AutoCAD 2011 For Dummies E-Book

David Byrnes

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 764

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

A great way to get up and running fast with AutoCAD "X"! If you're just learning AutoCAD, this friendly, For Dummies guide is perfect for you. You'll get up to speed on all the basics and start creating 2D and 3D technical drawings sooner than you might imagine. Learn how to create a basic drawing, use AutoCAD Design Center, edit your drawings, work with dimensions, add text, and much more. The book is straightforward, easy to follow, and includes practical tips and notes that demystify this complex software even further. * Gets you quickly up to speed on AutoCAD "X," the leading technical drawing software from Autodesk * Covers how to create a basic drawing, use AutoCAD Design Center, edit your drawings, use blocks, work with dimensions, add text, and draw on the Internet * Includes updates on the latest features in AutoCAD "X" focusing on those that matter most to beginners * Uses the popular For Dummies approach, which breaks down this intimidating topic into helpful, practical advice and how-tos for real people AutoCAD "X" For Dummies is what you need to get up to speed and start designing with this market-leading software!

Leseprobe

AutoCAD® 2011 For Dummies®

Table of Contents

Introduction

What’s Not (And What Is) in This Book

Who Do I Think You Are?

How This Book Is Organized

Part I: AutoCAD 101

Part II: Let There Be Lines

Part III: If Drawings Could Talk

Part IV: Advancing with AutoCAD

Part V: On a 3D Spree

Part VI: The Part of Tens

But wait . . . there’s more!

Icons Used in This Book

A Few Conventions — Just in Case

Commanding from the keyboard

Tying things up with the Ribbon

Where to Go from Here

Part I: AutoCAD 101

Chapter 1: Introducing AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT

Why AutoCAD?

The Importance of Being DWG

Seeing the LT

Checking System Requirements

Suddenly, It’s 2011!

Chapter 2: Le Tour de AutoCAD 2011

AutoCAD Does Windows (and Office)

And They’re Off: AutoCAD’s Opening Screens

Running with Ribbons

Getting with the Program

Looking for Mr. Status Bar

See you later, Navigator

Let your fingers do the talking: The command window

The key(board) to AutoCAD success

Keeping tabs on palettes

Down the main stretch: The drawing area

Fun with F1

Chapter 3: A Lap around the CAD Track

A Simple Setup

Drawing a (Base) Plate

Drawing rectangles on the right layers

Circling your plate

Placing your polygon

Getting a Closer Look with Zoom and Pan

Modifying to Make It Merrier

Hooray for array

Stretching out

Crossing your hatches

Following the Plot

Chapter 4: Setup for Success

A Setup Roadmap

Choosing your units

Weighing up your scales

Thinking annotatively

Thinking about paper

Defending your border

A Template for Success

Making the Most of Model Space

Setting your units

Making the drawing area snap-py (and grid-dy)

Setting linetype and dimension scales

Entering drawing properties

Making Templates Your Own

Chapter 5: Planning for Paper

Setting Up a Layout in Paper Space

Will that be tabs or buttons?

Creating a layout

Copying and changing layouts

Lost in paper space

A view(port) for drawing in

About Paper Space Layouts and Plotting

Part II: Let There Be Lines

Chapter 6: Manage Your Properties

Managing Your Properties

Putting it on a layer

Accumulating properties

Creating new layers

Manipulating layers

Using Named Objects

Using AutoCAD DesignCenter

Copying layers between drawings

Chapter 7: Preciseliness Is Next to CADliness

Controlling Your Precision

Keyboard capers: Coordinate input

Understanding AutoCAD’s coordinate systems

Grab an object and make it snappy

Other Practical Precision Procedures

Chapter 8: Down the Straightaway

Introducing the AutoCAD Drawing Commands

The Straight and Narrow: Lines, Polylines, and Polygons

Toeing the line

Connecting the lines with polyline

Squaring off with rectangles

Choosing your sides with polygon

Chapter 9: Dangerous Curves Ahead

(Throwing) Curves

Going full circle

Arc-y-ology

Solar ellipses

Splines: The sketchy, sinuous curves

Donuts: The circles with a difference

Revision clouds on the horizon

Scoring Points

Chapter 10: Get a Grip on Object Selection

Commanding and Selecting

Command-first editing

Selection-first editing

Direct object manipulation

Choosing an editing style

Grab It

One-by-one selection

Selection boxes left and right

Perfecting Selecting

Object Selection: Now You See It . . .

