What You ll Find
What You'll Find
To help you get the most from AutoCAD, the chapters in Introducing AutoCAD 2008 are organized into general topics such as "Drawing 2D Objects" or "Laying Out and Printing Your Drawing." Within each chapter, I discuss in detail specific tasks such as drawing circles or choosing a printer paper size.
The first three chapters serve as an introduction to the AutoCAD way of doing things. If you're new to AutoCAD, you'll want to pay special attention to these chapters. In Chapter 1, "Getting Familiar with AutoCAD," you'll be introduced to AutoCAD and how it's organized. You'll learn where to find features and the purpose of the various parts of the AutoCAD screen. Chapter 2, "Understanding the Drafting Tools," gets into more detail regarding the way AutoCAD works. You'll learn how to set up a drawing and how to use AutoCAD's basic drafting tools, such as the grid and the coordinate system. Chapter 3, "Drawing 2D Objects," discusses the most common AutoCAD drawing and editing tools. Here you'll find out how to draw lines, arcs, and circles, as well as how to add hatch patterns and how to lay out a drawing.
The next two chapters are concerned with editing in AutoCAD. Chapter 4, "Editing AutoCAD Objects," describes the general methods for editing drawings in AutoCAD. This is another good chapter to review if you are new to AutoCAD. Chapter 5, "Editing with the 2D Draw Control Panel Tools," shows you how to use specific tools to make changes to your drawing. Here, you learn how to join, move, scale, and stretch objects, as well as how to perform many other operations.
Chapter 6, "Creating 3D Drawings," introduces 3D modeling in AutoCAD. You'll learn about the basic concepts for creating and viewing 3D models in AutoCAD.
Chapter 7, "Getting Organized with Layers," shows you how you can use a feature called layers to organize your drawing. You'll learn how to create and use layers and how to manage large lists of layers. You'll also learn how to employ AutoCAD object properties such as color and line weights to help visually organize your drawings. Chapter 8, "Using Blocks, Groups, Xrefs, and DesignCenter," shows you how to work more efficiently by grouping objects into assemblies. Here, you'll also learn how to use existing files as backgrounds for new projects.
Textual notation plays a major role in technical drawing, and AutoCAD provides some excellent tools to help you with your notation tasks. Chapter 9, "Creating Text," shows you how to create and edit text. You'll learn how to scale text properly for your particular drawing and how you can use AutoCAD's table feature, which works just like a spreadsheet. Chapter 10, "Using Dimensions," shows you the dimensioning tools needed to add and display crucial dimensions of your drawing.
One of the greatest features of AutoCAD drawings is the amount of information they hold. Chapter 11, "Gathering Information," shows you how to extract the types of information available from an AutoCAD drawing. You'll learn how to find basic types of information, such as distances and areas, plus you'll learn how to search for text and other named components.
Eventually, you'll need to print your drawings, but the nature of technical drawings means that AutoCAD's printing and plotting feature is a bit more complex than your word processor's. Chapter 12, "Laying Out and Printing Your Drawing," guides you through the process of getting the output you want on the medium you need. Chapter 12 also shows you how to use AutoCAD's layout feature to lay out and organize the components of your drawing on a printed sheet.
