Autocad - Complete course for beginners

Hello friends my name is Fabio and welcome to this complete course for beginners in AutoCAD this video is intended for Learners that are using the software for the first time but as you can see it has 4 hours of length here we will have time to explore all the basics and get deeper in some topics that I find useful to learn in fact this video is a compilation of three tutorials that I decided to put them all together in just one as I know that some users prefer to learn with the full content in only one video but of course in the case you prefer to watch them separately please find the links in the description of this video then you will notice that in this video I'm using the versions AutoCAD 2020 and the version 2022 in the last tutorial of the course but don't worry in the case you have a different version even if it is a bit older that's not going to be an issue because I will conduct a lesson in a way that works for all now it's time to start [Music] okay this is the AutoCAD default display which consists in different areas above at the left you find the application icon this is the menu where I can open a new document open a file or do operations regarding saving or exporting a file then the main part at the top is called the ribbon there you find the majority of tools you will need during the program right above so you can find these steps which group the buttons in different categories for example the current one is the Home tab which has the most used icons if you switch to the insert tab I find in this case icons related to this category then inside the specific tab the icons are subgrouped in panels for example in the in the Home tab the first panel have the icons which can perform drawing actions in the second panel they are related to modifying objects and on the third panel are The annotation icons additionally when you click in a panel that has an arrow facing down it shows extra icons which are used less often has a diagonal Arrow at the right I can access to the settings window of this category now let's show you how to use tools in AutoCAD for example imagine I want to draw a line as you may guess I can click in the icon here I go to the workspace I click for the first point and then where I want the second point I click again simple then I'm going to repeat the process but this time I want you to pay attention to this the command bar this shows the operations that are taking place during the project I will show you I click again in the line icon and you can notice here line specify first point the first words which appears in capitals is the command name in this case line then that's the prompt sentence which tells me what I should do next though I click here to specify the first point then it asks to specify next Point click again as you see I just draw a line but it keeps asking for specifying another point it would draw a new line as I don't want I can press escape to exit the line command in conclusion to perform any action in AutoCAD I can type its command name for example I type line and press enter and I can draw a line then press the button escape to leave the command now I want to draw a circle I can click in its icon or type the command name which is circle additionally each command has a shortcut called Alias so I don't need to type its full name for example L is the shortcut for the command line and C is a shortcut for Circle during this tutorial each time I introduce a new command I make an annotation at the left part of the screen showing the command name the Alias and its location on the ribbon this way of inserting commands makes AutoCAD easy to switch from different versions if for any reason I'm going to a computer that has AutoCAD 2007 which had a different display than this one I can still work with no problems because the command names and their shortcuts are the same of course some functions were not available in that time but almost all the basics didn't change the same applies to the version in Mac even AutoCAD 2020 there has a different display the icons are in different places you can just type the command names and don't need to worry to find them out on the screen how to use the mouse in the workspace having a mouse is very important for working in AutoCAD as it's much more comfortable than using just a touchpad especially for zooming or moving the workspace area let's see the functions of the mouse buttons here I attach this image to help you most wheel with the mouse wheel I can zoom the workspace it's very simple if I scroll up I zoom in if I scroll down I zoom out the zooming always applies to the exact location of the pointer for example in this situation if you want to zoom these objects I need to move the pointer over them scroll up and you notice they are filling all the screen simple to move the workspace area press and hold the wheel when you see this hand you can move around left button clicking with the left button I can select objects like this circle if I want to select the circle and the line I can click first in one then in the second without pressing the Ctrl key unlike other programs but now imagine you have a bunch of objects to select it could take a long time to select them all for that reason if I click in an empty space a selection area opens this allows me to select more than one object however this is important there are two kinds of selection if I open the area to the right the color is blue if I open to the left the area appears in green color what's the difference when I open to the right blue color I have to cover the entire object to select it if I would open to the left green color it's enough if I only cover one part also you can understand if the object is going to be selected when you see it turning bold now the right button the right button opens this panel with several options you can choose but when you select an object and right click you can access for example to its properties I click it's a long list over here I'm going to close it however there is a compact version of properties quick properties which contains the most important features for this line you can see the object type line color layer line type and length by the way in the quick properties of this circle some of the topics didn't pop up for the line as they are more relevant for circles like the diameter radius or area in this capture I'm going to teach you to draw lines properly the line is probably the most basic tool and the one you will use most of the time before I showed how to draw a line but without any specified length or Direction I mean if it's horizontal vertical or if it makes an angle with the x-axis for example that's exactly what you will learn the next few minutes draw a horizontal line to draw a horizontal line I need to activate first the command line I can click on the icon there or type the command name as you remember from the first capture or I can simply Type L it's the Alias for line and press enter I click anywhere on the workspace for the start point then I'll drag the cursor to the right and you can notice the Stars green line with this label saying polar and 0 degrees if I click right now the line becomes completely horizontal this happens because I have the polar tracking turned on this icon located in the status bar the polar tracking allows the cursor snapping to certain angles by default these angles are set for 0 degrees 90 degrees 180 degrees and 270 degrees making the lines vertical and horizontal now look what would happen if the polar tracking is off click on the icon it's disabled now then I'm going to draw a line again Type L press enter click for placing the start point then as I'm trying to draw a horizontal line I realize that the dashed green line is not there that means when I click even the line Looks horizontal there will always be a slight deviation so I strongly suggest you to use the polar tracking whenever you are making precise drawings draw a line with specific length this time I'm going to draw again the horizontal line but with a precise length of 100 it doesn't matter the units for now as the last command used was line I can press enter to revert to the previous one look it turned on again the command I click I move horizontally to the right now that the line is on the direction I desire I can type 100 and press enter easy you just drew a horizontal line with a length of 100. but be aware when I type the length I cannot change the direction anymore see I move the mouse and nothing happens so if it's not on the direction you want you can press Escape now I can make it vertical for example insert the length again and press enter to confirm this I click on the line right click go to Quick properties and here you have it length 100. Ursa mode if I want to draw only orthogonal lines I can click on the icon also mode restrict cursor orthogonally then when I'm drawing a line I can only make it horizontal or vertical this can be useful if I'm at a part of a project where I just need those type of lines like in the example here now let's draw this line here with 70f lengths but with a 30 degrees angle from the x-axis which you can check looking at the UCS coordinates they are by default located at the left corner of the screen here so I draw again a line start point I type 70 but this time instead of pushing enter I press the button tab the one above the caps lock with this way I locked the length but I can choose the direction I placed a pointer more or less here type 30 and press enter as you see it's quite simple then look at these different situation the line makes the same angle but in the opposite direction I do the same as before type the length then look at this label showing the current angle while I'm moving the cursor around it's increasing until I reach half circle 180 degrees then it decreases as now it's showing the other side angle basically if I'm below the x-axis and type 30 the angle starts again in the same place but in a clockwise Direction next to the line icon is the polyline a polyline is a connect sequence of lines created as a single object for example let's draw this exercise here I click in polyline choose a start point to draw the first line go up and make sure you have the polar mode switched on type 20 press enter then to the right I Type 25 press enter again and finally vertically down this is important always click when the polar tracking is on the screen type 20 again press enter and Escape so if I click in the polyline it selects the full sequence as you see although I could use the command line to draw the same example all the lines would be considered as separate objects now that you know the basics to draw lines I want to introduce to you a very important function in AutoCAD the object snap this will allow us to make our drawings with the maximum precision take a look at the next example let's draw it I can use either line or polyline command I choose polyline I'm going to type its shortcut PL OT the first line then the vertical one as there is no line to continue here I press Escape now the third line has to be connected to this intersection I turn on the command line I move the cursor near the left end of this line and look at this green square appearing here saying endpoint the same happens when I go to the other side you can see it again if I click right now the next line starts automatically from that point and it means the three lines are now connected to each other Type 25 and press enter those green squares only appear because the object snap is active it's this icon at the status bar at the arrow just next I can see the modes that are currently active see here the end point which is an extremity everline segment now I'm going to introduce you also the midpoint first I'm going to click in it because it's not active then I want to draw a line from the middle point of this one I activate the command line C this triangle indicates the midpoint I click now and the next line starts exactly from there object snap tracking this is a very useful function and I will explain it with an example because I think it's easier to understand we have this example here and we want to draw this line which is located at a distance of 30 from the right I turn on the command line place the cursor on this endpoint drag left slowly so that I see this label that says extension in this moment if I type 30 the new line starts with that distance from the end point it's simple and with this we can avoid drawing extra lines then you just need to draw the remaining objects to connect this line with the rectangle below drag it down until I see this cross here now click and press Escape another way to use object snap tracking can be when I'm drawing this rectangle I can draw an extension line up from this point until I intersect the polar tracking of the line I'm making like this so this kind of things are very interesting to play around now you need to make a bit of practice to strengthen the knowledge you got in this video for that reason I prepared these exercises for you you can get them in PDF by clicking on the link available in the description part 2. I am going to explain to you briefly more drawing commands rectangle a rectangle is in reality a polyline it's just a faster way to draw this kind of objects as I just need to specify two points I'm going to show you the command is this one specify the first point and then I only need the opposite corner I can simply click to place it or insert a coordinates regarding the first point that's where I'm going to do the first blank is for the x-axis type 40. then I press tab to switch to the second coordinate this one is for the y-axis type 20 and press enter again in fact what I have done was inserting the length and the width simple however as I still have to take into consideration that UCS coordinates sometimes the values might be negative let's suppose I draw another rectangle but with the start point the x coordinates would be -40. click for the start point then type -40 press tab and that's the Y coordinates are positive I type 20. here you have the result Circle to insert a circle in AutoCAD I can click in this icon as I believe you guessed then just follow the prompts to draw the example here specify center point of the circle OK I click anywhere then specify radius of circle it is 20. I type that value and press enter let's do the next now check out this tip as I want to use again the command circle press enter the system automatically reactivates the previous action this is very important to know it saves time I am going to draw the same Circle again now look to the prompt at the command bar specify radius of circle or diameter so instead of typing a radius I can switch to typing a diameter I do it by clicking on it or simply type the first letter d then press enter as I'm drawing the same Circle the value is 2 times the radius 40. press enter again okay this is just one of the several ways to insert a circle if I click on the Arrow below the icon you can see all these options available that depends the situation that you are drawing Arc an arc is a section of a circle and like the previous command there is an arrow below the icon with different ways of specifying points I'm going to draw the Arc of this example above and the best option here is inserting the start point then the center and finally the end point by default AutoCAD draws The Arc in the clockwise Direction let's click on the Arrow then find Start Center end click on the end point of this line for the start point the center is the intersection between both lines and finally the end point is this one see how the arc is being drawn clockwise modifying objects until this moment I taught you the most used commands to draw in AutoCAD in this section I will introduce to you commands that will help you in modifying objects and to be more effective while drawing I'm going to start with the basic ones move to move an object to a different place for example want to move the small rectangle to a distance of 60 to the right click on the icon select a rectangle press enter specify a point from where I want to move the object then I move to the right horizontally and type the distance of 60. press enter in the following example I want to move the rectangle to the other box which is located at the same distance from the corner as here I activate move again I select the object press enter but this time the base point it's going to be the corner then I click in the next corner to move it there copy this command works in the same way as the command move I'm going to copy the object to the first rectangle I use this base point then I can copy it in this intersection then I realize I can keep copying the object the number of times I want do you see it's very nice this and when I'm done I press Escape rotate to rotate objects I can use this command let's see how it works I click on the icon select the objects press enter then I choose a base point where the objects can rotate around it as the bullet tracking is on I'm going to rotate them 90 degrees to this side another situation the same objects are in this position if I try to rotate them back to the position they were before the polar tracking doesn't work this time however I can use a different way if you look to the prompt there is an option that says reference to use it I can either click on it with the mouse or type R usually the first letter is enough after I can specify a reference angle or draw a reference line let's draw a reference line I prefer this click here for the first point then for the second point I choose this endpoint finally I can rotate until the polar tracking appears now look at this polyline with the command offset I can inscribe that polyline inside with a specific distance that distance is called offset distance and it has a length of 10 in this example let's do it the icon of set is this one clicking it then for specify offset distance I type 10. select the polyline I move the pointer inside and click there to draw the new polyline by the way if I click outside the area the new polyline offsets outside the original one the command of set can also be applied to lines if I have this line and apply offset to it a new line shows up parallel to the first one now I want to show you a situation that happens to a lot of people I'm going to draw a rectangle with a command line then I want to offset the lines like before I type O to activate a command specify the distance of 10. and when I click to offset I realize I can only click on one line at a time and the result is different than when I applied to poly lines however I can easily merge lines in a polyline there is a command for it join I type join or I can still find the icon on the modify panel here it's very simple select the lines to merge and press enter as you see now I have a polyline finally if I do offset again the result will be identical as my first example commentary in AutoCAD we often need to cut parts of objects we have drawn before for that we can use the command trim let's check out