Get a Grip

About grips

A gripping example

Move it!

Copy, or a kinder, gentler Move

A warm-up Stretch

Chapter 11: Edit for Credit

Your AutoCAD Tool Kit

The Big Three: Move, Copy, and Stretch

Base points and displacements

Move

Copy

Copy between drawings

Stretch

More Manipulations

Mirror

Rotate

Scale

Array

Offset

Slicing, Dicing, and Splicing

Trim and Extend

Break

Fillet and Chamfer

Join

Chapter 12: A Zoom with a View

Zoom and Pan with Glass and Hand

Navigating your drawing

Time to zoom

A View by Any Other Name . . .

Looking Around in Layout Land

Degenerating and Regenerating

Part III: If Drawings Could Talk

Chapter 13: Text with Character

Getting Ready to Write

Simply stylish text

Taking your text to new heights

One line or two?

Your text will be justified

Using the Same Old Line

Turning On Your Annotative Objects

Saying More in Multiline Text

Making it with Mtext

It slices, it dices . . .

Doing a number on your Mtext lists

Line up in columns — Now!

Modifying Mtext

Gather Round the Tables

Tables have style, too

Creating and editing tables

Bring Out Your Inner Leader

Electing a leader

Multi options for multileaders

Chapter 14: Entering New Dimensions

Discovering New Dimensions

Anatomy of a dimension

A field guide to dimensions

Dimension associativity

Finding your dimension tools

Doing Dimensions with Style(s)

Borrowing existing dimension styles

Creating and managing dimension styles

Adjusting style settings

Drawing Dimensions

Lining up some linear dimensions

Making dimensions annotative

Drawing other kinds of dimensions

Editing Dimensions

Editing dimension geometry

Editing dimension text

Controlling and editing dimension associativity

Chapter 15: Down the Hatch

Batten Down the Hatches!

Pushing the Boundary (of) Hatch

Hatch from scratch

Getting it right: Hatch angle and scale

Hatching for the 21st century

Do fence me in: Defining hatch boundaries

Have palette, will hatch

Editing Hatch Objects

Chapter 16: The Plot Thickens

You Say Printing, I Say Plotting

Get with the system

Configure it out

A Simple Plot

Plotting success in 16 steps

Preview one, two

Instead of fit, scale it

Plotting the Layout of the Land

The path to paper space layout plotting success

Plotting Lineweights and Colors

Plotting with style

Plotting through thick and thin

Plotting in color

It’s a (Page) Setup!

Continuing the Plot Dialog

Troubles with Plotting

Part IV: Advancing with AutoCAD

Chapter 17: The ABCs of Blocks

Rocking with Blocks

Creating block definitions

Inserting blocks

Attributes: Fill-in-the-blank blocks

Exploding blocks

Purging unused block definitions

Chapter 18: Going Dynamic and External

Theme and Variations: Dynamic Blocks

Now you see it . . .

Lights! Parameters!! Actions!!!

Manipulating dynamic blocks

Going External

Becoming attached to your xrefs

Layer-palooza

Creating and editing an external reference file

Forging an xref path

Managing xrefs

Blocks, Xrefs, and Drawing Organization

Mastering the Raster

Attaching an image

Maintaining your image

You say PDF, I say DWF

Chapter 19: Call the Parametrics!

Maintaining Design Intent

Defining terms

Constrain yourself

Understanding Dimensional Constraints

Practice a little constraint

Making your drawing even smarter

Using the Parameters Manager

Dimensions or constraints — have it both ways!

Understanding Geometric Constraints

Applying a little more constraint

Autoconstrain yourself!

Chapter 20: Drawing on the Internet

The Internet and AutoCAD: An Overview

Sending Strategies

Send it with ETRANSMIT

Rapid eTransmit

FTP for you and me

Bad reception?

