Hello people, welcome! Let's see quickly how to use Autodesk AutoCAD 2015,
in a few and easy steps!
Leave comments, in case you find mistakes in our English.
AutoCAD is one of the best softwares used for virtual design. We will see
just the main important things you need to start with.
New in this version is the start up. On the left you can open templates and
projects. Click on Start Drawing to start a new project. On the centre all
your previous projects are listed, described through a thumbnail on the
workspace. Just click on it to open it.
Now, just open a new project to start.
Let's see the workspace. It is composed by three main parts. On top you
have the full list of actions and commands that this software can do, from
drawing to rendering and exporting. If these occupy a lot of space, click
on the icon on the extreme right to minimize.
Then, on the centre, you have your main workspace, where you actually draw
your objects. At the bottom, you have the command line and some quick
options to change the way to manage the software behavior. We will see
it shortly.
Let's start drawing. On top, choose the Home section, where you have
anything you need to draw and edit objects. On the left, click on one
between Line, Polyline, Circle or Arc. The way to draw each object may vary
a lot, but if you hover the buttons for a short time, a graphic explanation
appears, helping you at how that particular object is drawn. Just follow
the green numbered steps shown.
The white arrow below an object's button shows you all the other different
ways to draw it. Hover your mouse on one of these ways to see how it works.
Plus, you can draw Polygons using the first button on the right, or
Ellipses using the second one. Try them!
Let's see how to draw an Arc using the Start, Centre, Angle approach. The
figure shows that you have to fix two points, and then an angle in phase
three. A point is made when you click on your workspace. So define two
points, and then the angle by moving your pointer. A preview is shown,
making you see the arc your are going to create. When you finish the angle,
so the phase three, the arc is made.
Any object requires points, angles or distances to be drawn correctly.
Follow the graphic suggestions, when you are just starting with AutoCAD.
Now you can understand the most important buttons in the bottom right
corner. From MODEL, the first button shows or hides the workspace grid. The
second one enables or not the grid snapping. If snapping is on, the mouse
will snap to a grid point if you approach it.
The third button makes you draw just horizontally or vertically, respect to
the X and the Y axis, indicated in your workspace.
Another important button is the square one, the Object Snap. This rules the
snappings on objects' points. Disable it, if you want to draw freely.
AutoCAD has many ways to help you at drawing. Green squares appear, when
you are going to snap to an endpoint. Green circles for central points.
Crosses for intersepting objects, and green dashed lines for the main
directions, the vertical and the horizontal one. Plus angles and lengths
are shown in grey.
Many of these points appear if you have Object Snap on. You can choose
which key points consider clicking next to the Object Snap icon.
Once you finish at drawing an object, you may need to click again on its
button to draw another one. However, it is enough to press Enter from your
keyboard to enable the tool again. Then, while you draw, you can simply
press Escape key to undo the drawing process.
If you drew objects wrongly, you can delete them fast. Just click on them
and press CTRL+X to cut them.
So you can use CTRL+C and CTRL+V to copy and paste objects fast, in this
way. When you paste, a preview is shown to make you see where you are
placing the object.
When no drawing tool is active, you are in the Selection mode. Your cross
pointer is not used to draw objects, but to select and manage the existing
ones. For example, if you hover an object, this will be highlighted, and a
white dialog box will appear, indicating you the kind of object and the
layer it belongs to. Layers are very important to to manage and organize
projects better with a lot of objects inside.
If you are interested in what are, and how to use layers, watch the related
video in this guide.
Click on an object to select it. This will be shown in blue color. If you
go to Properties on the right, you can choose color, thickness, kind of
line and transparency, but just to the object currently selected. If you
have more objects selected, these will be applied on all of them. To select
more objects, just click on them on and on.
You can remove objects from your overall selection clicking on them while
holding Shift down. In this case a small minus sign appears next to your
pointer. Otherwise you can click and hold your pointer to create a
personalized selection area: any object that touches it will be straight
selected. As always, press Escape key to undo all selections.
You can move and edit objects fast while they are selected. When you
select a Line, a Circle or an Arc, you can click on the central point to
move the object, without changing anything of its lengths. The other blue
squared nodes are used to edit the object instead. Just click on them, and
watch the preview to adjust all properly.
If you hover these blue nodes, lengths are shown, and plus a a white dialog
box may appear. Stretch lets you distort the object as you like, while
Lengthen increases the length without changing anything else, like angles
or scale ratio.
In case of Polyline or Polygon objects things are a little different. In
this case all the blue nodes are used to edit the object, including the
ones that lay on the sides, for example to convert them to curves, through
Convert to Arc. In short, there aren't points to move them directly. To
move them, search for the Modify section above, and click on Move,
the icon with the four arrows. If you already selected the object, simply
click on your workspace and move.
But if you don't have any object selected, your mouse will turn to a small
square, to make you select the objects to be moved first. You can choose
one or more of them, just as seen before. When you are done, just press
Enter key, and you are ready to go on with the move tool.
The other tools in Modify section work in the same exact way. So you can
rotate, scale, stretch or trim what you have selected in your workspace.
Objects selected together will be modified in the same way, all at once.
Whenever you draw or edit objects, the command line helps you at being
precise. This is located at the bottom of your workspace, and also appears
close to your pointer while you work, with a list of suboptions.
For example, if you draw a Polyline, the dialog box lets you change how to
draw it. You can draw it first as a polygon and then edit it to give curves.
Otherwise you can use the dialog box to insert curves from the start, while
you draw. To use the dialog box, simply use the up and down arrow keys in
your keyboard, and choose in the list with Enter.
Plus, next to the dialog box, you have another one, where you can type
inside the exact lengths you want with your keyboard. Always press Enter
to apply. The measurement units used are decimal by default. You can change
them clicking on the last icon at the bottom and going to Units. A new
section appears, where you can change the unit system: decimal,
polar and so on.
The command line can do any action. For example if you press the R letter,
all the commands that start with an R as a name will be shown. So if you
choose ROTATE with your arrow keys and press Enter, you will activate the
Rotate tool. If you type SCALE you will activate the scale tool, and so on.
Browse with the arrow keys and apply with Enter key.
If you use your Up Arrow key, AutoCAD will show you the latest commands
just done. To undo or redo actions, use the arrows in the top left corner.
Once your project is done, check it. Use your mouse wheel to zoom in and
out. This can be useful to draw more carefully, too.
To move through your project, click on the Pan tool on the right, indicated
by a hand. Then just click and drag on your workspace. Use Escape to exit.
Even more, you can use the 3D ViewCube in the top right corner of your
workspace. As long as you work in 2D, just the face TOP is needed. This
means to see your project from up to down. In this case you can rotate your
project using the hidden arrows on the right, or dragging the circle around
the TOP face. But the workspace grid is the cube on the centre, and this
one follows the carthesian axes fixed. These can be edited as a normal
object. If rotated, the whole grid will be rotated, but not your project,
and the cube is shown rotated respect to the main poles. It is a good rule
to keep the carthesian axes as they are.
Remember to save your project going to Save As.. through the AutoCAD icon.
We will see how to save and export properly in a following video. AutoCAD
projects are saved as .dwg, and can be opened anytime later, to edit your
project again.
Thanks for watching! Follow this guide to start creating 2D and 3D
professional projects with AutoCAD 2015!