Setting Up and Using AutoCAD’s

Setting Up and Using AutoCAD’s
Drafting Tools
Chapters 1 and 2 covered the basic information you need to understand the workings of
AutoCAD. Now, you’ll put this knowledge to work. In this architectural tutorial, which begins
here and continues through Chapter 15, you’ll draw an apartment building composed of studios.
The tutorial illustrates how to use AutoCAD commands and gives you a solid understanding of
the basic AutoCAD package. With these fundamentals, you can use AutoCAD to its fullest potential,
regardless of the kinds of drawings you intend to create or the enhancement products you
may use in the future.
In this chapter, you’ll start drawing an apartment’s bathroom fixtures. In the process, you’ll
learn how to use AutoCAD’s basic tools. You’ll also be introduced to the concept of drawing scale
and how the size of what you draw is translated into a paper sheet size.
Topics in this chapter include the following:
◆
Setting Up a Work Area
◆
Exploring the Drawing Process
◆
Planning and Laying Out a Drawing
◆
Using the AutoCAD Modes as Drafting Tools
Setting Up a Work Area
Before beginning most drawings, you should set up your work area. To do this, determine the
measurement
system,
the
drawing sheet size,
and the
scale
you want to use. The default work area is roughly
16˝
×
9˝ at full scale, given a decimal measurement system in which 1 unit equals 1 inch. Metric users
will find that the default area is roughly 550 mm
×
300 mm, in which 1 unit equals 1 mm. If these are
appropriate settings for your drawing, you don’t have to do any setting up. It’s more likely, however,
that you’ll make drawings of various sizes and scales. For example, you might want to create a drawing
in a measurement system in which you can specify feet, inches, and fractions of inches at 1˝ = 1´
scale and print the drawing on an 8 1/2*11 sheet of paper.
In this section, you’ll learn how to set up a drawing exactly the way you want.