Help from the Reference Manager

Design Web Format — Not Just for the Web

All about DWF and DWFx

ePlot, not replot

Making DWFs with ePlot

Making DWFs (or plots) with PUBLISH

Hyper objects

Autodesk Design Review 2011

The Drawing Protection Racket

Part V: On a 3D Spree

Chapter 21: It’s a 3D World After All

Understanding 3D Digital Models

Tools of the Trade

Warp speed ahead

Entering the third dimension

Unwrapping the Ribbon and other modeling tools

Modeling from Above

Coordinate input

Point Filters

Object snaps and object snap tracking

Changing Planes

Displaying the UCS icon

Adjusting the UCS

Navigating the 3D Waters

Orbit a go, go

Taking a spin around the cube

Gripping the SteeringWheels

Visualizing 3D objects

Getting some (visual) style

Chapter 22: From Drawings . . . to Models

Is 3D for Me?

Getting Your 3D Bearings

Creating a better 3D template

Seeing the world from new viewpoints

From Drawing to Modeling in 3D

Drawing basic 3D objects

Gaining a solid foundation

Drawing solid primitives

Adding the Third Dimension to 2D Objects

Creating 3D objects from 2D drawings

Modifying 3D Objects

Selecting sub-objects

Working with gizmos

More 3D variants of 2D commands

Editing solids

Chapter 23: On a Render Bender

Visualizing the Digital World

Adding Lighting

Default lighting

User-defined lights

Sunlight

Creating and Applying Materials

Defining a Background

Rendering a 3D Model

Part VI: The Part of Tens

Chapter 24: Ten Great AutoCAD Resources

Autodesk’s Feedback Community

Autodesk’s Discussion Groups

Autodesk’s Own Bloggers

Autodesk University

The Autodesk Channel on YouTube

The World Wide (CAD) Web

Your Local ATC

Your Local User Group

AUGI

Books

Chapter 25: Ten Differences between AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT

Price

3D Abilities

Customization Options

Express Tools

Sheet Sets

Standards Checking

Data Extraction

MLINE versus DLINE

Profiles

Reference Manager

Chapter 26: Ten System Variables to Make Your Life Easier

APERTURE

DIMASSOC

MENUBAR

MIRRTEXT

OSNAPZ

PICKBOX

REMEMBERFOLDERS

ROLLOVERTIPS

TOOLTIPS

VISRETAIN

AutoCAD® 2011 For Dummies®

by David Byrnes

Foreword by Heidi Hewett

AutoCAD® 2011 For Dummies®

Published byWiley Publishing, Inc.111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030-5774www.wiley.com

Copyright © 2010 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2010925240

ISBN: 978-0-470-59539-8

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

About the Author

David Byrnes is one of those grizzled old-timers you’ll find mentioned every so often in AutoCAD 2011 For Dummies. He began his drafting career on the boards in 1979, and first learned AutoCAD with version 1.4. Dave is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he works as a civil/structural drafter. He taught AutoCAD for fifteen years at Emily Carr University of Art + Design and British Columbia Institute of Technology in Vancouver. Dave has authored or co-authored over a dozen AutoCAD books and has been the sole author of this title since AutoCAD 2008 For Dummies.

Dedication

I left the bohemian lifestyle of the AutoCAD consultant at the beginning of 2008 and rejoined the engineering company I last worked for in 1988 (luckily they’d forgotten all about that chandelier). Working full-time (oh! the horror!) and keeping up with AutoCAD so I can revise this book has made me somewhat inaccessible for 3 months a year, and I’m forever grateful to Annie and Delia, still and always the two women in my life, who remind me there are other things besides keyboards and mice (and sometimes they have to try really hard).

Author’s Acknowledgments

Thanks, first of all, to former author Mark Middlebrook for bringing me into the AutoCAD For Dummies world. Mark asked me to tech edit AutoCAD 2000 For Dummies, then to join him as co-author of AutoCAD 2006 For Dummies, and finally to take over the title altogether. I hope my torch bearing comes close to the high standards that Mark set, and I wish him well in his new career in the world of fine wine (what, me jealous?).

