Chapter One
Getting to Know AutoCAD
* Opening a new drawing
* Getting familiar with the AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT Graphics windows
* Modifying the display
* Displaying and arranging toolbars
Your introduction to AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT begins with a tour of the features of the screens used by the two programs. In this chapter, you will also learn how to use some tools that help you control the screen's appearance and how to find and start commands. For the material covered in this chapter, the two applications are almost identical in appearance. Therefore, as we tour AutoCAD, I'll point out any differences between AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT. In general, LT is a 2D program, so it doesn't have the 3D features that come with AutoCAD, such as solids modeling and rendering. The other differences are minor. As mentioned in this book's Introduction, when I say "AutoCAD," I mean both AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT. I'll also refer to AutoCAD LT as "LT" throughout this chapter and the rest of the book. Starting up AutoCAD is the first task at hand.
Starting Up AutoCAD
If you installed AutoCAD or LT using the default settings for the location of the program files, start AutoCAD by choosing Start -> All Programs -> Autodesk -> Auto-CAD 2006 -> AutoCAD 2006. For LT, choose Start -> All Programs -> Autodesk -> AutoCAD LT 2006 -> AutoCAD LT 2006. If you customized your installation, find and click the AutoCAD 2006 or the AutoCAD LT 2006 icon to start the program.
The Startup Dialog Box
If AutoCAD or LT opens with the Startup dialog box sitting in front of the Auto- CAD Graphics window, your screen will look like Figure 1.1. If the Startup dialog box doesn't open, read on a little-you'll see how to display it and then how to suppress it.
The Startup dialog box has four buttons in the upper-left corner. The first two buttons let you set up a new drawing and choose an existing drawing to revise or update. The second two buttons use templates and wizards to initiate advanced setup routines. The contents of the middle portion of the dialog box depend on which of the four buttons you choose. By beginning a new drawing, you can get past this dialog box to the AutoCAD Graphics window.
1. Click the Start From Scratch button, the second button from the left.
2. In the Default Settings section, click the Imperial (Feet And Inches) radio button.
3. Click OK to close the Startup dialog box. Your monitor displays the AutoCAD or LT Graphics window, sometimes called the Graphical User Interface, or GUI (see Figure 1.2).
NOTE
If the New Features Workshop window appears when you start up AutoCAD, click the second or third radio button in the window, and then click OK to remove it. You can always access it on the Help menu.
The toolbars on your screen may not be in exactly the same places as they are shown in Figure 1.2. I recommend that you set your screen to look like the one here, as it will make following through the book that much easier. Later in this chapter, you will see how to move the toolbars, display new ones and place them, and delete them.
Another feature called palettes might be visible on the far-right side of your screen when you start AutoCAD. Palettes can display as a rectangular area or as a vertical title bar. If they appear, choose Tools -> Tool Palettes Window to temporarily close the palettes. We'll take a look at them in Chapters 7 and 9.
Introduction to the AutoCAD Graphics Window
At the top of the Graphics window sit the title bar, the menu bar, and three toolbars.
The title bar is analogous to the title bar in any Windows program. It contains the program name (AutoCAD or AutoCAD LT) and the title of the current drawing with its path. Below the title bar is the menu bar, where you will see the drop-down menus. Among the drop-down menus, the first two on the left and the last one on the right are Windows menus (meaning that they appear on most Windows applications). These Windows menus also contain a few commands specific to AutoCAD. The rest of the menus are AutoCAD menus.
Below these menus is the Standard toolbar, which contains 24 command buttons (LT has only 22). Several of these buttons will be familiar to Windows users; the rest are AutoCAD commands. Just below the Standard toolbar are the Layers toolbar and the Properties toolbar, which together contain three command buttons and five drop-down lists.
The blank middle section of the screen is called the drawing area. Notice the movable crosshair cursor. The crosshairs on your cursor may not extend completely across the screen. I recommend that you set them to look like they do in the figures in this book, and I will show you how to do this when we make a few changes later in this chapter. Your screen may or may not display the coordinate tool tips next to the intersection of the crosshairs.
