AutoCAD Basic Tutorial for Beginners - Part 1 of 3

hello and welcome to source cad in this three-part video series i will introduce you to autocad software so this tutorial series is for a complete beginner in autocad who has absolutely no knowledge of this software whatsoever so in this autocad beginner series of videos i will start with the basics and i'll introduce you with the user interface and setting units and working with commands then later on we'll move to making basic drawings using draw and modify tools and then we'll learn about tools that let you make precise drawings like object snaps further we'll move into some drawing management tools like layers then we'll talk about blocks which are symbols in autocad and then we'll talk about making dimensions and finally we'll print our drawing so all these things in just this three part autocad tutorial for beginner series so let's get started [Music] so in this first part we'll learn about making the basic drawing now when you start autocad for the very first time this is how your interface is going to look like it also depends on the software which you are using and its version autocad as of now comes in two different variants it has autocad complete version which is called autodesk autocad 2020 in this case because it's the 2020 version which i'm using and the second one is autodesk autocad lt the lt version is the lighter version of autocad which has limited set of features although all the basic features are similar in both the softwares is still some advanced features like 3d tools and sheet sets are not available in autocad lt apart from that everything is same for autocad as well as autocad lte including the user interface now i am using autocad for windows here but if you are a mac user you will find the user interface little different although functionally they are exactly the same the tools commands and everything is exactly the same they'll work in a similar way but the user interface will be different and you may have to figure out the place where some of these tools are in the mac environment but if you're using windows well you're good to go with this tutorial now this is the start screen of autocad software and to start a new drawing all you need to do is just select the start drawing box here and it will start a new tab so now here we have different parts of the autocad software the first one is application button on the top left which has all the frequently used tools the quick access toolbar again similar set of tools on quick access toolbar then we have the tabs and the ribbon area on this ribbon area we have tabs like home insert annotate parametric and so on and on these tabs we have the panels and on these panels we have the tools and commands to activate any command all you need to do is just click on its icon and the command will start also you can use the command alias which is also called the shortcut for the command for example if you want to start line command you can just click here or you can use its command alias l so you can just type l press enter to start the line command now this is the drawing area on which everything is actually drawn in autocad and then we have right beneath this drawing area the command bar or the command line or the command palette whatever you want to call it and finally we have the status bar toggles right here these are status bar toggles help us in making precise drawings in articad we'll talk about that also so let's first make our very first drawing quickly for that i'll go to line tool and i'll just left click now when you do that you'll notice that your cursor will look like this two intersecting lines this type of cursor is called point selection cursor also right next to cursor you'll see this kind of tool tip now if you have this kind of tool tape that's fine this is called dynamic input tooltip if you don't that's also fine you can bring it using f12 function key so press f12 if you don't have it and if you have it don't press f12 key now in this case i will not use this dynamic input so i'm gonna press f12 just to make it disappear and now we have this empty cursor now we need to start with the first point as you can see here on the command line the instruction is clear you need to specify first point so click at a point and that's going to be your first point now click again and that will be the second point click again third point click again fourth point all right and here we have the very first drawing once you have finished making your drawing press enter to exit from the command because after making line your command will still remain active so now let's talk about the navigation tools so here we have the simple triangle now if you want to navigate in your drawing if you want to move this triangle around then you can do that using your middle mouse wheel so inaudible to use a three button mouse the left click right click in the middle mouse wheel these buttons should be there and to move this drawing all you need to do is press and hold the middle mouse wheel when you do that your cursor will change to this hand icon now move your mouse and the whole drawing will move along with it don't let go your mouse just move it like this now let go your mouse wheel and if you move it only your cursor will move now now if you move your cursor to any point and then rotate your mouse wheel it will zoom in your drawing in the opposite direction it will zoom out also the point where you put your cursor will become the point which will be zoomed in or zoomed out to select anything in your drawing all you need to do is just click on it and that object will be selected to deselect anything press escape key and it will deselect your selection or it will just remove everything from your selection set also to exit any command you can press escape key and you can press escape key couple of times it won't make any difference now before moving on i'm going to make another drawing here i'll just make a circle so i'll go to circle i'll click at a point and i'll click at another point so now we have a triangle and a circle so if you want to select anything in autocad as i mentioned earlier you can select it using this left click so hover your cursor over the boundary and left click it will be selected that's easy but if you have a lot of objects in your drawing and if you want to make that kind of selection then you can use the windows so click at a point and let go your cursor then move your mouse to the right and you're gonna get this window this window this solid window is called selection window and everything which is completely inside this window will be selected in this case the circle is selected as it is completely inside this window now if i click here and i'll move to this side i'm gonna get this window which is the solid window and everything which is inside the window will be selected now the second window is crossing window and for this click let go your cursor don't click and hold your cursor just click and let go now move your mouse to the left and you're gonna get this dashed window which is also called the crossing window in this case any object which even touches the boundary of this crossing window will be selected so in this case the circle and two lines of the triangle they are simply touching it they're not completely inside and if you click they'll still be selected like this so i'll press escape to get rid of this selection and then we have the third kind of selection set which is called the lasso selection so press and hold your left click now move your mouse and you're gonna get this kind of lasso selection so if you press and hold you'll get this lasso selection if you press your left click let go you'll get this window selection that's it now let's move to the units and for that i'll