Thanks, too, to colleagues and friends at Autodesk: above all Guillermo Melantoni, Heidi Hewett, and Bud Schroeder, who never seem to mind being asked even the dumbest questions. And speaking of colleagues, thanks to my cubicle-mates at Sandwell for showing me how things are done in the real world of engineering.

At Wiley, Acquisitions Editor Kyle Looper was a reliable source of calm but firm direction. It was a great pleasure to work with project editor Blair Pottenger again, and copy editor Laura Miller made so many great suggestions she ought to get an author credit. And thanks, finally, to Lee Ambrosius who not only did his usual sterling job of tech editing, but contributed the three chapters on 3D in Part V of this book.

Publisher’s Acknowledgments

We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments through our online registration form located at www.dummies.com/register/.

Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:

Acquisitions, Editorial, and Media Development

Project Editor: Blair J. Pottenger

Acquisitions Editor: Kyle Looper

Copy Editor: Laura Miller

Technical Editor: Lee Ambrosius

Editorial Manager: Kevin Kirschner

Media Development Project Manager: Laura Moss-Hollister

Media Development Assistant Project Manager: Jenny Swisher

Media Development Associate Producers: Josh Frank, Marilyn Hummel, Douglas Kuhn, Shawn Patrick

Editorial Assistant: Amanda Graham

Sr. Editorial Assistant: Cherie Case

Cartoons: Rich Tennant (www.the5thwave.com)

Composition Services

Senior Project Coordinator: Kristie Rees

Layout and Graphics: Joyce Haughey, Clint Lahnen, Ronald G. Terry

Proofreaders: Melissa Cossell, John Greenough, Linda Seifert

Indexer: Becky Hornyak

Publishing and Editorial for Technology Dummies

Richard Swadley, Vice President and Executive Group Publisher

Andy Cummings, Vice President and Publisher

Mary Bednarek, Executive Acquisitions Director

Mary C. Corder, Editorial Director

Publishing for Consumer Dummies

Diane Graves Steele, Vice President and Publisher

Joyce Pepple, Acquisitions Director

Composition Services

Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services

Foreword

If you are completely new to AutoCAD or just feeling a little rusty, this book will help start the wheels turning and keep you rolling in the right direction. Tidbits of historical insight and explanations help you understand not only “how” to perform a task, but “why.” David’s friendly and humorous writing style makes the book easy (and even entertaining) to read. The topics are well organized, enabling you to read it cover to cover or use it as a handy reference tool. It includes a comprehensive Table of Contents and Index to help you quickly locate key topics. Icons scattered throughout the book further aid in your quest for knowledge by identifying important or useful information such as warnings or new functionality.

David’s experience as a technical writer and AutoCAD user and educator is unmistakable in AutoCAD 2011 For Dummies. He doesn’t just describe AutoCAD tools — he describes the processes in which you can use them most-efficiently. David does a fantastic job of integrating powerful AutoCAD functionality such as named page setups, annotation scaling, and parametric constraints into the standard workflow for “beginning” AutoCAD users. Even veteran AutoCAD users can learn from AutoCAD 2011 For Dummies with a willingness to explore newer methods they may have previously overlooked.

David, thanks for providing a valuable resource to help AutoCAD users maximize their software investment with minimal brain drain. While AutoCAD 2011 For Dummies isn’t really “For Dummies,” it is a welcome relief to the typical software technology books.

Heidi HewettAutoCAD Technical Marketing ManagerAutodesk, Inc.

Introduction

It’s amazing to think that AutoCAD came into being more than a quarter of a century ago, at a time when most people thought that personal computers weren’t capable of industrial-strength tasks like CAD. (The acronym stands for Computer-Aided Drafting, Computer-Aided Design, or both, depending on whom you talk to.) What’s equally amazing to the grizzled old-timer writing these words is the fact that many of today’s hotshot AutoCAD users weren’t even born when the program first hit the street! It’s almost as amazing that, 25 years and counting after its birth, AutoCAD remains the king of the microcomputer CAD hill by a tall margin, making it one of the longest-lived PC programs ever. It’s conceivable that the long-term future of CAD may belong to special-purpose, 3D-based software such as the Autodesk Inventor and Revit programs, but for the present and the near future anyway, AutoCAD is where the CAD action is.