how it works I'm going to start with a very simple example we have these lines and I want to erase this segment I click on the command trim is located there select both lines press enter then if I drag the pointer over here the screen shows that this part will be erased the same happens when I move the pointer to the other segments I click on this one and you see it disappearing it's done to leave the command press enter or Escape look to this example this time we have three lines I turn on trim again select all the objects and then I can erase any segment between any intersection as you see now suppose I want to erase all this part of the horizontal line turn on trim the vertical line on the right I don't need to select just the other two press enter and when I'm going to click on this line it erases everything from the intersection of the lines I have selected to the right maybe for this situation this didn't make a big difference but look at this case here I want to delete all this part of the line if I select everything then I need to erase one by one it takes a long time so it's better to only select the lines I'm going to use like this of course I can use stream not only for lines it works for other kinds of objects for example I want to change this drawing to that one I activate stream select everything press enter and finally click on the parts to erase extend this command is used to extend lines in the example here I want to extend this line to intersect the vertical line on the left I am going to click on the Arrow located next to the command trim then I select extend first I have to select not the line that I want to extend but the one where the extended lines will connect so it's this one press enter then I select the line to extend to extend the line to the left I have to click on the left half in order to work look if I drag the pointer over the right half nothing happens I go slowly to the left and after passing the middle the extension appears again I click and press enter in this example I want to extend all the vertical lines on both sides I type EX press enter select both horizontal lines press enter again to extend the lines up I can open a selection area to cover the upper part of all vertical lines I click then I do the same for the part below to extend the lines down when I finish I press enter to exit the command of course in this situation there is a faster proceedment by opening an area that covers both line sites that extends both parts in just one step mirror with this command we can copy objects symmetrically this is how it looks also when we need to make a symmetrical drawing we can just draw half of it and then use mirror in order to complete the process without spending time in drawing let's see how the command Mirror Works for these objects click on the icon select everything and press enter then the prompt asks me to draw a mirror line I'm going to insert the first point at a distance of 20 from the objects I Hove the mouse over this endpoint move right type 20 and press enter I'm going to draw the line vertically and you can see everything reflected as a mirror I click for the second point now the prompt sentence says erase Source objects I choose now to keep the original ones notice that all lengths are kept including the distance between the objects and the mirror line now check out these considerations about command mirror it doesn't matter the length of the mirror line just the direction as you can see if I draw a long vertical line the result is the same only if I rotate it the objects are placed differently to make a symmetrical drawing I just need to draw half of it because if I draw a vertical mirror line in this end point the new mirrored objects connect to the original ones it's simple sometimes I don't want the original objects in the option erase Source objects I choose yes that's the result editing objects using grips the blue icons that show up when I select an object are called grips and they allow me to edit it when I select the line there are three groups if I click in one at extremity I can change the position of that point keeping the other end in the same place if I click on the grip in the middle I can move the line without changing the length and direction now let's see some editing tips change the line length by moving one of the ends I'm going to click on this icon I drag left I'm going to type 10 and the line length increases to 80. of course this also works if I want to make the line shorter click again this time I drag right type 10 and the line returns to its previous size to type a new length to the line I click on the grip drag left and this time I press the button tab and the input switches to the full length I am going to insert 120. then let's check out how grapes work on polylines the end grips of each line Works in identical way I click on this one to change its position and you can see all the other vertexes don't move of course this may cause me to deform the polyline now unlike the lines the grip on the middle has a rectangular shape I'm going to click on one and I can move that full line then the rest of the polyline has to adapt to its new position for example I move right type 10 and you can notice this line increases 10 of its total length so we reached the end of the second part of this tutorial now I prepared more exercises for you in order to practice what you have learned here the link is in the description of the video after don't miss the third part of this course as I will keep teaching very important features for beginners as setup units work with layers platter drawing and more part three until here I taught you commands to draw objects and modify them but I haven't mentioned any units for the dimensions when I was drawing lines I said draw a line with dimensioner 50 or 100. I didn't say if it was meters millimeters inches or feet but I'm going to talk about this now first of all AutoCAD uses a dimensional units this means that it's up to me to decide what is the unit of a line that has length of 2050 or 100. it's very simple let's suppose I want to make a project in millimeters that's the unit I usually work with I want to insert a line with five millimeters of length I draw the line as usual and when I want to set up the length I type 5. then I'm going to insert a line that measures 1 meter I do the same but this time for the length I type 1000 because as you may know one meter is one thousand millimeters now let's go to the unit properties window I type units and press enter here on the length section at the left you can choose the format for units of measure if you work in millimeters or meters you should use decimal units instead in some countries it's more common to use inches and feet in this case engineering or architectural units are more suitable below you can set the Precision in this drawing I consider the units millimeters and I don't need decimals so I choose the first option at the angle side I can choose the units for angles most of the time I use test symbol degrees but there are others here that could eventually be more suitable for you the units in insertion scale are used only when I insert objects or drawings from a different file usually when we start learning AutoCAD I don't need to insert anything external but in my opinion it's better to specify the unit I click on millimeters when I finish I click on OK to exit foreign layers is how AutoCAD organizes objects for example have a look to this file here I have two floor plans it's a proposal for converting offices in Flats so instead of having the objects all together I decided to organize them in different layers I am going to click on this icon to open the layer properties manager here you can see that I created layers to group different categories of objects for example I placed the windows in one layer the walls in another and I did the same for the doors text labels and so on there are also other advantages in using layers I can set up specific colors to to distinguish them another thing for easy access I can drag this window to the left and then I click on this icon to hide it automatically then I just need to drag over the tab to see the layers now I am going to explain to you how we can work with layers and tell you some considerations new layer if I want to create a new layer I click on a blank space on this window with the right button then I click on new layer then I can set up a name for the new layer for example stairs and if I click on the color for example I can change it to the one that I want I'm going to choose this yellow under line type I have a continuous line by default however if I click on load I can find several line types dashed lines or other formats clicking on this light I can turn off a layer for example I'm going to turn off the layer doors and you can see those objects disappearing from the screen there is also the mode freeze even it looks like it has the same effect as turning it off freezing a layer releases it from memory you can notice the difference in the performance when you work with very large drawings especially freezing layers that contain loads of 3D objects now suppose that I want to move these objects to the layer stairs I have to select them go to the layer tab and change to stairs you can see that they changed the color then I want to draw a new line in a specific layer first choose the layer and then I can draw the line it's simple always specify the layer before drawing to avoid changing it after isolate layers to isolate the layer I can click on this icon then I click on one object of the layer that I want to isolate this operation locks all the objects inside the other layers meaning that I cannot edit them now this is useful for me to modify objects from this layer text for example I want to move all the text to the left I activate the command move open the selection window to select the objects click for a base Point move left and click again to restore all layers that were locked before I click on the icon right below and isolate layer 0. if I move the pointer over the layer properties you can check here the layer 0. default layer anytime I start a new file in any project I recommend to you to keep this layer without objects there you cannot rename it or delete it however this layer can be useful for creating blocks which is what I'm going to explain on the next section of this video sometimes we draw something that it's easier if it would be a single unit for example a door if we want to copy it I have to select all the objects that compound the door if we convert all these objects to a block they add like a single object so I want to convert this door to a block as it's on the floor plan to be easier to select it I'm going to isolate the layer where the objects are located in click on the icon isolate and click on any object of the door press enter and the layer doors became isolated let's use the command copy now it's very easy to select only the door with the selection area that's because all the other layers are locked press enter and I can copy the door outside the plan creating a block before creating a block I'm going to move these objects to the layer 0. by doing that I can later move the block to the layer I desire and it gets its properties I select the objects and I'm going to click on the icon create a block the block definition window appears here I can set up a base point for the door I choose this corner here back to the window I have to write a name for the block I name it as door when I finish I click on OK so the block is created if I click on any part of the door you can see that this is now a single object now I'm going to change the block to the layer that I want and you can see while I'm scrolling here it changes the color to match the new layer however if I created the block with objects in another layer for example stairs I'm going to create the block then I'm going to change the layer of the block to another one but it keeps the properties of the layer stairs the layer 0 on the other hand means that the objects don't have any layer assigned check out this example add doors to the floor plan as you know I have my new block here with the command copy I can insert them easily in the floor plan I just have to click on the endpoints of these lines a great advantage of using blocks is the ease of modifying them I go to this button that says edit block then I choose the block door I click on OK this is the block editor workspace and also a new tab for editing blocks appeared on the ribbon here I can make all the changes that I want to this block for example I'm going to draw a circle here then I close the block editor and save the changes as you can see all the block references of the black door have a circle inside which can save amounts of time in this section I am going to explain how you can print in AutoCAD I know there are a lot of people struggle with this topic as it's a bit complex but I will explain the most important tips to make it as simple as possible first of all look at the tabs located here the first one that says model is where we can make all the project this workspace seems to have an infinite area so we can make the drawings that we want but of course the larger the file the slower the computer gets the tabs that say layout are used for printing I'm going to layout one here there is a paper with a specific size and these drawings is what we it would be printed to print properly we should specify the paper size that we need I am going to click here with the right button and then click on page setup manager in this window I choose layout 1 and click on modify so here you have the page setup first we should choose the printer by clicking on this tab if we want to save a page in PDF there are several options here regarding the file size and print quality I usually use this one DWG to PDF to change the paper size I have to click on this tab for this case I want A4 this one on drawing orientation I choose between landscape and portrait finally click OK and close to save changes now that we have the paper size we have to decide what we want to print on there on the layout tabs there are two spaces paper and model space we can switch between them here currently we are in the paper space if I play Zoom or move it works for the paper notice this rectangle here where I have the drawings it's a viewport and it's like an access to the project I am going to double click inside and it switches to the model space now if I zoom the paper doesn't move just the objects that I drew as well if I draw a line here it will appear exactly in the same place in the model tab change the size of the viewport I'm going to click on model to switch to the paper space again at this moment I can select a few ports then with the grips I can modify it to cover the entire paper double click to go to the model space now I can zoom in the drawing or put a specific scale for the paper it's here I specify for example one per 100. when I finish I am able to print the drawing click here with the right button and this time I click on plot continue to plot a single sheet here I can click on OK to print or in this case to export the file as a PDF some printing tips hide the viewport when I plot the file the viewport appears by default on the paper if you want to hide it follow the next steps go to the layer properties manager and create a new layer just for the viewport switch to the paper mode click on the viewport and move it to its own layer then go again to the layout properties and freeze the layer you can see that it's not appearing anymore so if you save as a PDF or print the file right now the viewport is not visible have different colors on the viewport the default AutoCAD workspace uses a dark background with a reason to be better for the eyes when working for several hours because of that it is common to use light colors in our project the problem is when we switch to the layout mode the colors can be too light for a white paper for example the doors are a bit hard to see don't worry it's possible to set up different colors for printing first you have to double click on the viewport to switch to the model space go to the layer properties and you can see this column with the label VP color if in your version is not located next to the color tab look at the right end of this table then I'm going to change the color for the layer doors click here and put this one for example now it's much better insert text I am going to explain to you quickly to insert text in AutoCAD it's not hard and there are two types of text single line and multi-line text I will start with single line text first we insert the start point then this line specifies our text height I can either click or specify a distance I'm going to type 100 press enter and then I choose the direction if I want to type horizontal text I need a horizontal line now I can write anything and when I finish I click in a different place to write another text or if I don't want more I can just press enter or Escape now let's see the multi-line text wait the command choose first point and I specify a selection area to fit the text in but just the horizontal length the height of the rectangle doesn't matter then I can write the text I like the single text this this time a temporary tab for editing text appears on the ribbon here I have options for editing a paragraph and much more if I want to change the height I need to select the text and change it here as you know this is very simple to write text in AutoCAD part 4. in this part I'm going to teach how to scale objects how to attach an image to the drawing and apply a scale in order to have the real dimensions how to import a PDF file and this is especially useful when the file was previously created within AutoCAD how to stretch objects and how to fill in closed areas with the command hatch of course as always I like to share some tips with you along with the explanations let's start scale objects let's learn how we can scale objects this command is not hard but you should understand it well if you want to use it properly to turn on the command scale click on the icon it's this one select the objects I want to scale in this case I want to scale the figure on the right choose this base point now there are several modes to scale objects the one by default is to insert a scale factor I am going to type 2 and the lengths of all these lines changed to double size okay I'm going to repeat the process but this time I want to shrink the objects to half size I type SC to activate the command again select the objects but now I don't select the dimension line for the scale factor I insert 0.5 and the lines were convert to half of the length that they used to have previously look that this Dimension line was updated even it was unselected scale with a reference now I'm going to show to you how to insert the scale with a reference I turn on again the command scale and select the objects select the base point looking to the command bar it says specify scale factor or these