The midpoint of this line is our starting point. And as we come up, you can see the line is getting drawn anti clockwise. But all we've got to type in now is the angle. So that's 56 degrees.
Ozgur Gorgun, Adobe & Maxon Certified Instructor