AutoCAD has grown more complex over the years, in part to keep up with the increasing complexity of the design and drafting processes that AutoCAD is intended to serve. It’s not enough just to draw nice-looking lines anymore. If you want to play CAD with the big boys and girls, you need to carefully organize the objects you draw, their properties, and the files in which they reside. You need to coordinate your CAD work with other people in your office who will be working on or making use of the same drawings. You need to be savvy about shipping drawings around via the Internet. You may even need to be a little cognizant of working with AutoCAD in three dimensions.

AutoCAD 2011 provides the tools for doing all these things, but it’s not always easy to figure out which hammer to pick up or which nail to bang on first. With this book, you have an excellent chance of creating a presentable, usable, printable, and sharable drawing on your first or second try without putting a T-square through your computer screen in frustration.

What’s Not (And What Is) in This Book

Unlike many other For Dummies books, this one does sometimes tell you to consult the official software documentation — such as it is. AutoCAD is just too big and complicated for a single book to attempt to describe it completely.

AutoCAD is also too big and complicated for a book like this to cover every feature. I don’t address advanced topics like database connectivity, customization, or programming, in the interest of bringing you a book of a reasonable size — one that you’ll read rather than stick on your shelf with those other thousand-page tomes!

Autodesk likes to keep its users (and us authors!) guessing about new features in future releases of the software. AutoCAD 2009 surprised users and authors alike with a totally revamped user interface, replacing the drop-down menus and toolbars of previous versions with a Microsoft Office 2007–style Ribbon (happily, Autodesk doesn’t force its users to adopt the new look like Microsoft does — there’s still an “AutoCAD Classic” interface available). The new interface got some tweaking in AutoCAD 2010 — 2009’s Menu Browser, which essentially duplicated the pull-down menu structure, was replaced with a better thought-out Application Menu.

AutoCAD 2010 also delivered two significant new features — parametric drawing and organic (or free-form) 3D modeling. The changes in AutoCAD 2011 are relatively minor compared with those: AutoCAD added inferred constraints to its parametric toolbox, and 3D benefitted from the addition of a major suite of surface modeling tools. But while the program may not have changed that much from the last release, the book you hold in your hands has changed. For years now I’ve been bemoaning the fact that lack of space prevented virtually any coverage of 3D modeling. I guess the editors at Wiley got tired of my whining, so AutoCAD 2011 For Dummies proudly presents three new chapters on 3D modeling and visualization, written by 3D expert (and AutoCAD 2011 For Dummies technical editor!) Lee Ambrosius.

This book focuses on AutoCAD 2011 and addresses its slightly less-capable but much lower-priced sibling, AutoCAD LT 2011. I do occasionally mention differences with previous versions so that everyone has some context and upgraders can more readily understand the differences. I also mention the important differences between full AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT so that you’ll know what you — or your LT-using colleagues — are missing this book is concerned, the major difference is the almost total absence of 3D capabilities in AutoCAD LT. This book does not cover the discipline-specific features in AutoCAD-based products such as AutoCAD Architecture 2011 or AutoCAD Mechanical 2011, except for some general discussion in Chapter 1, but most of the information in this book applies to the general-purpose AutoCAD features in the AutoCAD 2011–based versions of those programs as well.

Who Do I Think You Are?

AutoCAD has a large, loyal, dedicated group of long-time users. This book is not for the sort of people who have been using AutoCAD for a decade or more, who plan their vacation time around Autodesk University, or who consider 1,000-page-plus technical tomes about AutoCAD to be pleasure reading. This book is for people who want to get going quickly with AutoCAD but who also know the importance of developing proper CAD techniques from the beginning.

However, you do need to have some idea of how to use your computer system before tackling AutoCAD — and this book. You need to have a computer system with AutoCAD or AutoCAD LT (preferably the 2011 version). A printer or plotter and a connection to the Internet will be big helps, too.

You also need to know how to use your version of Windows to copy and delete files, create a folder, and find a file. You need to know how to use a mouse to select (highlight) or to choose (activate) commands, how to close a window, and how to minimize and maximize windows. Make sure that you’re familiar with the basics of your operating system before you start with AutoCAD.