options copy and reference I'm going to use the shortcut R to use the reference and what I need to do here is draw a reference line and type a new length for it so it's very simple I click for the first point and then I click for the second point finally I type the new length which is 55. and press enter to confirm it use scale to import a PDF or attach an image in AutoCAD it's possible to insert an image to use as a background of a project for example images from Google Earth can be used to draw site plans to attach an image file I go to the inserts tab at the ribbon click on attach and select an image from my computer I choose this one in this window I can set few options here it's important that I click on specify on screen the insertion point otherwise the image is inserted on the coordinates which are specified here okay except if it's exactly what you want I click on OK and now I click for placing the image for the scale factor I'll leave it for now press enter so what happens here most of the time that we insert an image it's not scaled properly for example I have a reference between these two points which is approximately 206.17 meters if I use the distance command I type the I press enter I can notice that the distance here is a bit longer than what it should no problem I can use scale with reference I turn on the command scale select the image by clicking on the border if I click inside the image it doesn't work change the mode to reference and then I draw the line between those two points I will try to make it as accurate as possible now it should be correct ah and I want to share a tip with you always try to use a long reference line because if understand my reference was a short distance after scaling the image tends to be less accurate to import a PDF file I can click on the icon also located on the search tab here I'm going to choose the file of the exercises then the window that opens has a bit more complex options than for attaching images actually this is a very useful function because if I insert a PDF that was previously created in AutoCAD I can recover all the layers and the objects as this PDF has two pages first I need to click on the one that I want to import on PDF data to import itcom Vector geometry to import the lines poly lines circles arcs and so on if I click on true type text text created with a font that has this symbol will be automatically recognized as text in AutoCAD most fonts available are to type so usually this is not a problem here the option below I click on it if I have raster images attached in this case there aren't so I keep it unselected then on the right panel I take on the first option use PDF layers on the panel below you can find more options to add but for now let's click on OK and I am going to insert the file on the project nice now if I go to the layer properties I can see that new layers were created from the PDF and due to the fact that I made this drawing in not a cat the layers are the same from the original DWG file I'm going to check out how the objects look like and you can see here Body Lines among other objects also look how the text was recognized if the text was not on a true type font it would be splitted in very small lines and arcs which wouldn't be so interesting however not everything is perfect the dimension lines are not recognized neither block references which means I have to create them again but in general insert PDF can be very useful just be aware it's only available in the versions after AutoCAD 2017. stretch objects sometimes in AutoCAD we need to stretch figures let's learn how it works first it's important to have in mind that this operation doesn't work for blocks as you can see here I have only lines and polylines let's do it I am going to click on the command stretch it's this icon here then I have to select the parts to actually stretch so I open the selection from the right just until here that I specify this base points as you can see I'm extending and moving objects to this side and as the dementia line was in the selection it is also readjusting now I can click to place the objects exactly how it's on the screen however it's without any kind of precision or type a distance to extend if I type 800 actually I add that value to the original length of 600 and the total is one thousand four hundred the way that the object stretch depend only on the selection even I select a different base point the result is the same let's repeat this again and this time I want to change the selection to cover also design I press enter and you can see the object stretching differently now I want to try to stretch vertically I select the objects press enter and oh it's not as I was expecting but I select all the objects why does the why does this happen when I was doing the selection I kept these sides outside of the selection area and even everything was selected because the external rectangle is a polyline a single object the really important thing here is is what actually I am covering with the area Hearts filling in closed areas in this section I will be talking about a drawing tool which is used to fill in closed areas it's the command hatch but first I am going to create a new layer in this file let's check out if you remember how to do it I go to the properties manager click with the right button and new layer I name it as simply hatch then I'm going to choose a color for it for example this kind of pink okay now I'm going to turn on the command hatch it's located here at the drawing panel wait a few seconds if you want to read the description of this tool sometimes it can be interesting then to apply your hats click on it and I have to click inside an enclosed area it can be any of these rectangles I click to fill this one ah it's in a white color I forgot to change the layer yes when you create a new layer you still need to set it as the current layer before you draw the objects in otherwise it will not work go to the layer Tab and click on Hatch now I see this message appeared the current layer will be turned off what do you want to do for any reason this bulb is Switched Off and if I draw objects on that layer they will not be visible click to turn it on I'm going to repeat the process click on the command hatch and fill that area now it's on the correct layer press enter to confirm then by dragging the mouse over you can see that it's a hatch object now I will show you another way to use hatch I click again here and then instead of pressing enter I feel a different area right away what happened is that both areas are now a single object hot editor above a new tab appeared at a ribbon specialized for editing hatches I'm going to show you briefly the functions here I'm going to click on this button at this panel and you can see a lot of patterns to use here the first one solid is the simplest one it fills the area with just one color I chose for example this now let's have a look at the options at this side on these controls I change the scale look how is the effect on the angle tab above I can rotate the pattern finally on Hatch transparency I add a transparent effect to the objects I want to mention one thing when I first tried to change the scale by clicking on the controls I realized that these values didn't change a lot even if I type a number with decimals it shows just zero when this happens it means that I should go to the unit properties type un and press enter and in this tab I need to set decimals for example two decimal cases then it should work fine part five how to use array with the command array we can copy objects arranged in a pattern there are three different modes rectangular array polar array and path array I start with rectangular array and for that I just need to click on the button that's the mode set by default then I'm going to select these objects and press enter so an array was generated and a special tab on the ribbon has appeared now I can edit this pattern as I wish here I can set the number of columns and rows if I decrease the number of columns for example from 4 to 3 as you can see on the screen the last column is suppressed the array creation I find it very intuitive and I think it's easy to understand the options here while looking to these little drawings there the distance between is the distance from the origin to the beginning of the next element the distance total is from the origin toward the last element starts simple I'm going to change the distance between rows to 200. and look how the pattern moves of course the total distance was updated in order to match to the new distance between lines to exit the array mode I press Escape now if I want to confirm the distances I can use the measure tool or type Di and press enter notice that the vertical length between two elements matches as well as the horizontal length grapes in an array object whenever I select an array you can see the dynamic grips the blue buttons here which I can use them to modify this array for example if I click on this one on the second row I can change the vertical distance between two objects for that I simply type the new length to change the horizontal length on the other hand click on this one if I click on the grid button last row I can add more for example 7. if I click on this side it's the numbering of columns that I can change the grip on the opposite corner changes both rows or columns by dragging the mouse basically these operations can also be performed on the array tab but sometimes it's just more practical with these buttons another useful thing in Array is changing the base point I click on this icon set the new point for example or on the corner and the grips moved with the base point but they perform exactly the same actions let's make a polar array I'm going to draw a small circle with its center located at the boundary of this big one on this side now I can click on the command polar array it's this one there basically what I want is to have this object displayed around I click on it then the center point of array is going to be the center of the bigger Circle and that's the result the program sets 6 circles around by default but like for the rectangular array I can edit this on the top of the ribbon so the array tab for Polar array is a bit different especially the panel items on the first parameter I set the number of items in this case I specify 18 and they cover all the circumference because I have 360 degrees for the fill parameter in between I specify the angle between two items and in this case it's 20 degrees if I try to change the angle to 30 you can notice that it doesn't work because it's not possible to fit 18 items with that spacement let's try 15 degrees so what happened here in order to keep 18 items the angle on fill was updated now it's only 255. grips and polar array and tips the small square on the original item allows me to change the radius of the array I'm going to set for example 50. and this is how it looks like the grip on the center can be used to change the position of the array on the other hand if I click on this little arrow I change the angle between two items let's suppose I want six items the angle to have then distributed equally is 60 degrees however it's possible to increase a bit that angle but the last and first item we stay closer than the others path array the third array mode available in AutoCAD is path array we can copy objects along a line or a curve let's see how it is first I'm going to draw a spline which is a smooth curve I click on the command located here spline fit and I can draw a curve by specifying some points on spline fit the curve crosses exactly the points that I insert when I finish I press enter here by pressing escape and Stat it cancels the command it will not work next I draw a rectangle on the first endpoint of the spline now let's use the path array I click on the icon select the object to copy press enter and then I select my path so I have made it however probably I want to edit the spaceman position a rotation at the command bar you can easily check out that there are several options to edit let's analyze some of them base point the base point will be exactly at the start of the path I click on the option then I change for example the base point to the opposite corner and that is the result the objects moved but without rotating tangent Direction this one is useful if I want for example to have one of the rectangle edges tangent with the Curve I'm going to click on the button tangent Direction then just specify two points and the objects will rotate but now suppose that I want a path to cross the center of the objects I'm going to use the option base point and click on the center of the rectangles hmm But it's not snapping to the center point if this happens to you it means that you should turn on the mode geometrical Center in object snap it's this one now it's going to appear I just need to have the boundary first and click on the center array tab on the ribbon the tab on the ribbon is now specific for path arrays specially the first panel I can change here easily the spacing between total spacing and number of items I think the best way to absorb these things is to Simply practice you can play around with all these options and after a while it will be easier for you explode objects once I create an array all the group is considered a single object now imagine that I want to get rid of the array it doesn't work with just select it and press delete it erases the the old thing as you see what I need is the command explode it basically returns a compound object to its original components it's very easy to use this I click on the command explode select the array and press enter as you see all these are now separate polylines then I can manipulate the objects as my preference consequently I can explode the polyline in separate lines another way to use explode is on blocks hatches and other kind of objects but some of them it doesn't work like text utilities panel let's talk about the utilities panel and I'm going to start with the measure tool there are several ways of measuring as you can see here I start showing you the first one quick measure which is the one set by default when you click on this button for the first time when I move the mouse over the objects some Dimensions appear on the screen and these yellow lines measure vertical and horizontal distances between the closer objects on the other hand if I try to check the dimensions in a circle at the first time it looks a bit confusing all these values here but they just showed the radius of the circle they indicate for example 100 is the radius of the bigger Circle as well as 15 is the radius of the small circle the yellow lines don't measure anything here just don't care about them honestly this quick measure it's not my favorite because even it's true that we can have a lot of information at the same time it can be a bit confusing but of course that is just a personal taste TI can distance I use it a lot as I find it very intuitive it simply measures the linear distance between two points another one which is very easy to use is radius I only need to click on a circle to check it out measure an angle this one is simple I can select two lines to measure the angle between them or I can check out the angle of an arc by clicking on it now let's go to where I was before I want to focus on something when I select the objects to measure the angle this menu appears where I can choose from different types of measures I'm going to click on for example area and with this I can measure the area of the triangle it's very simple I just need to click on all the vertices and press enter at the end then you can see in this box the area and the perimeter but how could I measure the area of a circus since it doesn't have corners I click on the icon then at the command bar I can switch to object I type O and press enter finally I just select the circle quick select on the utilities panel you can find other tools at a small icons at the right the first one above is quick select if I click there I open this window where I can select objects by using filters for example I can specify a type of object or select by color now I will select all the objects with color cyan click on OK and here it is this is the only one in this color other options can be select all the objects of a specific layer or you can select by line type among other options if I click on this icon I select all the objects in the workspace except the ones that are frozen or unlocked layers the button below is the quick calculator actually it's a kind of scientific calculator and there we can do from basic calculations to a bit more complex ones part 6 the final part dimension lines now I am going to teach you how to draw dimension lines this is a classic feature for annotation in your drawings in this video you can see the dimension lines indicating its distances now to draw dimension lines there is a panel on the Home tab here or if we go to The annotation tab we can have all the tools so there are several types of dimension lines whose you can find them by clicking on this Arrow for now let's start with the most common one linear dimension to insert the dimension line I just click on two points then I click again to put the dimension line on the place that I want so it's very simple however this feature is quite complex and we usually have to set up some settings sometimes the dimension lines are not proportional with the sizes of the objects that they measure so I'm going to open the dimension style manager by clicking on this little arrow here I need to choose the dimension style that I want to edit I select standard which is the current one and I click on modify now there are loads of options here but for a beginner the most important is the size of the text and arrows as well as the units go to symbols and arrows tab look for Arrow size and put a value that seems convenient then the size of the text can be changed in the text tab as you see both sizes have a height of 2. to confirm this I can always measure the distance here you can see it's too on primary units tab I can edit the unit format the number of decimals let's change it to 2. and I can add a prefix or a suffix for example suppose that the units here are emitters I can type the symbol m on suffixed to appear after the values like this other types of dimension lines as I showed in the beginning there are more types of dimension lines to use in AutoCAD depending on what we want to measure for example let's measure using the linear Dimension the distance between this point and this one as you see it's measuring either the horizontal distance or the vertical one if I move the pointer this way but this is all fine because I can insert an align dimension with this option I can measure objects that are not located in the Cartesian axis so it's much better as you see angular Dimension now I am going to click on the angular Dimension this one is still simple to use I can measure an angle by clicking in two lines that intersect each other the