Dear followers, welcome to this short tutorial! We are going to see all
the main 2D features inside Autodesk AutoCAD 2020!
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Any 2D projects in AutoCAD is made by several objects such as Arcs,
Circles, Line segments and Polylines, drawn as curves, polygons or custom
closed shapes. All these can be modified by using all the tools inside the
Modify section, under the Home tab.
To start editing you can enable any tool, select all the interested
objects and use the Enter key. You can also make your selections first
and then enable the tool right after. As other tools inside AutoCAD, you
can use the Escape key to undo anything in progress.
Use Move, Scale and Rotate to move, size and rotate the objects selected.
Enable Stretch to stretch any element from any of its vertices and sides
selected with the Lasso Selection Tools.
Other tools allow to make copies of selected objects, like the Copy tool
for simple copies, the Offset tool to keep a constant distance from the
selected object and the Mirror Tool to mirror from a defined axis. You
can also use the Array Tool to make full arrays with a Rectangular shape,
around 360° degrees with Polar Array and among a Path defined by a
selected curve. Then drag from the blue nodes and arrows to adjust the
array, such as its number of copies and their relative distance.
Enable the Trim and the Extend tool to cut or extend parts of objects that
that meet the borders of others selected.
Use the Fillet and the Chamfer tools to create curved and sharp vertices
by intersecting the two selected sides.
AutoCAD also includes the Hatch tools, which apply filling to any 2D
closed shape.
With Hatch enabled, click within any closed shape to create a filling
on it. You can go on dropping others sharing the same properties or create
independent fillings by exiting from the Hatch tool every time you create
one.
The filling created is also associated to its boundaries, so it gets
updated every time this is modified. You can also make the filling
independent by moving it out from its boundaries.
To manage any filling, select it and use the Hatch Editor tab above. Apply
any solid color, any gradient or pattern, adjusting style on the Pattern
section and other options such as color, pattern size and transparency
inside Properties.
AutoCAD also includes several tools to add 2D text and measurements inside
the Annotate tab.
From the extreme left you can drop two different kinds of text: Multiline
Text and Single Line text. Multiline text is used to drop complete and
long text paragraphs. Just create the basic text area, which delimits
the region where text can spread and distribute from the top to the
bottom. Then type inside and use the Text Editor to adjust the text style
and properties, including color and background.
To apply text, just click outside. This becomes an independent object that
you can move and manage as other 2D objects. You can double-click on it to
open it and edit its content again.
To drop simple annotations you can use the Single Line text. Click on any
point, set the text height and inclination and then type in. You can add
annotations continuously by fixing several points, finishing with the
Escape key.
Inside the Dimensions section, set what to measure between sides,
angles or any object radius. Then enable the Dimension tool and define
the measurements directly on the objects interested. As seen for the text,
these annotations can be moved and edited freely as standard 2D objects.
By default the measurement units are decimal for the length and degrees
for the angles, but you can adjust these by going to Manage Dimension
Styles...
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