How This Book Is Organized

Appearances can be deceptive. For example, had you wandered into my office and seen the apparently random piles of stuff that covered my desk while I was writing this book, you might wonder how I could possibly organize a sentence, let alone an entire book. But, given a suitable degree of concerted thought, I know exactly where to put my hands on that list of new dimension variables, my bag of 1/2" binder clips, or the rest of that bagel and cream cheese I started at coffee break.

I hope you’ll find that the book also reflects some concerted thought about how to present AutoCAD in a way that’s both easy-to-dip-into and smoothly-flowing-from-beginning-to-end.

The organization of this book into parts — collections of related chapters — is one of the most important, uh, parts of this book. You really can get to know AutoCAD one piece at a time, and each part represents a group of closely related topics. The order of parts also says something about priority; yes, you have my permission to ignore the stuff in later parts until you’ve mastered most of the stuff in the early ones. This kind of building-block approach can be especially valuable in a program as complex as AutoCAD.

The following sections describe the parts that the book breaks down into.

Part I: AutoCAD 101

Need to know your way around the AutoCAD screen? Why does AutoCAD even exist, anyway? What are all the different AutoCAD-based products that Autodesk sells, and should you be using one of them — for example, AutoCAD LT — instead of AutoCAD? Is everything so slooow because it’s supposed to be slow, or do you have too wimpy a machine to use this wonder of modern-day computing? And why do you have to do this stuff in the first place?

Part I answers all these questions and more. This part also includes what may seem like a great deal of excruciating detail about setting up a new drawing in AutoCAD. But what’s even more excruciating is doing your setup work incorrectly and then feeling as if AutoCAD is fighting you every step of the way. With a little drawing setup work done in advance, it won’t.

Part II: Let There Be Lines

In this part, you discover some essential concepts, including object properties and CAD precision techniques. I know that you’re raring to make some drawings, but if you don’t get a handle on this stuff early on, you’ll be terminally confused when you try to draw and edit objects. If you want to make drawings that look good, plot good, and are good, read this stuff!

After the concepts preamble, the bulk of this part covers the trio of activities that you’ll probably spend most of your time in AutoCAD doing: drawing objects, editing them, and zooming and panning to see them better on the screen. These are the things that you do in order to create the geometry — that is, the CAD representations of the objects in the real world that you’re designing. By the end of Part II, you should be pretty good at geometry, even if your ninth-grade math teacher told you otherwise.

Part III: If Drawings Could Talk

CAD drawings don’t live on lines alone — most of them require quite a bit of text, dimensioning, and hatching in order to make the design intent clear to the poor chump who has to build your amazing creation. (Whoever said “a picture is worth a thousand words” must not have counted up the number of words on the average architectural drawing!) This part shows you how to add these essential features to your drawings.

After you’ve gussied up your drawing with text, dimensions, and hatching, you’ll probably want to create a snapshot of it to show off to your client, contractor, or grandma. Normal people call this process printing, but CAD people call it plotting. Whatever you decide to call it, I show you how to do it.

Part IV: Advancing with AutoCAD

A good CAD user, like a good kindergartner, plays well with others. AutoCAD encourages this behavior with a host of drawing- and data-sharing features. Blocks, external reference files, and raster images encourage reuse of parts of drawings, entire drawings, and bitmap image files. You can create symbols with changeable text or appearance, and you can apply parametric “rules” to drawing objects so they help maintain design intent. This part of the book ends by explaining how to use AutoCAD’s Internet features to enable sharing of drawings well beyond your hard disk and local network.

The drawing- and data-sharing features in AutoCAD take you way beyond old-style, pencil-and-paper design and drafting. After you’ve discovered how to apply the techniques in this part, you’ll be well on your way to full CAD nerdhood. (You may want to warn your family beforehand.)

Part V: On a 3D Spree

In this part, you discover the basics of 3D modeling in AutoCAD 2011. Beginning with the 3D environment — how to change its appearance, how to move around in it, how to examine the model itself in different ways — the chapters introduce different modeling techniques, from solid models, through to the latest surface modeling commands included with AutoCAD 2011.

