Creating Your First Drawing

Creating Your First Drawing
This chapter examines some of AutoCAD’s basic functions. You’ll get a chance to practice with the
drawing editor by building a simple drawing to use in later exercises. You’ll learn how to give input
to AutoCAD, interpret prompts, and get help when you need it. This chapter also covers the use
of coordinate systems to give AutoCAD exact measurements for objects. You’ll see how to select
objects you’ve drawn and how to specify base points for moving and copying.
If you’re not a beginning AutoCAD user, you may want to move on to the more complex
material in Chapter 3. You can use the files supplied on the companion website to continue the
tutorials at that point.
Topics in this chapter include the following:
◆
Getting to Know the 2D Draw Control Panel
◆
Starting Your First Drawing
◆
Specifying Distances with Coordinates
◆
Interpreting the Cursor Modes and Understanding Prompts
◆
Selecting Objects and Editing with Grips
◆
Using Dynamic Input
◆
Getting Help
◆
Displaying Data in a Text Window
◆
Displaying the Properties of an Object

Getting to Know the 2D Draw Control Panel

Your first task in learning how to draw in AutoCAD is simply to draw a line. But before you begin
drawing, take a moment to familiarize yourself with the feature you’ll be using more than any other
to create objects with AutoCAD: the 2D Draw control panel. Try these steps:
1.
Start AutoCAD just as you did in Chapter 1, by choosing Start 
All Programs 
Autodesk 
AutoCAD 2008 
AutoCAD 2008. If you see the Workspace dialog box, select 2D Drafting &
Annotation, and click OK. If you see the Startup dialog box, click Cancel to go directly to the
default
Drawing1
document. If the default
Drawing1.dwg
file shows a gray 3D workspace,
choose File 
New, select
acad.dwt
from the Select Template dialog box, and click Open.

2.
Make sure the Workspace toolbar shows 2D Drafting & Annotation. If it doesn’t, click the
Workspace toolbar, and select 2D Drafting & Annotation.


3.
Close any open palettes except the Dashboard.
4.
In the AutoCAD window, move the arrow cursor to the Line tool in the 2D Draw control
panel, which is near the top of the Dashboard at the far right of the AutoCAD window, and
rest it there so that the ToolTip appears.



5.
Slowly move the arrow cursor to the right over the other tools in the 2D Draw control panel,
and read each ToolTip.
In most cases, you’ll be able to guess what each tool does by looking at its icon. The icon with
an arc, for instance, indicates that the tool draws arcs; the one with the ellipse shows that the
tool draws ellipses; and so on. For further clarification, the ToolTip gives you the name of
the tool.
You see two rows of tools in the 2D Draw control panel. The top row includes the Draw tools;
they correspond to the Draw menu. The lower row contains the Modify tools, which offer many
of the same tools from the Modify menu. In Chapter 1, you saw that if you click and hold the
downward-pointing arrow to the far right of the rows of tools, the row expands to offer additional
tools (see Figure 2.1).