delete this drawing so i'll make the window and delete so before you begin any drawing the first and the basic thing that you would want to do is set the proper units to set the unit type un and if you type anything in autocad it will always type that in the command line you don't actually need to click here in the command line and then type anything you just need to start typing and it will type the commands directly here on the command line so i've got unit so u n i'll press enter and the drawing units window will pop up now here we have the unit option it is right now set to millimeters i'll change it to inches you can select from any of these units and if you don't want any of these units then you can also select unit less which will not select any kind of unit for this but in this case i will select inches for the unit now for the length type you can select decimal if you want it in this kind of format in the decimal format so in this decimal format if you type 4 it will be 4 inches if you type 5 it will be 5 if you type 12 it will be 12 inches and so on but if you want a proper fit and inch format you can select architectural and now you'll get your output in the form of feet and inches and now in this case if you type 4 it will be 4 inches if you type 5 it will be 5 inches but if you type 12 it will now change to 1 feet which is obviously equal to 12 inches so you can directly type the inch value or you can also type the feet values in this architectural format so for now i'll go to decimal i'll click on ok and now we're using inches as our unit now let's talk about making the first set of drawing and we'll do that using line tool so you can click here to select the line command or you can also use its command alias l so i'll type l and press enter to start the line command now we need to start from a point as you can see here the instruction says you need to start from point so i'll just click here and now i'll move my cursor to the right when you do that autocad will show you this tooltip on which you'll see the approximate length of the line in this case it's 1719.8058 unit so that's pretty big let's make a line of length 100 units so i'm going to type 100 and press enter and we'll have a line of length 100 unit which is pretty tiny here so let's zoom in and i'll pan my drawing to bring it at the center and here it is it's 100 unit now i'll move it to the top and we have this green tracking vector which indicates that this line is perfectly vertical then i'll type 50 and enter and we have the second line of length 50 then you can again go to the left side or any other direction which you want type in the value for example maybe 120 and enter and you can even align it in any direction if you want so i'm gonna align it here i'll type 60 enter and so on so you can keep on making your lines by entering the proper distances and it will just make your line that way also in this case if you want to add angle values then that also you can do pretty easily so in this case let's just make another line of length hundred so i'm going to go to 100 and enter now this length is again 100 and now from here i want it to incline at an angle of exactly 30 degrees so now instead of typing 3 0 30 i'm gonna type this angle sign now this angle sign is on your keyboard it's right next to the m key so just press shift key press and hold shift key and then press the angle sign key and it will add the angle sign now type in 30 and press enter and autocad will now take this value as angle not as distance so if you move your cursor now you're going to see angle override here which is now set to 30 unit so if you now move your cursor the length will change here but not the angle so all you need to do is now type in the length so maybe i'll type 50 enter and here it is so now the length of this line is 50 and it is inclined to an angle of 30 degrees with respect to positive side of x-axis now to exit the command press enter key and this was the line tool now in this case i specified the angle right here using the line command but there is an option that can help you do this pretty easily as well so for that i'll once again go to line tool and now on the status bar i have this option here called polar tracking now this polar tracking will help you specify any angle that you want so i'm gonna now click on this arrow which is right next to polar tracking and the angle currently set is 90 degrees i'll change it to 30 multiples so 30 60 90 120 and so on now i'll click at a point and i'll move my cursor to the right and you can see that i have an angle this green line at an angle of 0 degrees now if i move it in any direction it will show the green tracking line at the interval of 30 degrees so we have it at 30 then 60 then 90 then 120 and so on so this will also help you in making lines at any particular angle so here also your line is kind of logged to 60 degrees and all you need to do is just type in the length so 60 enter and enter so the angle is 60 and so is the length to return it back to normal i'll change it back to 90. now if you have selected the angles make sure you also keep this active so this is active as you can see it's blue in color but if you click on it again it will be deactivated like this and the activated status bar option look like this so make sure it is active if you want to use it now you can also force your lines to 90 degree angles or the multiple of 90s using this tool this is auto mode if you select this autocad will only let you make your drawings at the multiples of 90 degrees so now if i click here i will be able to make line here horizontal or vertical i won't be able to make my line in any other direction so look at this no matter where my cursor is i'll still end up with horizontal or vertical lines just because of ortho mode so i'll switch back to polar tracking and the ortho mode will automatically disable now let's talk about another method which can help you make drawings again pretty easily and that is dynamic input so if i go to line command and if i start it you'll notice that i only have the cursor here but if you press f12 function key you'll end up with these extra tool tips now this is the dynamic input feature and right now on my status bar i have it here so you can just click here to activate or deactivate it or you can also use its function key f12 so now i've deactivated it's no longer visible now if you don't have this kind of feature on your status bar then go to customization this three dash line and activate dynamic input so this should be checked if it is checked the dynamic input will show up here and then you can activate it once active you'll have it like this now click at a point and this time you'll have the length as well as angle and you can directly type in the values so in this case maybe let's make a line of length 200 so i'll type 200 and i'll press tab key now the length will be locked and you can add the angle value so let's type 45 for the angle and i'll press enter and there we have it so 200 length and the angle is 45 in a similar way you can just keep on making lines with the proper angles and the length and you have the visual reference as well so this one is pretty handy tool if you want to use it for making your drawing so again 150 now this angle is maybe let's make it 30 and enter and so on to exit this once again i'll press enter so these are the basic modes of making drawing in autocad in the next video we'll talk about other draw and modify tools and we'll make a very simple drawing using those draw and modify tools [Music] you

Channel: SourceCAD

Views: 2,488,689

Rating: 4.9301162 out of 5

Keywords: autocad for beginners, Autocad complete tutorial, autocad basics

Id: cmR9cfWJRUU

Length: 17min 36sec (1056 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 20 2019