Notice the little box at the intersection of the two crosshair lines. This is one of several forms of the AutoCAD and LT cursor. When you move the cursor off the drawing area, it changes to the standard Windows pointing arrow. As you begin using commands, it will take on other forms, depending on which step of a command you are in.
The icon with a double arrow in the lower-left corner of the drawing area is the User Coordinate System icon. It indicates the positive direction for the X and Y coordinates. You won't need it for most of the chapters in this book, so you'll learn how to make it invisible in Chapter 3.
At the bottom of the drawing area are three tabs: a Model tab and two Layout tabs. You use these tabs to switch between viewing modes. (I'll discuss viewing modes in Chapter 13.) Our example shows no toolbars floating in the drawing area, but two toolbars are docked at the left of the drawing area. Your screen may or may not have the toolbars, or they may be in a different position. If the toolbars are within the drawing area, they will have a colored title bar. For specifics, see the section "The Toolbars" later in this chapter.
Below the drawing area is the Command window.
The Command window is where you tell the program what to do and where the program tells you what's going on. It's an important area, and you will need to learn how it works in detail. Three lines of text should be visible. If your screen displays fewer than three lines, you will need to make another line or two visible. You'll learn how to do this later in this chapter in the section "The Command Window."
Below the Command window is the status bar.
On the left end of the status bar, you'll see a coordinate readout window. In the middle are nine readout buttons (LT has only eight) that indicate various drawing modes. It is important to learn about the coordinate system and most of these drawing aids (Snap, Grid, Ortho, and Osnap) early as you learn to draw in AutoCAD or LT. They will help you create neat and accurate drawings. Polar and Otrack are advanced drawing tools and will be introduced in Chapter 5. Dyn is an OFF/ON toggle that activates or suppresses the dynamic display of information next to the crosshair cursor when it's in the drawing area. For now, keep it in the OFF, or unpushed, mode. Lwt stands for Lineweight and will be discussed in Chapter 14 in the section on plotting. The Model button is an advanced aid that will be covered in Chapter 13. At the far right of the status bar are small icons that indicate the presence of various features for a drawing session. The Satellite Dish button activates AutoCAD's Communication Center and is discussed in a bonus chapter available on Sybex's website (www.sybex.com). The Padlock icon controls which types of toolbars and windows are locked in their current positions on the screen. Leave it in the unlocked mode for now.
This has been a quick introduction to the various parts of the Graphics window. I didn't mention a couple of items that might be visible on your screen. You might have scroll bars below and to the right of the drawing area, and you might have a menu on the right side of the drawing area. Both features can be useful, but they can also be a hindrance and can take up precious space in the drawing area. They won't be of any use while working your way through this book, so I suggest that you remove them for now.
To temporarily remove these features, follow these steps:
1. Choose Tools -> Options to open the Options dialog box (shown in Figure 1.3). It has nine tabs (LT has only eight) across the top that act like tabs on file folders.
2. Click the Display tab, which is shown in Figure 1.4. Focus on the rectangular area titled Window Elements. If scroll bars are visible on the lower and right edges of the drawing area, the Display Scroll Bars In Drawing Window check box will be checked.
3. Click the check box to turn off the scroll bars. Also be sure the check box for Display Screen Menu is unchecked. Don't click the OK button yet.
Another display setting that you might want to change at this point controls the color of the cursor and the drawing area background. The illustrations in this book show a white background and black crosshair cursor, but you might prefer to reverse the colors. To do so, follow these steps:
1. In the Window Elements area of the Display tab, click the Colors button to open the Color Options dialog box (see Figure 1.5). In the middle of the dialog box, in the Window Element drop-down list box, Model Tab Background should be visible. If it's not, open the drop-down list and select it.
2. Move to the Color drop-down list, which is below the Window Element drop-down list. If your drawing area background is currently white, a square followed by the word White is displayed. Open the Color drop-down list. Scroll to Black (or the background color you want) and select it. The drawing area will now be that color, and the cursor color will change to white, as shown in the Model Tab preview window in the upper-left corner of the dialog box.