angle itself I can place in any of the four sides of the intersection plane radius to measure the radius of a circle first I'm going to draw one here then I choose the option to measure the radius and just click on the circle I click again to place the dimension line in this tutorial I want to show you also the arc length I can measure the distance of an arc and yes this only works on arcs if I try to measure the perimeter of a circle nothing happens as you see apart from those Styles there is the automated Dimension which is the icon here it detects automatically what is the most suitable type of dimension in each situation for example if I hope this line This Square appears and I can click on it and I will place the dimension of the length of this line I can do the same for the other lines as you see for measuring an angle I have to choose the option angular and then I can place it like I did previously in a circle the automated Dimension places the diameter by default however I can change to place the radius instead now let's see some tips and peculiarities dim layer on this tab at the panel Dimensions I set the layer where I want the dimension lines in I choose the layer Dimensions as I created this specially form placing the dimension lines however if I switch to the Home tab the current layer is lines and if I draw Dimension line you can see that it goes automatically to the dimension layer snaps on arrows in some versions of AutoCAD like the one that I'm using the system snaps to the end points midpoints geometrical centers on the Arrow shape and this is a bit annoying because usually I only want to snap to the end of the dimension line this point and honestly I haven't figured out yet if there is a way to get rid of those snaps if anyone knows it's welcome to post a comment on this video it would help a lot of people however I'm going to share with you a good way to deal with this on symbols and arrows tab at the dimension style manager click on the first Arrowhead and as you can see on this list there are plenty of them to use but for now I choose known automatically the second Arrowhead is updated to match the first one the result is this it's easier to snap to the end point Additionally the distances extend beyond dimension lines and offset from origin are these ones that I show on the drawing put 0 for both and it's even better I can only snap to the intersection of the line below and to the dimension line end basically you can make all your projects with these settings and just edit the style according to your preferences when you finish the dimensions will be all updated choose the style of Dimension line before drawing whenever we draw a dimension line we should make sure that the desired Dimension style is active for example I'm going to switch to annotative and as you see the settings there are different another thing what I have been teaching during this tutorial are the standard dimension lines all the sizes that we set on the dimension style manager are according to the workspace the annotative dimensions are the Styles which are represented with this icon here the sizes that we set are according to the real size of the dimension lines on the paper that we print however the annotative dimensions is a subject that you will find on a second tutorial which is going to start right away foreign now we are ready to start getting deeper into the program here you will learn very useful tips to improve the knowledge you have already learned here now this tutorial is divided in five parts and you can check them out in the description of the video Let's Start part one let's have a look at the contents organize your working area we can save amounts of time if things are prepared in advance annotative objects by using annotative Dimensions text or blocks you can have those kind of objects with a specific size when you print your files even if you have different scales on your viewports in the layout and finally you will learn to use the zoom command instead of just scrolling the mouse wheel this is especially useful for large files as there are functionalities to zoom specific areas instead of being looking for a specific element forages tips for having a good organization and save time for me it's a very important thing as with spending a couple of hours organizing your layouts and creating personalized templates you will save a lot of time in the future whenever you start a new project save space when using two screens if you have two screens on your computer you can use them as your benefit when working on AutoCAD as you may be familiar sometimes we have to open the layer properties panel or open the external references palette as well as the properties window all are using space on your screen but however if you have a second screen you can play stare at the palettes you often need in AutoCAD for example here I place these ones in a way that I can use them easily all the time and this is important the palettes are still on the same position if you open another file or if you close the AutoCAD program and come back just tomorrow the things will look more organized which is more pleasant to work create a personalized template for your projects let's suppose you need to create architecture projects often and you need floor plan drawings elevations or location plans in addition the scale and the paper size you use most of the time is the same so if that is your case one good way to save time is create a personalized template with everything already set up for example look to this file where I draw this floor plan the layers that I use here probably will be the same or similar in other projects so first I can empty the workspace make sure that all layers are turned on and unlocked then go to select all and press delete now I can save this as a template or saving as a normal DWG file would work fine it's important that you choose a name that you will remember for example project architecture okay I can continue personalizing this file for example editor units and precision if I often use the same units in my projects on the layout tabs I can save loads of time if I have several tabs for floor plans elevations sections and so on I can go to the page setup manager to set the paper size for example A3 and also the printer if it's the same all the time then I can delete the objects here by selecting all make sure I am on the paper space now I'm going to add a new layer called title block and I'm going to draw on the paper a title that can be used on all my drawings as soon as I finish the title block I can create a viewport in this layout I go to the layout tab then I click here to insert a rectangular viewport and draw it on the paper after I double click inside to switch to the model space and set up a scale for it ok suppose that most of the time I use the scale of 1 per 50. I click on it so I don't need to set it all the time when I start a new project then I can rename this layout to ground floor I double click on it and I type the name that I want then to create similar layouts I can right click here then move or copy I select ground floor and tick create a copy then I click on OK and a new tab with the same configuration was created so in a project architecture I can have all these steps for floor plans elevations site plans or location plans and when I'm happy with the template I can save it in my computer on save as click on drawing template and save it with the name that you like I can add a description here also and click on OK basically with this I can save a lot of time when I start a new project annotation in AutoCAD in the next part we will focus how to insert annotative text and dimensions it's simple we just need to play a bit with scales in the workspace the text height that we insert for our text is actually the real size that will be printed for example in layout 1 I want to write text in this viewport with a text height of 0.005 meters the proceedment first check out the scale of the viewports double click inside here and I can see it as 1 per 200. then switch to the model tab on the Home tab go to The annotation panel click on this arrow and switch the first tab to a notative or to a style that has this icon associated change the scale to fit a viewport scale I click on one per 200. create a single line text here the command is up there click for the base point and when you are prompt to insert the height it says here specify paper height I am going to type 0.005 because in this drawing I'm using meters as units type the text and click in a different place then switch again to layout 1 and here you have the text if you print it and check it with the rule it has to measure five millimeters now let's go to another layouts tab this one this time I want to add a text to the viewport where I have the door the scale here is 1 per 16. so going back to the model space let's find the door I'm going to switch the scale to 1 per 16 and let's draw another text this time for the paper height I type 0.01 one centimeter finally I type the text when I switch again to the details tab I can see the text there annotative Dimensions this uses a similar logic as annotative text we want to add this Dimension line with the same five millimeters of text height on the paper go back to the model space first change the current layer to dimensions then click on the Arrow at The annotation panel and then click on the second tab which is the one for dimensions choose an annotative style this one now we have to do a different step we should edit the dimension style first click on this button in this window choose annotative meters and click on modify here I go to the label text and specify 0.005 for the text height then in symbols and errors I can put the same measurement for the arrow line finally I click on OK and close to add the dimension line I change the scale again to fit the viewport scale of 1.200 click on this icon to draw a dimension line and I'm going to place it here when I finish I can go to the layouts tab and here you have the dimension line okay it's too light in a white paper that's no problem I can click inside the viewport go to the layer properties and then in Dimensions I can change the viewport color to a darker one now it's much better annotative blocks now let's check out how we can create annotative blocks they can be useful for some kind of projects where we add symbols that can represent elements for example here suppose we want to add a socket to this project as it's a small element to be seen in the plan we usually represent it as a symbol with a fixed size in order to be easily seen in drawings with different scales in the example here the socket has five millimeters of diameter in the paper back on the model space I'm going to zoom in the object and the first thing I have to to confirm it has the size that I desire oh and don't forget to set the scale as one per one because we are drawing an annotative element otherwise the block will be automatically scaled after being created and I don't think that's what we want so as I want this distance as five millimeters you can see that it's not I have to use the command scale so I type SC lect all the objects press enter I can choose this one as the base point and then instead of a scale factor I have to choose a reference then I select two points for my reference line and then I specify the new length as 5 millimeters oh and just to let you know in this project the unit is millimeter now that our symbol is in the correct scale I'm going to convert it to a block I select all the objects and make sure they are on the layer 0. to create a block I can use the Alias B to open the block definition to create a block I type the name for the block for example socket then we need to tick this box that says annotative I click on OK and I can choose the base point and the block is finally done the next step is to insert a block on the drawing but in the scale of one of the viewports it can be one per 50 one per 100 or 1 per 200th as you can see there I decide to choose one per 50. so on the model space change the scale here to 150. go to insert block choose the socket and I'm going to place it where it belongs I hope this end point and put it there if you go again to the layout mode you can see it on the viewport with scale 1 per 50. so until here everything is correct then how can I add the other scales if I access the properties of this block I can see under miscellaneous that this object is annotative along with the annotative scale however I can easily add more scales here by just clicking on the button at the right this is The annotation object scale and I click on it to add more scales I choose 1 part 101 per 200 in this list I clicking OK and here you have them then it should be done so let's change the scale here and you can see that the object is resized what happened is that this block has now three different scales when you look at the viewports the socket symbol has exactly the same size in all of them and then if you print you will notice that the symbol measures exactly five millimeters of width going back to the mother space and select the socket you can see the three scales when you have this button on the status bar turned on then let's put it just in another color to be easier to distinguish Zoom now I'm going to talk a bit about zooming in AutoCAD as you know the most simple way of zooming and the most common one is to scroll the mouse wheel to reach the different parts of our project however for large projects this can be a bit annoying to try to find specific areas for that reason there is the command Zoom let's have a look at it I type that and press enter then if you look at the command bar you can see several ways to use the zoom the option by default is drawing a window on the workspace for example if I want to show the starkey's division here I draw a window covering that part and here is the result so I find this specially useful when I want to focus something specific as the zooming is more precise in this area another way of using Zoom is using the option all this sets the zoom to cover all the drawing in this file including the position of the UCS coordinates in the corner here then a similar option is the zoom extends very useful by the way I use it quite a lot it shows all the objects covering the full screen here the difference regarding Zoom all is that the position of the UCS coordinates can be hidden if I click on Center I pick a point to be placed in the center of the screen then I specify the zoom height by drawing a line here simple now I'm going to show you something useful for larger projects in this file you can see all these drawings of a single architecture project in this case it's an exposition Center there are floor plans sections elevations site plans and so on these controls at the top left corner click on this one that says stop and here you can switch to a different view of the workspace however the ones here are useful when I have 3D drawings look that I can't see anything interesting when I switch to the left or right views this is because everything in this project is two-dimensional and was created in the top plane on the V Cube you can understand a bit better the location of the views by default especially when you click in a corner to switch to another isometric View okay but what I want to do now is actually create a custom view to show up a specific part let's go to one of the floor plans located here and to be more precise I zoom with window okay now it's better then I go again to top and this time I click on view manager I'm going to create a new view here on new and first I need to choose the name it's going to be a schema the installation sanitarius yes it's Spanish but it means literally sanitary facility scheme then I can put it into a category it's empty so I can create a new one let's name it floor plans The View type I keep it still I don't change it for the boundary I choose the current display and click ok to close here okay again and then I go back to top and on custom views I choose the one I just created and you can see it zooming automatically okay it's true that this floor plan was not very difficult to find however if you are working in a huge project with loads of drawings sometimes you can stay looking for a specific detail for ages like those books where you need to find Waldo so now we want to zoom up to these objects but this time let's do it a bit different go again to the view manager create a new view called detail one and put it into a new category details and in boundary this time I'm going to define a view window I click in this button then I search for the part that I want I told you it's hard where are they ah here so make a window in the place where I want to zoom I press enter when I'm ready and you can see a preview on The View manager I click ok to confirm it and close so for the next time I want to go to the detailed one it's much faster Charan [Music] part two layout tabs extra tips when we set a viewport to show a specific drawing with a specific scale we realize that in a small destruction we scroll the mouse wheel and it messes up all the scale and then I have to go to the scale list and click again in this case in one per 150. however there is a very useful tool here I can lock the viewport by clicking on this icon now even I am in the model space I can zoom or move in the same way as I was in the paper mode by the way I can still draw or erase objects inside the viewport so I just recommend you to lock all the viewports when you don't want to change them anymore write text and draw the title block on the paper when you need to add text to your papers just draw it directly in the paper mode I mean outside of any viewport it's easier and more practical first it's text that we don't want to model as it's unused for annotation second the size that we specify is the paper height in this case 5 millimeters and I don't have to scale it like in a model space much easier the same applies for the title block just draw it on the paper you can start drawing the borders then the text using the paper height in this case after placing the first single line text I want four of these with the same spacing I can use here the command copy then the option array I Type 4 and finally you can click again to confirm the position or insert a specific distance between objects and then just change the names to the right ones okay I can take the opportunity to explain to insert an image to the layout for example if you want to add a logo of your company there it's quite simple go to the inserts tab then click on attach and select an image to import to this file I select the cutting black logo for example just to show you how it works we can insert the coordinates of the insertion point or specify it on screen and that's what I'm going to do click on OK place the start point I can click around here then it looks like that image is a bit large but that's fine just press enter for now as we can scale it after with the reference use the command scale