Part VI: The Part of Tens

This part contains a concise catalog of differences between AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT, and lists of resources and settings that can make the time you spend in AutoCADland more enjoyable. There’s a lot of meat packed into these three chapters — juicy tidbits from years of drafting, experimentation, and fist-shaking at things that don’t work right — not to mention years of compulsive list-making. I hope that these lists help you get on the right track quickly and stay there.

But wait . . . there’s more!

AutoCAD 2011 For Dummies now has a companion Web site. Point your browser at www.dummies.com/go/autocad2011 to find many of the drawing files I use to demonstrate commands and procedures in this book. The drawings are posted to the Web site in zip format; just download and unzip them and they’re ready to open in AutoCAD. The zip files are named for the chapters and contain one or more drawing files. For example, afd03.zip contains the versions of the drawing for the base plate exercise in Chapter 3 of the book (refer to the downloadable Read Me file for an explanation of the naming conventions used for the drawing files). Note that not all chapters have associated drawing files.

The drawing files are saved in AutoCAD 2010 format and can be opened in AutoCAD 2010 or 2011 (and, of course, AutoCAD LT 2010 or 2011). If you’re using this book with an earlier release, you can download Autodesk’s DWG TrueView, a free viewing and conversion utility from www.autodesk.com/trueview.

If you don’t have any AutoCAD release and just want to get a taste of the program before you buy, you can also download a free 30-day trial version of either AutoCAD 2011 or AutoCAD LT 2011. Just browse to www.autodesk.com/autocad or www.autodesk.com/autocadlt.

You can also find the cheat sheet that’s mentioned several times in the book at www.dummies.com/gp/cheatsheet/autocad2011.

Icons Used in This Book

Throughout this book, I point out certain morsels of particularly important or useful information by placing handy little icons in the margin. Naturally, different icons indicate different types of information:

This icon tells you that herein lies a pointed insight that can save you time and trouble as you use AutoCAD. In many cases, Tip paragraphs act as a funnel on AutoCAD’s impressive but sometimes overwhelming flexibility: After telling you all the ways that you can do something, I tell you the way that you should do it in most cases.

The Technical Stuff icon points out places where I delve a little more deeply into AutoCAD’s inner workings or point out something that most people don’t need to know most of the time. These paragraphs definitely are not required reading the first time through, so if you come to one of them at a time when you’ve reached your techie detail threshold, feel free to skip over it.

This icon points out text that tells you how to stay out of trouble when living close to the edge. Failure to heed its message may have unpleasant consequences for you or your drawing — or both.

There’s a lot to remember when you’re using AutoCAD, so I’ve remembered to remind you not to forget about some of those things that you should remember. These paragraphs usually refer to a crucial point earlier in the chapter or in a previous chapter. So if you’re reading sequentially, a Remember paragraph serves as a friendly reminder. If you’re not reading sequentially, this kind of paragraph may help you realize that you need to review a central concept or technique before proceeding.

This icon points to new stuff in AutoCAD 2011 (and sometimes AutoCAD LT 2011). It’s mostly designed for people who are somewhat familiar with a previous version of AutoCAD and want to be alerted to what’s new in this release. New AutoCAD users starting out their CAD working lives with AutoCAD 2011 will find this stuff interesting, too — especially when they can show off their new book learnin’ to the grizzled AutoCAD veterans in the office who don’t yet know about all the cool, new features.

This icon highlights text that shows the differences between AutoCAD LT and AutoCAD. If you’re using AutoCAD LT, you’ll find out what you’re missing compared to “full” AutoCAD. If your friend is using LT, you’ll know where to look to find stuff in AutoCAD to brag about.

A Few Conventions — Just in Case

You can probably figure out for yourself all the information in this section, but here are the details just in case.

Commanding from the keyboard

Text you type into the program at the command line, in a dialog box, in a text box, and so on appears in boldface type. Examples of AutoCAD prompts appear in a special typeface, as does any other text in the book that echoes a message, a word, or one or more lines of text that actually appear on-screen. Sequences of prompts that appear in the AutoCAD command line area have a shaded background, like so:

Specify lower left corner or [ON/OFF] <0.0000,0.0000>:

Many of the figures — especially in Chapters 8 through 11 — also show AutoCAD command line sequences that demonstrate AutoCAD’s prompts and example responses.