3. Click the Apply & Close button to close the Color Options dialog box. 4. Don't close the Options dialog box yet.
5. If you want the lines of your crosshair cursor to extend completely across the screen, go to the lower-left corner of the Display tab (lower-right for LT) and move the slider to change the Crosshair Size setting to 100.
6. Click OK to close the Options dialog box.
Your screen and crosshair cursor will take on their newly assigned colors, and the crosshair lines should extend across the drawing area.
TIP
If you choose a color other than black as the drawing area background color, the color of the crosshair cursor remains the same as it was (black). To change the crosshair color, in the Color Options dialog box, open the Window Element drop-down list, and select Model Tab Pointer. Then select a color from the Color drop-down list.
The Command Window
Just below the drawing area is the Command window. This window is actually separate from the drawing area and behaves like a Windows window-that is, you can drag it to a different place on the screen and resize it, although I don't recommend that you do this at first. If you currently have fewer than three lines of text in the window, you will need to increase the window's vertical size. To do so, move the cursor to the horizontal boundary between the drawing area and the Command window until it changes to an up-and-down arrow broken by two parallel horizontal lines.
Hold down the left mouse button and drag the cursor up by approximately the amount that one or two lines of text would take up, and then release the mouse. You should see more lines of text, but you might have to try this a couple of times to display exactly three lines. When you close the program, the new settings will be saved, and the next time you start up AutoCAD, the Command window will display three lines.
The Command window is where you give information to AutoCAD and where AutoCAD prompts you for the next step in executing a command. It is a good practice to get into the habit of keeping an eye on the Command window as you work on your drawing. Most errors occur when you are not taking a look at it frequently. If the Dyn button on the status bar is activated, some of the information in the Command window is displayed in the drawing area next to the cursor. We'll look at this feature when we start drawing.
Before you begin to draw, take a close look at the menus, toolbars, and keyboard controls.
NOTE
In many cases, you can start AutoCAD commands in a number of ways: from drop-down menus, from the toolbars, from the keyboard, and from menus that appear when you right-click the mouse. When you get used to drawing with AutoCAD, you will learn some shortcuts that start commands quickly, and you will find the way that is most comfortable for you.
Drop-Down Menus
The menu bar, just below the title bar (see Figure 1.2 earlier in this chapter), consists of 11 (12 if you have the Express tools installed) words and an icon. Click any of these to display a drop-down menu. The icon on the left end and the File and Edit menus are included with all Windows-compatible applications, although they are somewhat customized to work with AutoCAD. The menu associated with the icon contains commands to control the appearance and position of the drawing area.
Commands in the File menu are for opening and saving new and existing drawing files, printing, linking on the Internet, exporting files to another application, choosing basic utility options, and exiting the application. The Edit menu contains the Undo and Redo commands, the Cut and Paste tools, and options for creating links between AutoCAD files and other files. The Help menu (the last menu on the right) works like all Windows Help menus and contains a couple of AutoCAD-specific entries as well, including some online resources and a context-sensitive help feature called the Info Palette.
The other eight or nine menus contain the most-often-used AutoCAD commands. You will find that if you master the logic of how the commands are organized by menu, you can quickly find the command you want. Here is a short description of each of the other AutoCAD drop-down menus:
View Contains tools for controlling the display of your drawing file.
Insert Contains commands for placing drawings and images or parts of them inside other drawings.
Format Contains commands for setting up the general parameters for a new drawing.
Tools Contains special tools for use while you are working on the current drawing, such as those for finding the length of a line or for running a special macro.
Draw Contains commands for creating new objects (such as lines or circles) on the screen.
Dimension Contains commands for dimensioning a drawing.
Modify Contains commands for changing existing objects in the drawing.
Express This is an optional menu containing a library of productivity tools that cover a wide range of AutoCAD functions. It may or may not be installed on your computer.
Window Contains commands for displaying currently open windows and lists currently open drawing files.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from AutoCAD 2006 and AutoCAD LT 2006by David Frey Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