select the image click for the base point choose the option reference at the command bar and then chose two points of a reference line to resize it and this time I will not insert any length because I don't know it I just move the cursor in this direction and you can see a dynamic preview of the logo as soon as it looks great I can click to place it there so simple isn't it yes let's continue now we are going to learn to add more viewports on the same paper usually the purpose of doing this is to show different drawings or a specific detail that we want to show on a smaller scale let's go to the layout tab on the ribbon here we will create a new viewport by clicking in this icon and there are three ways rectangular polygonal and object let's go for rectangular so I simply draw a rectangle here then I double click inside it to switch to the model space this time we will use a custom view that we created in the previous chapter I click on top go to custom model view and choose detailed one and look how useful this can be not need to search for that part so easy next I go to the scale list and I need to choose one one per 50 and the reason that I decided to use this scale is because one per 50 is the same as 0.02 which is relatively close to the value that I've got here and you can see that the drawing didn't change that much double-click to switch to the paper space and readjust the viewport by clicking on the group stair ah and don't forget to lock the viewport to not move it again after I can copy this text and place it below our new viewport select the text I'm going to use this endpoint as my base point and then click in this corner for the second point to keep the same spacing towards the viewport and rename it with the correct text put also the scale of 150. then let's draw a circle here the radius doesn't need to be precise on the layouts tab choose now the option to create a viewport from an existing object this one then click on the circle to convert it to a viewport and of course this option only works for enclosed areas then suppose what I want here is to zoom this specific part move the circle to a specific layer if you want or put the object just in a specific color and then I can draw a small circle in the same place of the floor plan to indicate that this area belongs there and if you want at the end you can connect it with lines other drafting techniques in this chapter I'm going to talk about drawing tips and I will start with the grid and snap modes grid and snap mode can be useful when we have to make detailed drawings especially when they have regular shapes let's have a look at them the first icon at the status bar enables the grid as you can see here try it on your computer however you will probably notice that it looks darker than here if you have the default colors for me they are a bit hard to see and that's why I prefer to change them but okay this I will explain to you at the end of this chapter for now let's Zoom a bit and activate the drawing command for example line you can see that the cursor doesn't snap to any point because the snap mode is off let's turn it on and now yes you can click on an intersection of the grid line so it's easily understandable that these tools work together and there is no point to turn on the snap mode if your grid mode is off now I'm going to click on an intersection of two major lines and by moving the cursor you can understand what is the length between two points of the Grid it's 10 and the distance of two major lines is 50 because is equal to five minor lines so as you can see this is quite simple now have a look to this drawing we can easily guess the distance between some points if they are not that far away for example this distance is 100 millimeters and the width of the rectangle is 200. because there are four big squares 5 10 15 20 you can just count them so to draw that rectangle with the grid is actually easy this is the first corner then the opposite will be four large squares to the left and one above the line at the bottom so click there you can zoom a bit to make sure that you click on the correct point it's better okay now let's learn to edit the snap and grid spacing click on Snap settings to modify those values it's in the first step of the drawing settings window here of course to snap only in every point of the grid the snap spacing and grid spacing must match don't forget this and the values that I have now are the settings that I used in the previous example suppose we set 5 for SNAP spacing but leave 10 millimeters for the grid spacing the result is this and it can actually be a good method because with the same grid I can have the center of each Square as an extra point to snap as you can see to have a different X and Y spacing I need to uncheck equal X and Y spacing and then I set the values here I have 5 millimeters for y distance and 10 for the X distance I can also change the length of the major lines the higher the value the easier to measure larger distances if I'm zooming out the workspace at one point the Grid resizes in a way that the lines won't get that close we couldn't see anything if that would happen this means that at this moment the spacing here is not what we put on the settings be careful don't draw anything now always draw in the maximum zoom and in the case that you want to Draw Bigger objects simple just change the spacing settings to bigger values if I like to have the workspace more organized and I want a point to be in the corner of an intersection when I zoom out a lot like where I am now simple place the cursor there the corner and zoom in slowly keeping the cursor in the same position one degree doesn't resize anymore it means that the grid is now resized correctly change the grid colors as I told you previously the default grid colors are dark but I understand their points we don't want the workspace to look a mess with the Grid on especially when we have lots of layers with different colors like in the example here but I think that putting the grid a bit lighter it doesn't interfere that much so let's learn to do it to edit the colors we have to access the options menu then I go to the display tab and click on this button that says colors here we can change the color of each element on the workspace you can see a big list here also they are grouped by context it's the list on the left now it says that we are at a 2d model space so I am happy with most of the AutoCAD interface colors so I don't need to change them except the grid which is a bit dark for me to change the color click on the element go to color choose one from the list or click here to pick a different one let's say I want it a bit green but in a gray style I keep the cursor here and then I drag this rectangle to choose the proper color a bit up to be more visible and click on OK it's done now I need to change the grid minor lines to do it I choose the same color then I click again and pick up a color so the cursor will be in the same position this is good if you just want to change the color a bit and do not look very different so I want to put the selector a bit darker then click on OK I apply in close the window and now it looks more visible so you can just choose a color that will be comfortable for you change the position of the UCS look to this situation here I want to draw these objects in reference to the diagonal wall it would be hard to draw them accurately if I use the UCS coordinates on the position by default you can see that while I'm trying to draw that line I don't have any reference to draw it perpendicular to the wall but no problem because I can make the things easier by just rotating the UCS coordinates I go to the icon click on it I place it in this corner and then clicking on the x-axis I align it to this diagonal line then I can switch to also mode and you can see that I can easily draw vertical and horizontal lines according to the new UCS position also if I want to insert a block now it automatically rotates and the same happens with the grid then to restore the original UCS which is the WCS World coordinate system just click on the icon and then select word now let's have a look at the shortcut menu the one that we can open with the right button of the mouse actually most of these functions are icons located on panels in the ribbon but sometimes it can be easier for us doing this way now I will make a quick introduction of what you can find here the first option of there repeats the last command used it's an alternative way of just pressing enter when we don't have any command active I actually prefer to just press enter it's much easier then there is a list of the last comments used on the clipboard we find the basic tools to copy move or cut objects to a different file and this still works by just pressing the classic shortcuts like the Ctrl C Ctrl V and so on for example I will copy these objects press enter then I go to a different file and just click on paste and they will be copied exactly in the same position as they were before but if you wanted to copy this door straight you can use the method that I just showed you previously by moving the UCS coordinates to the corner then rotate the x-axis in line of the edge of the door and repeat the process press Ctrl C and then paste it in the other drawing and now it's straight back in the shortcut menu I want to show you some options that I use quite often like isolate objects I'm going to select this part and then I click on isolate objects and you notice that all the other drawings disappeared to revert these changes just click on ADD object isolation in the same Sub menu there is also height objects which will be the opposite if there are parts that you are not using at the moment you can hide them temporarily a bit down in the list there are the options to use the pen Zoom or the steering wheels then there is the quick select quick calculator also available on the ribbon and the options menu also don't forget that when you select objects that menu is different and Depends the kind of object that you select for example in a block you get options to editor block reset a block if you modify it or edit a block in place if you don't want to open the block editor then you find the basic commands to modify objects so it's also possible to access them from this list then there is the draw order and this one I use a lot when you create a new layer AutoCAD puts the objects of that layer above everything that was created before for example here I created the layer for the dimension lines I after the layer for the walls and because I don't like this extension lines above the walls let's sweep the order and for that I need to select all the objects of the layer dimensions and I can do it from the quick select choose the layer DLI and click ok now that auto dimensions are selected I can go again to the right click menu go to draw order and choose send to back and look that the walls are now visible when they overlap dimensions another tool I sometimes use is group objects let's say I want to group this floor plan but without the dimensions turn off the layer DLI then I select everything and from the menu choose group and I could move or copy this house elevation to a different place the option select similar is also very useful by clicking on a type of object for example a dimension line you can see that it selects all the remaining Dimensions but yes they must be located in the same layer for example in this situation the large Dimension is not selected object snap overwrites has a useful tool that not a lot of people know suppose we are drawing a line here and we want to connect it perpendicular with the diagonal line below as you see it's only showing up the midpoint and the end point but if I click with the right button I can see object snap overrides I go there and I can choose a different mode in this case I click on perpendicular and now you can see the symbol appearing just click on it to make those lines orthogonal twitch other you can try the other modes by yourself for example nearest or on the top you can create a temporary track point or choose the middle between two points this is how it works I choose two points and it selects the middle distance between them so just explore the other modes maybe you find some useful for you as long as the other options from the shortcut menu [Music] part three attributes in blocks to Define an attribute we can either click on this icon at the Home tab or in the insert tab you can find it located in the block definition panel click on it and the attribute definition window shows up on the screen then there are three main fields to fill for each attribute first we insert the tag which is just used to indicate the position of the attribute this text appears in capitals and you can't put spaces between characters so remember this below you should type The Prompt sentence for example if I want to fill with the name of the client I type client name on default I will put a value that will appear anytime that I insert that attribute personally I prefer to keep this empty except it's an attribute that uses the same text often however let's insert a value here under text settings it has the justification on the left and standard textile Below on text height I specify the same as the existing text it was 3 and remember it's the paper height so I don't put the tick in annotative we click on OK and we can specify the start point for our attribute so now I can draw the next one which I can repeat the process or I could use a quicker way with the command copy I use the option array with four number of items it's exactly what I did before then click here approximately to be in line with the text at the left there are no object snap points for text objects however if you want to put the text perfectly in line there are ways to do it but it's something that we will learn later don't worry then double click on the second tag and this window shows up to modify the information that I had given before when you are ready click ok and do the same for the others for the scale and date I do the same in the attribute definition but here the text height will be 2. click OK and place the attribute where I want to show the scale then copy it below to make an attribute for the date and change the values okay now that the attributes are completed it's time to create a block with the title block and the attributes first I need to switch to the layer 0. now I'm going to create a block and first I have to choose the name for the title I put tighter block A2 so I know I have to use this block in an A2 paper you can also create another title blocks for different papers click ok to select the objects and now I have two options or I select all the attributes first and then the remaining objects or the inverse first the normal objects and after the attributes I decide to select first the attributes but I still need to click on them in the order that I want to display this is important now I select the remaining objects I can cover all with the selection area and don't worry that the attributes are inside because they are already selected I press enter to return to the block definition window click ok and the window to edit the attributes is now on the screen and you can see them on the order that I choose and now have a look to the window on the left is what I insert for the prompts the valve is at the right are what I set for the default values as you remember I put some values there but actually it was for you to have a look at the appearance of this actually it would be better to not write anything on the default because now I need to erase those blanks so let's fill with the content that I need click ok and you can see how the attributes are automatically displayed on the Block then in this case the drawing name is too long to fit on the box so if I double click on the Block itself I can edit each attribute and in this window you can see that aside from the attribute values I can also change text options and properties just look at the tops here above so I changed the drawing to ground floor plan now let's have a look at this example in this level point I want to put an attribute to indicate the elevation of a specific area of a plan but this time I want to place the text at a certain position and for that we have to draw temporary lines as reference so I'm going to offset this line above to 100 millimeters then let's add an attribute here click on the icon then on the blanks put the tag level next I'm going to type insert level for the prompt and don't write anything on default just leave it empty on the text settings change the justification to right you will see after and set the text height as 300. I do this because now we are at a motor space and it will be basically the triple of the distance between both horizontal lines click on OK now I'm going to put the attribute in this corner and you can see it aligned to the right like this exactly so you can notice when you do this way you put the text at a precise location so I can now delete the extra line and I'm going to use the command hatch let's see if you remember it type h and press enter then I go up here and select solid change the color of the hatch to by block as we are going to make a block of all these objects to later edit the color of the hatch if we need then click on these two quarter parts of the circle press enter to finish now I'm going to convert this to a block click on create a block then type the name level point select the objects first I click on the attribute then on the remaining objects press enter again click on OK select the base point and finally it asks to edit the only attribute that this block has I type plus 1.2 and click on OK and you can see the block updated now I can change to the layer that I want and the colors of the hatch objects as I said before as by block they get the colors that I specify here at the object's color how to edit an attribute in a block when I double click in a block reference I can edit the attributes but be aware that this only applies to that object so on text options I change the height to 200 and you can see that it updates the size of the level number however if I insert another block reference of the same block let's put here 0 for example you can see that it still keeps the previous text height so how could I edit the attribute inside the Block in a way it would update all the block references it's like this go to the block attribute manager which is the icon located here then in this window I need to select the attribute I want to modify and as you can see they are grouped by blocks I click on the level attribute go to edit and any change that I made here applies to all the block references so if I change the text to 200 you can see that it applies to all Dynamic blocks this is a block reference of a window projection in a floor plan if I click on it I can see the base point along with other groups created by me the one at the right is an added parameter to change the length it's very useful because now I just type the value for a new length when I double click to edit the block I can see that there is this symbol here meaning that the block is dynamic in another words it has parameters with actions associated so let's start from the beginning for adding a new parameter we need to use the block authorities palette if you can see it on the screen you can enable it in this button here I'm going to use a linear parameter for a distance I click in the start point and then on the end point this Distance by itself doesn't do anything because I need to set an action and as what I want to do here is stretching the window I'm going to use stretch first I need to select the parameter then the action point this one I specify the stretch frame it's the area that I want to stretch then I select the objects press enter I close the block and save changes and now you can see how I can change the length it's simple so it's recommended to select the action on the other side of the base Point otherwise they would overlap each other let's go to the next example here I'm going to show you another parameter flip and that's what I have in this door I can flip the opening by just clicking these buttons open the block editor and then I'm going to start with this one in the middle foreign and the reflection line will be in the middle distance between frames I could draw a line here to use the midpoint but let's do something we learned earlier in this tutorial the click with the right button go to object snap overrides and then click on meet between two points select these two and then I can make the vertical reflection line here then I need an action to that parameter and instead of going to the actions tab I can also click in the exclamation point to add an action and then for the objects I select the line and the arc so if I close the block editor I can see the result then let's add another flip but this time to switch the door down here this time I go to action I click on flip select the flip State tool this time I need to select everything and if I close the block you can see I have a new flip to the other side in this door there is also a stretch action to adapt the frame to different wall widths so let's edit it's again the linear parameter choose the two points of the dimension line then double click in this yellow symbol remember that when it shows up on the screen it means there are no actions Associated yet there are four possibilities to linear parameters so we add the stretch then select the stretch frame and I need to cover all this part and for the objects I select those here and also at the left I press enter then I have to close the block editor and you can see again the result of stretching a part of a block the parameter alignment this parameter can be useful to align the block along a line for example for electrical circuits we want to align a socket automatically along a polyline so let's see and this parameter is actually very simple we click on alignment set the base point of alignment which I want you to be here in the middle then I need the direction of alignment which is along this direction close the block to return to the main workspace then select the socket click on the alignment point which is easy to recognize as it has a different shape and move it to the polyline simple then there are some important tips you should know I recommend you to have the mode nearest active so you can put the Block in any position of the polyline if your object snap is off the alignment will not work another tip is that the alignment will be to the other side of where you have the pointer for example if the pointer is just a little bit above the line the alignment faces down however if you have the pointer down the line the block is placed on the other side I know that this is a bit tricky but for that reason we can also add flip states to the block to switch the direction easily but as we all already know the things are never perfect in AutoCAD at least that's our beliefs especially when the things are not working as we desire for example if you have text in a block and then you want to align it here it's alright but if it aligns to the opposite direction you notice that everything is flipped over including the text so in the case you want the socket to face the inner side of the polyline the best is to place the Block in this side and then use the grip to flip the direction yes but make sure you don't have the system variable to mirror the text active I mean if you type mirror text in the command line you can switch to one and then the text is also mirrored basically if you don't want to mirror text keep it zero visibility this parameter is used to make variations on objects in a block and then display a list with different options to choose I show to you this socket as an example so I'm going to convert the switch 2 to a block uh and first I'm going to draw a line here to use the midpoint as my base point then I turn on the command block choose a name select the objects except the line I have just drawn and finally specify the base point so I converted the switch to to a block now let's go to the block editor and here I'm going to add a visibility parameter I can just put it wherever I want because its location doesn't affect the performance of the objects also the visibility works with visibility states which is a bit different than for the other parameters if I double click here it opens the window to manage those States I can also access it in this button at a visibility panel let's continue first I can rename this current visibility State type socket 1. then let's create a new one socket 2 and click on OK close the window you can see that here I have the socket 2 and as this state has exactly these objects I leave it and change it then I switch to socket 1 and here I don't want to show up the number two click on it and then press this button at the visibility panel to make it invisible very good now I go back to the visibility State window and add a new state called socket 3. if you look at the bottom of this window there are three options here and now I take the third option and this new state will be a copy of the current status which is socket one so I'm going to add a hatch object here and first I draw a line then I activate hatch and fill all this area ah I also want to change the pattern to a solid color and then fill the area here and now that I am done I press enter important when you draw new objects here they only go to the current status for example if I switch to the socket one or socket 2 you can see that there is no hatch there on the visibility panel there is an icon it's actually a system variable to control how the invisible objects are shown in the current mode the invisible objects are transparent so you can notice them however if you click in that button you choose to not see them [Music] part 4. in this part we will learn to use the design center as well as the tool and block palettes they are located in the view tab finally in the last minutes we will have a look at the external references a very useful feature in notacad now we can start The Design Center in AutoCAD we can import content from different drawings let's go to the view Tab and add the palettes panel we can find this icon The Design Center I click on it and on this window we can browse for a specific twg file I'm going to choose this one and then you can see that we can have access to blocks dimension lines layers line types and other elements that are located on that file if I want to insert a specific block from this file I click here then select for example table 1 double click on it and this window appears now if I click on OK we insert the block exactly in the way that it was created but we can use few insertion options let's see them in the middle section we have the scale and is set by default as one for each X Y and Z axis if I click on specify on screen you will see what happens AutoCAD prompts to specify the x-scale factor I'm going to type 2 and then it asks to enter a y scale factor and have in mind if it's a different value than x that would deform the table so as I don't want it to happen I have to use the same X scale factor 2. I press enter to place the block and as you can notice all the dimensions are now double size back on the insert window I can click on uniform scale to insert just the scale factor for all the axes so you have a step less another insertion option is rotation put a tick on there click on OK then this time I put for the scale 0.5 and then I'm going to rotate it 90 degrees on this direction so it's simple as you see finally there is also another and important information here block unit which for this one is set as millimeters and I cannot change it as you can see actually the unit is defined when we create the block here on the bottom left corner I think a lot of people don't notice that even usually it's not a problem but what's important to know is the unit that appears here by default is what is set on the unit properties for the insertion content you might remember this when I explained in the tutorial for beginners when we insert content from a different file and that's exactly what we are doing here let's now have a look on the next example I'm going to change to this file where I have several door blocks I'm going to choose door one and this time you can see that the block unit is set to inches as in my current file the unit is millimeters the block has to be converted from inches to millimeters and the conversion factor is automatically calculated here it says 25 but is it correct do you remember if you look at the tables one inch is 25.4 millimeters but it shows only 25 why because on the unit properties I have this option set to not show decimals if I change it to two decimals or one decimal now you can see 25.4 it could be 25.40 but it doesn't show the zeros at the right of the comma because it's no need since sataka 2020 there is a new palette to insert a block from other drawings it can be quite useful I click on it then I need to click on this Ellipsis to find a different file and here you have the blocks within that file this is a nice feature it's faster to search for blocks and also you have in this panel tabs that group the blocks from other drawings recent blocks that you used and the blocks from the current drawing it also indicates which blocks are dynamic now to insert a block it's easy double click in the one that I want go to the drawing and it just asks to specify the insertion point you can see here that is the only option ticked the disadvantage regarding the design center is that I cannot see the unit that the block was created anyway I don't think that's a big issue as I can always check it out on its properties and if you notice that it's not in the right size when you insert a block you can simply apply a scale to it so among the elements on the design center we can also add layers from other drawings it's very simple if I want a layer from this file send through this positionis I just need to double click on the one that I want and it's automatically added you can see the new layer Arcos Pista to import more than one layer I select them and this time I do not double click it doesn't work this way instead I click with the right button and choose add layers here you have them and remember that in the layer properties the layers are displayed in alphabetical order four dimension Styles it works the same way simple so you can play around this with the other elements and you will notice that they work all similar tool palettes it's this icon here this is another way to insert content from different drawings I think this is something really useful in AutoCAD basically it's a kind of library that organizes items into these different tabs which are called palettes all these items here come by default in AutoCAD and they are located in Sample files if you are curious those sample files can be found on the AutoCAD folder go to samples and all the default DWG files are there are Dynamic blocks normal blocks hatches or other kind of objects let's open one of these files for example home space planner and you can see that there are just blocks here and actually we can get advantage of these files because we can use those blocks in our projects without the need to search for blocks on the internet these are also More Sample files now let's go back on each palette here you can find specific elements blocks for architectural annotation mechanical electrical civil and so on to insert an element or object just click on it and click again in the drawing it's very simple the only thing is that you don't have insertion options here it uses the ones by default you can also insert the hatch for example I click in this dark red and place it there like this but be aware this doesn't create any layer if you look at the hatch tab on the ribbon it just uses this specific color for this object and it went to the layer walls as it's the current layer ok now I'm going to show you how to organize this palette if you click here with the right button you can use the palette group that you desire for example there are the parametrics here if I clicking civil it shows this one and so on look that there are also tables or even visual styles then these palettes can be customized if you click with the right button and then go to customize palettes on the left side you can see all the palettes and on the right the palette groups each group contains how many palettes as we want some just have one palette and others like The annotation design have several palettes as you guess all these can be customized just click and hold in one palette for example modeling and drag it to a palette group I put it on annotation and design and at the top the order here indicates how the palettes are sorted on the tool palette's main window okay but actually I don't want this palette here so to remove a palette click with the right button and click on remove now I want to show you how to add new palettes for example with blocks from other drawings what we need to do is to use the design center to bring content to the tool palettes so I have the design center window here and I want to add the blocks from the files that are in this folder if I click in any file with the right button there is an option here to create a tool palette click then wait a few seconds until the palette is generated and as you see it goes directly to the top of your current group and also only the blocks were generated then I'm going to repeat the process for the other files doors home assembles kitchen and windows all are generated and placed above back on customize palettes window I'm going to add a new group named my blocks and then move the new palette to this newly Creative Group when ready I can also remove these palettes from the group annotation and design as they are not needed anymore select the palette and press delete finally switch to my blocks and here you have the palettes with this nice organization so you can see at least in my opinion this is a very practical way to use blocks in your projects and it's also possible to choose a specific block from one of your lost files and put it and put it directly on the palette now I encourage you to create your own palettes and you will see how organized your projects become external references I open a new file and here I want to attach a reference to a file that it was previously given to me this one project architecture imagine that I am a structural engineer and I want to draw here the structural plan or I could be an electrical technician and I want to draw electrical circuits there so on my new file I go to the insert Tab and on the reference panel this is the panel that controls references click on this Arrow to open the external reference palette an alternative way is typing the command xref or external reference at the moment I just have here the current file you can recognize it by the DWG icon then if I switch to project architecture now you can see that the current file changes it also has an additional element which is an attached image the details of each file you can check out on this part below this is a JPG file that image is the one that I added to the title block on the layout tabs here then if I click on cutting black logo with the right button I can detach the image in a load and you can see it disappearing but I don't want to do it so I click again with the right button and click on reload so to attach here the file project architecture I go to this icon then I click on attach DWG select the file in this window I click again on OK or specify the insertion options that I want at this moment I'm not going to scale the reference the option specified on screen is not ticked and I specify the insertion point if you remove the tick on this box the base point will be on the coordinate specified below and if it's zero zero zero the base point will be on the origin click on OK and place now the base point where I want I'm going to put a coordinates in the origin so I type 0 press tab 0 again and press enter so here you can see the reference to the project architecture and it's easy to recognize because it's darker than usual at the file references list you can see the new attached file the DWG the project architecture and the image that was in that project is also shown here and it appears with the name of the file first and then the name of the image The Cutting black logo however sometimes for any reason some of the files attach it might not load because the program can't find the file and even if you click on reload nothing happens so the solution for this is clicking on change path and search for the file on your computer how to edit an external reference in a drawing if I click on the image you realize that everything is selected I cannot select a line by line or or an object by the object also on the ribbon it shows up a new tab called external reference here I can create a clipping boundary on a part of the drawing and other options example let's say in this project I only want to show the floor plan below I click on create clipping boundary then I select rectangular draw a rectangle around the drawing and do all the other parts of the file just disappeared I can also invert the part of the drawing that is showing by clicking on this grip now let's use a different clipping boundary I'm going to click on polygonal and it could be useful if in a different case I would like to select this drawing below or the drawing above and not the one in the middle so the purpose of using external references is to allow two or more people working in the same project now let's suppose I have a specific task in this project look to the layer properties now they are a bit different as I'm using external references on the filter section I can choose which type of layers that I want to display the layers on Gray are from the external references first you can see the file name and then the layer name for example at this moment I have all the layers shown on the screen now I switch to the all non xref layers or I can see only the layers from the external reference so it's not hard to work with external references as you can see but I recommend you to practice a bit to interiorize all the steps that I have been showing to you part 5. we are going to discuss here multi-leaders and the properties panel multi-leaders are an interesting way to add annotations to our drawings they consist in an arrow that connects to a text or a block with an attribute let's have a look to it a bit more in detail we can add a multi-leader from The annotation panel at the Home tab or if we switch to The annotation tab there is a full panel dedicated exclusively to leaders the first thing I should do is check out the settings by clicking in this Arrow here so it opens a window very identical to the dimension style manager let's select the style the standard one and modify it here I'm going to start with the text height and because it's too small I'm going to change it to 250 as my text labels are 350. this will be just a bit smaller then on leader format I want also to change the style of the arrowhead for example 200. only the structure I have by default 2 leader points then uncheck the box for landing distance if I don't want it to be a fixed value I click on OK to confirm the changes and close the window so now I can add a letter it's easy just click on the multi-leader icon choose the base point then specify the leader Landing location and click one time more to type the text for example external wall as it's what the leader indicates then change here the layer style to annotative nice this time I'm going to repeat the process but instead I'm going to add an annotative multi-leader to appear in this viewport in the scale 1 per 100. change here the layer style to annotative and then on the multi-leader style manager click on modify so I will not change the settings because I think they are quite acceptable I close the window don't forget to make sure the scale is correct 1 per 100 and draw the motivator for example window now if I double click on the Arrow I can see the quick properties of the multi-leader for example let's change the landing distance to 10 and you can see the distance updating automatically so if I switch to the layout tab I can see how the annotative multi-line looks like multi-leaders have two types of content multi-line text or a block with an attribute which it's this example here now I'm going to show you how to make this go again to the multi-leader style manager and here I'm going to create a new style I select this time annotative and click on new so my new style will have the same settings as the annotative style choose the name for it and when I'm ready I click on continue on this window we go to content and change the multi-leader style to block in this list as you can see there are already several blocks for multi-leader that come with AutoCAD apart from this I can also use a block made by me but this time let's use this circle then I can change the scale but I'm going to keep it one have in mind that in this kind of multi-leaders using a block we don't specify the height of the text then I create a multi-leader somewhere here and as the text inside the block is an attribute I'm asked to insert the value let's put one for it and click on OK to confirm this choice okay I don't like to match this position so let's use the grips to put it a bit here inside now it's good and you can see that it has an acceptable size on the layout let's add another multi-leader and this time I put 5 for the value you can see how simple it is one disadvantage in multi-leaders unlike dimension lines if I change the multi-leader style settings the existing objects do not update automatically so if I decide I want to change the block I have to draw them again as you see I inserted the arrow with the new block on the next example I'm going to add a multi-leader using a standard style non-annotative so if I use the scale one it will be too small for the drawings that I have here I need to increase it let's try with 20. then I close this window I'm going to draw the leader ah and you can see that the block I have here is a bit different this one has two attributes I just put random values and now the size fits quite well for this drawing have in mind that using the blocks by defaulty multi-leaders can be hard to measure exactly actually what happens is the measurements themselves are defined at the Block editor when I specify the multi-leader settings I can just set the scale each multi-leader can have more than one Arrow if I click on ADD reader then I select the multi-leader I can add an extra leader so this is as simple as it looks and it's possible to add how many leaders as I want I could place another from this point or press escape to cancel the command to remove a leader just click on the icon located below select first the object and then click to remove the arrow now let's talk a bit more in detail about the properties of objects you can find an entire panel here as you can see there are three main tabs the first is for the color the second the line weight and the third the line type by default these settings follow the properties of the layer where the object is now suppose I want to change the color of only a certain object I click on it go to the color Tab and change it to Red for example so at this moment the color of the object is not regulated by the layer color next situation now I have a block and you will see that they can activate different if I try to change the color you can see that it doesn't work and as you remember we should put the lines that form a block in the layer 0 before creating it so I'm going to copy this block and then I use the command explode to return to its original objects if we want to give more freedom to the block before creating it we set the color of the objects as by block then I convert the door to a block I finish and as you can see it's possible to change the color to follow the layer or choose the specific one like I did before there are also several ways that I can play with colors in blocks for example I can set the color of these two objects to an orange then I create a block and what happens is that when I change the layer those two objects will always keep the same color line weights I'm going to select this line and change the line weight here to one millimeter but nothing seems to change why the line weight at the status bar is Switched Off so I need to switch it on to see it if you don't find this icon there go to the corner click in these three lines and find it on the list there also looked at the weights measure exactly how they are printed one millimeter and no matter the scale that we are using so basically the line weights are annotative now I'm going to switch off the icon show line weights and now even the line looks similar as the others also it's not displayed on the layout it's still there when you print the project or publish a PDF here you have it and now you can ask why does not AutoCAD show the line weights by default honestly I'm not sure about the answer but I think it's to not have the workspace too messy with different weights of objects especially if there are lots of them basically it's up to us to decide if we want the line weights or not like line weight there is a similar option to add a thickness in this case for polylines I can use the command P edit it means polyline edit I select the polyline I select a polyline and you can see several options to use here for example I can turn into a spline or click on the curve to come back to the original polyline along with other options that you can explore later if I click on the third option I can add the width then it prompts specify a new width for all segments this time this width value is the real size like when you draw standard dimensions or standard text so let's type 50 and the polyline has this new shape I can still snap to the object snap points and they are now in the middle because when we add a width to a polyline it basically expands to the sides extra tip if I wanted I could draw a wall just using one polyline with a specific width for example let's draw this rectangle with 5 meters per 2 meters then I right click and this is a different way to access the settings that you can find on P edit I select with and put the thickness of 150. so this could be a wall however look what happened here in the corner it looks like that these joints are not connected and this is because the polyline is not closed I open again the right click menu and this time on polyline I click on close to have the results that I want now let's talk about the remaining setting the line type I'm going to select this line then I click in this tab to select the line type in this case there was already A Lash line selected but let's see the others then click on load and you can find a bunch of line types in this list here let's choose this one click on OK select it again here then it didn't change I also have to select the line and now yes it chain it changes to the one that I want now let's go to the properties there is a parameter very important here is the line type scale and we have to play with the numbers to know which range of values we need to put here another thing you can also notice that the current value is zero of course it's not possible to have a scale of zero but the reason of this is on the unit properties I have the Precision set to no decimals I'm going to change it to two decimals and you can see that actually the current scale is 0.1 now let's see how the line type scale works the smaller it gets the more difficult it is to see to distinguish the shape the larger it is is more likely to see just a continuous line or zooming into a gap let's see another very important tip it's common that we want the line types to appear in a specific viewport so as the viewports are in a specific scale this one is set as 1 per 100 we should set up the scale in the model space before choosing the line type if we do this the line type will look exactly as it is in the viewport on the other hand if my scale is set to 1 per 1 and choose the same line type this is the current appearance at the model space when I switch to a viewport that it scaled differently 1.100 in this case I can see that the appearance will not be the same so we reached the end of the tutorial too now I think you have enough knowledge to practice yourself remember that you can find a playlist with exercises in my channel page it's really important to practice then when you are ready to learn more tips in AutoCAD you can watch the next tutorial which starts right now [Music] hi again so this tutorial is the continuation of the complete tutorial for intermediates that was playing right before let's check out the contents first I'm going to focus on the status bar and then I will Explore More the topics dimension lines lines and polylines and other drawing commands and tips for texts let's start [Music] in this first chapter I'm going to focus on some functions of the status bar that I haven't explained before in the previous tutorials I will start with the isometric Drafting and to understand how it works we are going to draw this simple Cube which is represented as a 2d isometric projection there are three different planes that we can work on the left right and top and before starting let's switch on the grid and you can notice when I turn on the other magic drafting for the left plane the cursor and the grid are automatically registered and the same happens with the snap mode and the also mode however the polar tracking doesn't work for isometric Drafting and that means you should be in the Ursa mode to use this technique properly okay let's make the cube I start with the left plane and this time I'm going to switch on both the grid and the snap modes even they are not required to help you visualizing the drawing process I'm going to start in a major intersection and then make the edges each of them measuring 200 millimeters so when I'm done with this face I change the plane to right and you can see how easily it's now to draw the right side this time I switch off the snap mode because I don't need it anymore and finally I turn on the top plane to draw the remaining gadgets now you can start practicing ISO drafting in your projects annotative scaling now in this drawing I have added annotative dimensions in different scales one per 50 1 per 10 and one per two so they appear in the viewport that has exactly the same scale as at this moment the annotative scale is one per one no dimension lines are shown here however if I activate this button all the dimension objects appear now in the workspace basically when this icon is off I can only see The annotation objects that match the current scale the next icon adds scales to annotative objects when The annotation scale changes has the following effect if I change the scale each Dimension line was added that scale and they will still appear if I change one of the viewports to the scale of 1 per 5. the gear hair that looks like a settings menu is actually meant for switching the workspace by default AutoCAD comes with three the current one is drafting and annotation which is used for drawing in 2D then we have two workspaces for 3D modeling first we have 3D Basics this one comes with simple commands in the panels for drawing 3D objects and as you can notice the buttons here are bigger than in the other panels finally we have 3D modeling and here the panels and menus are more complex plenty of commands to model our projects then if we are not happy with none of these workspaces we can create a new one in save current as and then customize it here in this option finally if we put the tick here we can display the workspace name in the status bar this button which represents a square circle and triangle is for isolating or hiding objects and it's very simple to use let's start with isolate then I picked these two objects press enter and as you can notice everything is hidden without this part on the other hand if I click on hide I can hide some objects from the screen and I'm doing it on these three ones as an example to return to the normal State I click on end object isolation and everything is shown again hide and isolate can be especially useful when in a complex project I want for example to make some changes in this specific section here I have decided to isolate this part and then hide the lines that I don't need one last tip alternatively I can access these options from the right click menu and it's exactly the same as what you can find on the status bar the next icon is the Autodesk trust DWG this function analyzes if the current DWG file was last saved with the Autodesk product or by a software developer license to use the real Autodesk toolkit if it matches this criteria you will have a green tick here if not you'll get a warning instead of the tick and Autodesk cannot guarantee the application compatibility or Integrity of the file in other words if you were working in a dwj file in a different CAD software it may work properly here in AutoCAD but it's not 100 guaranteed the next button is called clean screen and we just use it to switch to the full screen mode like this this can be useful if we want to work in a wider workspace so click on it again to get to the previous state finally we have customization here we can either remove icons to the status bar as we wish some of those used to be included in the status bar by default in previous versions and that was the case of the dynamic input I'm going to check this option and you can see it appearing just before the Ursa mode also have in mind that the tick doesn't mean the function is turned on only that it's displayed in the status bar so this function shows the input next to the cursor when I type anything with the keyboard such as a command name length Etc and look that it's not showing it anymore when it's off another function you can add to the status bar is the selection cycling and this one is very useful for complex projects let's switch it on and basically when I click on two objects at the same time I mean when they are overlapped this window shows up so I can select the object that I want by default it selects the one in the front and in this case is the construction line but if I want the line that's on the back I simply click here and it's selected now this is important if you zoom out a lot and click in a place where is busy with objects for example here looked at the window shows up a big list that you can choose from in this case most of these objects are not necessarily overlapped but they are close enough so they still appear in the list okay in this chapter I will explain some extra tools for the dimension lines let's start continue and Baseline on the next example suppose I want to add more dimension lines to measure the remaining distances along this side instead of creating Dimensions one by one there is a very useful tool that can save you considerable time if you are working on a huge project to continue dimension first I'm going to draw a vertical Dimension here then I'm going to push this button that says continue and suddenly it looks like I'm making another dimension in the same direction as the last one that I created here so as you can see it's easy to Place several Dimensions by just clicking on the points that we want when you finish just press Escape I also want to explain you a tip as this command defaults to continue the last Dimension I need to click on select to change to a different dimension line for example I click in this one if I want to continue it to the right for example below the button continue we can find the Baseline with this feature we can make several dimension lines measuring a distance from the same point also look that the precedent is the same as for the continue command however there is a specification that's a bit different the spacing between each line must be defined on the dimension style manager I'm going to modify the current style internal measures and on the line section we can change the Baseline spacing let's increase it a little bit to 5. and then click on OK nothing has changed here in fact the new spacing only applies for the next Dimensions that I would draw I'm going to delete them and repeat Baseline again and look that the spacing is a bit wider than before another tip regarding baselines is about the position of the dimension It's Curious that if the pointer is below the line in the text the new dimension will stay above it and if I move the cursor to the other side you can see that I'm switching the position of this new dimension line [Music] have a look at this example where you can see some dimension lines intersecting each other in order to avoid them appearing as normal lines we can add Dimension breaks at their intersections the icon is this one and the way this works is really simple I just need to click on the dimension line press enter and the break is added automatically at each intersection