Many AutoCAD commands have aliases — shortcut (fewer-letter) versions for the benefit of those who like to type commands at the AutoCAD command line. In this book, I show command names in uppercase letters. Chapters throughout the book include tables listing, respectively, the most commonly used drawing and editing commands, and in these tables I list both the full command name and its alias in parentheses; for example, LINE (L), ARRAY (AR), and so forth. If you’re using the keyboard to enter commands, this means you can type either LINE or simply L and then press the Enter key to execute the command. You can view a list of all the command aliases by typing ALIASEDIT (not in AutoCAD LT) — but just look, and be careful not to change anything!

Tying things up with the Ribbon

As you’ve noticed if you’ve skimmed through the book and looked at a few of the figures, AutoCAD 2011 doesn’t look like earlier releases you may be familiar with. Throughout the book, I tell you where to find commands on the new Office 2007–style Application Menu and Ribbon interface. (The Ribbon is organized into a series of task-based tabs, and each tab has a number of panels containing specific tool buttons.)

Where to Go from Here

If you read this Introduction, you’re like me — you like to read. (The cut-to-the-chase people tend to flip to the index right away and look up what they need to know at that instant.) If you’re a total AutoCAD newbie, you can read this book in order, from front to back; it follows a straightforward route from setting up your drawing environment, to outputting your masterworks to hard copy, to sharing your work with others. If you’re an experienced user, you’ll probably be one of those index flippers looking for the missing information you need to complete a specific task. You can probably find the index on your own, but I encourage you to browse through the book anyway, with highlighter or sticky notes in hand, so you can find those particularly important places when you need them again. If you’re competent in most areas of AutoCAD and pretty familiar with the previous version, look for the New In 2011 icons in the margins to find out the latest features you never knew you couldn’t live without. Whichever route you choose, I hope you enjoy your time with AutoCAD 2011 For Dummies. And . . . you’re off!

Part I

AutoCAD 101

In this part . . .

AutoCAD 2011 is more than just another drawing program; it’s a complete environment for drafting and design. So if you’re new to AutoCAD, you need to know several things to get off to a good start — especially how to use the command line area and how to set up your drawing properly. These key techniques are described in this part of the book.

If you’ve used earlier versions of AutoCAD, you’ll be most interested in the high points of the new release, including some newer interface components. The lowdown on what’s new is here, too.

Chapter 1

Introducing AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT

In This Chapter

Getting the AutoCAD advantage

Using AutoCAD and DWG files

Meeting the AutoCAD product family

Using AutoCAD LT instead of AutoCAD

Finding out what’s new in 2011

Maybe you’re one of the few remaining holdouts who continue to practice the ancient art of manual drafting with pencil and vellum. If so, I must tell you, you’re a dwindling breed. Or maybe you’re completely new to drafting and yearn for the wealth and fame (would I lead you on?) of the drafter’s life. Maybe you’re an engineer or architect who needs to catch up with the young CAD hotshots in your office. Maybe you tried to use AutoCAD a long time ago, but gave up in frustration or just got rusty. Or maybe you currently use an older release, such as AutoCAD 2006 or even (if you’re into antiques) AutoCAD 2000.

Whatever your current situation or motivation, I hope that you enjoy the process of becoming proficient with AutoCAD. Drawing with AutoCAD is challenging at first, but it’s a challenge worth meeting. AutoCAD rewards those who think creatively about their work and look for ways to do it better. You can always find out more, discover a new trick, or improve the efficiency and quality of your drawing production.

AutoCAD first hit the bricks in the early 1980s, around the same time as the first IBM PCs. It was offered for a bewildering variety of operating systems, including CP/M (ask your granddad about that one!), various flavors of UNIX, and even Apple’s Macintosh. By far the most popular of those early versions was for MS-DOS (your dad can tell you about that one). Eventually, Autodesk settled on Microsoft Windows as the sole operating system for AutoCAD. AutoCAD 2011 and AutoCAD LT 2011 are supported in the following Windows flavors, including both 32- and 64-bit versions: