20 Must know AutoCAD Shortcuts & Commands! AutoCAD Tips & Tricks

hey everybody Brandon here from CAD intentions and in today's video we're going to take a look at a handful of commands and shortcuts in AutoCAD that you should have memorized and the ability to type one-handed while working in AutoCAD this is going to save you a ton of time and keep your drawing efficient let's get started and Jump Right In [Music] so as I mentioned drafting an AutoCAD a lot of your productivity comes from memorizing shortcuts and quick commands through the command line down at the bottom here you can type these in with your left hand while moving your right hand using the mouse not keep having to take your most hand off and go back to the keyboard I.E having these memorized and being able to type them one-handed is going to make your process so much quicker and you can definitely see when someone's used AutoCAD for multiple years how fluently they can type these commands in as they're working so first up let's take a look at a handful of kind of short codes or shortcuts that are going to access some useful functions within the software first up a few of my favorites would be control and one this is going to bring up the properties menu so again just hold down control and tap the one key this is going to bring up properties for you and it's going to save you time when you've got say something selected and you want to bring up that properties menu control and one is going to do that for you similarly control and 2 is going to bring up something called The Design Center or ADC this is going to allow you to copy and move things like blocks Styles layers layouts between drawings simply going to one drawing that you'd like to copy things from and right clicking you can add it to your existing drawing again that's Ctrl and 2 to bring up Design Center and if you haven't used Design Center I've got videos on that on my channel also put a link down below where you can learn how to copy things from drawing to drawing using Design Center similarly what before we move on to the next quick commands and shortcuts Ctrl and 3 is going to bring up your tool palette and this can be a big Time Saver if you're using Custom Tool palettes I've also got a video on creating quick Custom Tool palettes to save you time in AutoCAD and again hitting that control and four this time is going to open up the sheet set manager now all four of these quick commands are going to be used depending on the type of drawings you're working on and what type of work you do if you don't use tool palettes or sheet sets those two won't be as helpful but I can guarantee you that control 2 for Design Center and control 1 for properties is going to save you a ton of time over the course of a drafting career alright so moving on we're going to get into some of the short codes or Alias commands that you're going to want to have memorized and be able to type with that left hand without looking now before we jump into the next next few tips I wanted to say if you like these tips or you want to learn more about AutoCAD whether that's the fundamentals or tips and tricks I have a course available for instant download you can click on the link up above and down below to check out more information on those the links are discounted for viewers such as yourself in it I've packed over a decade of my experience using AutoCAD and civil 3D to share as much as I could about different workflows and tips of using AutoCAD everything from setting up drawing templates and layers all the way to creating plans x-refing drawings in how to package and send drawings creating text annotative scaling all of that is in the course and much more again you can check it out at the link up above and down below where I go into more detail of what's included and again those links are discounted for viewers such as yourself now again you're always going to be able to start typing a command in the command line at the bottom here and see things get Auto filled or Auto completed for you so if you ever don't know a command just start typing something out that you think is where you want to go and it's going to autofill those in but for ones that you can quickly type in m a is your match properties so this is going to match the properties between one object to the other object starting with the one you'd like to copy from and then the object you'd like to copy to so again M A and enter is going to start the match properties command another great one to use is p e for polyline edit and you can see here if I've got a polyline drawn and type in PE enter it's going to ask me to select a polyline and then I can choose all of the typical P edit commands which would be edit vertex fit D curve line type generation reverse align close Etc next up if you didn't catch that I typed in PL to create a polyline so PL and enter is going to start the polyline command this is one you're going to use a ton and TR for trim is going to allow you to trim these you just simply select the objects after typing in TR and hitting enter hit enter again and you can start by trimming things away next up you can see I've got this irregularly shaped polygon over here if I wanted to hatch that you can simply type in h for hatch to bring up the hatch ribbon panel up here another one that's super useful is D and I for distance hitting that and typing enter is going to allow you to select any two points to get a distance down in the command line here it's going to give you your Delta as well as the total distance if you make this a little bit taller here you can see the total distance is 41 feet 5 inches and five and three quarters inches now these are just a few quick text commands but as I mentioned you can start typing in any command and it's going to pop up in the autocomplete and hitting enter at that point is going to activate the command for you so some of the ones that I like to use for that would be n which is going to start your nested copy command hitting enter is going to start that command and then you can select objects that are within an x-ref or within a block and it's going to allow you to copy them into your existing or current model space rather than being in say an xref same goes for S if you type in s you're going to get the stretch Command right off the bat and Q is going to get you the quick save command so this is one to remember type Q and wait for it to autocomplete which is typically half a second and hit enter to cue save or quick save your drawing now if you'd like to go and say copy objects from one drawing to another you can simply select them and use the copy with a base Point command so that would be Ctrl shift and c and then it's going to ask you for a base point if you'd like them to be in the exact same position in both drawings use the base point 0 comma zero and now it's copied to your clipboard with that point in mind going to a new blank drawing and using Ctrl and V to paste and then the base point of zero comma zero is going to place it in the right spot now another Quick Command or shortcut that you're going to want to remember is z e enter e enter and that zooms to the extents of everything in your drawing you can see that our line work is now in this new drawing in the right location compared to the original drawing now before I let you go a few more quick commands that you'll probably want to memorize and have ready with that left hand would be say Co for copy that's a helpful one Ro for rotate XR for xrefs or external references and pu for Purge which is one that I've mentioned a few times which can be helpful to clean up your drawings of any unused layers blocks line types and styles I like to purge my drawings when I'm finished with them or before I send them out just so you're not sending out anything extra that you don't need to and it keeps your drawing size a little bit smaller now I hope these shortcuts and quick commands helped you if you have any favorite quick commands or shortcuts make sure you leave them down below in the comments for everybody else to enjoy and start using and let me know what you'd like to see in the next one don't forget to hit that subscribe and like button and cheers I'll see you in the next one bye

Channel: CAD Intentions w/Brandon

Views: 73,442

Keywords: cadintentions, autocad, autocad 2019, autocad 2020, autocad tips and trics, autocad tricks and tips 2019, how to work fast in autocad, autocad 2020 new features, autocad shortcut keys, autocad shortcut commands, autocad command list, autocad tricks, autocad basic commands, autocad advance tricks, autocad important commands, autocad useful commands, autocad tutorials, autocad most useful commands, autocad expert, autocad join lines, autocad fix linetype, autocad trim lines

Id: uNCzSTOu26Y

Length: 9min 6sec (546 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 22 2022