now let's activate the command again another way to access it is by typing dim break and this time I select the dimension 600 and as you can see I broke it at these two dimension lines but stays continuous at this point because the break is already added in the previous dimension also brakes applied to any kind of objects that the dimension line intersects and to show you this I'm going to repeat the command in this drawing where this Dimension line intersects those circles look there is a break in all the intersections to edit the brake size I just need to go to the dimension style manager modify the style dims for exercises the current one go to the tab symbols and arrows and at the bottom you can see the section for the dimension break where I can change the brake size as an example I'm going to set 10 click on OK and now as you can see the Gap has increased [Music] Dimension space at the right of the icon theme break we can find Dim space when the dimensions are not well organized or we just want to set the same spacing between different levels we can use this command the process is the following first I need to choose the base Dimension which is the one that will not move then I pick the dimension to space let's select this one with 200 millimeters of length press enter and then I can type a value or set an automatic spacing if I press enter again you can see the second dimension goes down and now the spacing between both matches the extension lines of the First Dimension okay now I'm going to undo this pressing Ctrl Z and repeat the command again I select the same base Dimension but this time I pick up these two I used again the auto spacing and now the three levels are separated equally let's go back one last time I'm going to I'm going to do exactly the same but now instead of automatic let's type a specific distance for reference I can look at that small dimension of 20 millimeters so let's put the spacing a bit wider I think 30 is fine now this is how it looks like create a jog dimension [Music] this new example has a section at the right which is long enough to not fit in a paper and this representation means that this length is larger than what it looks like here so I'm going to add the dimension line but this time let's use the tool continue then pick up this last dimension and place this new one here now the length of this Dimension line is 300 millimeters however the real size of that section is 1500. to represent that I need to add the Jack Dimension the button is located here and this is simple first I click on the button then select the dimension line and click exactly in the place where you want to add the chalk now to replace the current measurement I can simple double click on the text and change the value to 1500. basically what I'm doing here is adding a text of a right and it can be either as a text numbers or both finally select the dimension click with the right button go to Quick properties and there I can see the real measurement of the dimension which I cannot change it is 300 and the current text override now to display the real Dimension length again you can just erase the text to the right it's also possible to edit the size of the jog in the dimension style manager I'm going to modify the current style in the simple scenarios tab there is a panel called linear jog Dimension here we have to specify a height factor with the text size as it's currently set as 1.5 you can see the size of the jock a bit bigger than the text and if I change it to 3 click on OK and close the windows you can see now the chalk increased it to three times the size of the text okay now let's have a look at extra tips to apply two dimension lines draw the dimension line at a specific distance from the object suppose we have this example and we need to add Dimensions to indicate the lengths of these lines in fact that's easy to do we just need to activate the command Dimension linear click on two points and finally click again to place the damage line right okay now I'm going to do the same but for the left side and also let's add a horizontal Dimension here in the bottom as you can see the dimensions are correct and there is nothing wrong with them but as you can notice I use the random distance from the lines for each of the dimensions okay maybe it's not a big deal but in my opinion it's better if we use a specific Dimension spacing for the entire drawing or even for the full project let's see I'm going to do this again this time I'm drawing a dimension line measuring this section but then instead of clicking on a random location for placing the measurement I decided to have it for example at 500 millimeters above the line and when I see this extension track line I type 500 and press enter in this way I will have that distance between both objects then for the left Dimension I use the same method I hover the end point drag to the left and type 500 again finally I repeat the same process down here type the 500 millimeters and now you can see that all the dimensions have the same separation between the lines making the drawing looking nicer of course there are always exceptions in a rule let's use the command continue for the dimensions above ah first I have to choose to select the object that I want to continue I click on select then on this extension line as you can see I am adding another dimension connected with the first one and finally add the third dimension by clicking in this last corner of course as you can see this last animation is far away from the line but in this way I can have all the dimensions in this side all along the same reference line finally here you have an example of this method applied in a floor plan set specific lengths for extension lines another nice setting is to set the fixed length for the extension lines those bars that limit the measurement using the default settings when I add more dimension lines all along this side and look that I can do it pretty quick by just clicking in each intersection they start from the points where I click with an offset Gap that is also specified in the dimension style manager I'm going to access that menu by clicking on the icon located on the dimensions panel select the dimension Style this one annotative and click on modify in this section below put the tick here to add the fixed length on all the extension lines as you can see the length here is three millimeters and actually as this is an annotative style this value means that the extension lines will measure three millimeters in a paper after printing it click on OK and you can see the result use template files with your own Dimension styles this is a good practice if we want to keep the dimensions with the same appearance in all the projects we are working on suppose you have a file about the project of the building X then your next one will be about the building Y and then the building set as you will probably use different DWG files for each project to keep the same Dimension Styles the best is to have a template and use it whenever you start a new project so in a new file which can be from a template you have created and I don't have any objects here in the workspace I'm going to the dimensions tab on the annotative menu and click on manage Dimension styles so these are the default Styles I can modify any of them or create a new style if I want and that's exactly what I'm going to do I click on new then on the first blank I should write the name for the new style start with means that I copy the settings of the style that is showing here in this case annotative below I decide if I want to use annotative Dimensions by checking this box and finally I can continue so now we can make the changes that we need text arrows primary units Etc I'm going to add just a suffix here as the symbol of millimeters because I put it on the title and click on OK to save the changes after I can add more styles for example let's say I am creating a similar Style with the same settings except for the suffix I'm going to set meters and for that I put a scale factor to convert millimeters to meters of course this is in case I'm making the drawing in millimeters and when you are ready with your Styles let's save this file as a template choose the name and save it on the default templates folder or create a new one in this way you can start your projects with the same template and you don't need to edit the dimension styles again [Music] on the next chapter of this video we will go back to lines and polylines but this time we are going to learn some interesting tips that will help you to master these two commands let's start with settings to edit in a polyline [Music] there are several features we can edit in a polyline and we are going to start with gloves to explain you this situation I'm going to use this example where we are going to draw this simple figure with the command polyline you will see that what matters here is the way we will draw the last line let's activate the command polyline as you may know I can click on the icon at the ribbon or a faster way is using its Alias just type PL and press enter then I'm going to draw this irregular polygon and let's make it beautifully starting at the same horizontal play first make sure object snap and Ortho mode are on hmm the Snaps are off let's turn them on I'm going to hover this endpoint drag to the right following this truck line and then I type 200 millimeters to start the polyline at that distance from the corner then I draw each line by typing the exact length with the keyboard and to make the things easier for you you can just look at the left drawing as all the dimension lines are there also notice as we are inertia mode for the lines snap vertically or horizontally and in this way we can draw all the lines much faster I'm going to speed up the process and when I arrive at the last line I'm going to finish the polyline normally by clicking at the end point what happened is if I'm using the grips to modify the figure by trying to move the line at the bottom a bit down where we should click on this grip at the middle you can see it separates from the last line in contrast what happens if I try to do the same in these other segments look however let's go back when we want to join the last line with the start point we can click on close or typing CL and this time I basically remove any start and last point from the polyline and the lines no longer break at the origin now I'm going to select the polyline and right click with the mouse let's go towards polyline and there are several settings that we can do here if I click on open look what has happened the last segment that I inserted just disappeared leaving the polyline open instead if I click on close I get back to a closed polyline exactly how it was before with the options at the bottom I basically comfortably line into a spline if I choose cure fit you get this result and it's exactly like drawing this figure using the spline fit command on the other hand if I convertibly line to spline fit it uses the method of drawing the spline CV command I know it sounds a bit counter-intuitive but CV actually means control vertices in the same menu related with the polylines we can add a width in case we want to represent that polyline a bit thicker comparing with the other objects in this drawing then we are prompt to insert a value because I have these Dimensions here as a reference I can guess more or less how the new thickness will look like let's insert 10 and it should be more or less this distance type 10 press enter and here you have the result one characteristic when you add a width to a polyline is when you select it the grips are located at an imaginary line in the middle to get back to the previous day I go again to width but this time I'm going to type 0 to disable this property convert lines in a single polyline sometimes we are just drawing something and only after finishing we realize that we have been using the command line instead of polyline that's fine and there is no needs to draw everything again of course there is a command for that the command join you can find it here on the modify panel that's simple select all the objects and they convert to a single polyline [Music] line line types a lot of AutoCAD users have encountered problems when dealing with line types in addition the way they appear in the workspace can be very different than the viewports on the layout tabs all that strolling is due to the line type scale so in this tutorial we are going to explore this step by step hoping this won't be a big issue for you back on the same drawing we are going to create a new layer here let's name it dashlines and set the different color for example this light blue one next I select the drawing at the right and change it to the new layer on the layer properties manager there is a column about line types let's change the line type for this layer and first I have to load a new one and as you can see there are lots of them that AutoCAD provides by default I select this ISO Dash space then don't forget to select it also here click on OK and close as you can see the lines in that blue layer are now dashed now there isn't any control to set the measure of each Dash or to set the quantity of dashes within a line that would be very hard to measure but what we can do instead is set the line type scale now in AutoCAD we can set a line type scale for a specific object or we can apply it generally for all the file and in that case all the lines that are not continue change their appearance so to set the general line type scale I type LT scale and press enter the default value as you can see is 1 and this drawing has the dashes with this size if I change the scale to 0.5 you can see the dash sizes are now half smaller if I am not happy with the result I can keep changing until I find the size that works for me so at this moment it doesn't look hard but suppose now I draw a line very very large in comparison with the existing objects what happens here is with the same line type scale I cannot see anything as I don't want to modify the other dashed lines I can do a different process select the line and go to properties and here you can see a setting for the line type scale by changing this value and this time I'm going to try a very huge one for example 50 and let's see ah finally I can see the dashes properly without changing the lines that I have in the exercise that I showed you before now let's go back but they seem to change um okay this is actually just a problem of loading the screen usually if you zoom the screen few times we've solve this problem but but in this kind of situations the best is to use the command region regenerate and now the dashes are visible again object snap overrides midpoint between two points imagine we are drawing a polyline or a line here the next point will be on the midpoint of this distance normally we would make a temporary line there and use its midpoint that's a way however there is an alternative if I right click go to object snap overrides select mid between two points then you will see if I click on two points the line ends at the middle between them use a specific object snap mode sometimes you have probably noticed it's hard to find the mode we actually want especially if a lot of them are turned on for that then go to oh snap overrides and choose the one we want to use right now for example if I select perpendicular it's very easy to find a perpendicular intersection to this line okay let's go on now I am going to show you extra drawing commands that you can find in this little section let's start with spline it's a command to create a smooth curve and there are two types the first one is blind fit here which is the point where the curve must pass through and when you finish press enter to confirm the spline if you press Escape instead you cancel the command and nothing is created so have this in mind then it's possible to adjust the position of the curve by moving the grips the second method to create the spline is with controlling vertices now unlike the spline fit the curve doesn't pass through the points that we specify as they are just vertices to control its position then this grip that looks like an eject button switches from fit to control vertices so you can use this if later you change your mind another command available here is the construction line it's this button this creates an infinite line and it's used mostly for drafting purposes one of the situations that can be useful is to draw an elevation of a floor plan like the example I'm showing to you right now the next command at the right is called Ray and it works in the same way as the construction lines as well we can use them as a reference to draw other objects the difference array is a semi-detached line it has an origin and continuous infinitely in the direction that we specify also the bullet tracking might be useful here if we need to create trays separated equally with a specific angle for example 15 select that option and then click where the pointer snaps other type of reference is simply a point I can click in this command multiple points and you can place them in strategic positions then in this example I'm going to add two points in two intersections of the track lines at the right we have two buttons called divide and measure they are very similar with divide we can create a certain number of space points along a line or another kind of object now I enter the number of segments for example 5 and press enter the only thing here is that we can't just see these points if we delete the line or move it to another place so in conclusion I think this command can be useful if we need to place equally spaced points along a certain direction so in this case I can draw a line then use divide and erase the line at the end with the command measure instead of specifying the number of points I set the length between each of them as an example let's type 20 and I divided the line in five sections [Music] in the last chapter we will talk about texts and this time we will focus on some a bit more advanced tips let's check them out insert text height is not showing on the command bar not sure if this happened to you but sometimes when we are creating a text object let's say a single line text for example we realize that it prompts directly to set a rotation angle of the text without asking for the text height previously this happens when our current text style has a specific height defined in its properties so in this situation we are on the style floor plan labels and the text style you can see here it's defined as 500 so let's cancel this first I'm going to access the text style properties and you can see the height here for floor plan labels is defined as 500. on the other hand the standard style let's click on it remember that it prompts to specify a text height on screen due to the fact that the value here is set to zero so memorize this now let's go back to floor plan labels and I'm going to change the height to zero apply the changes in close finally on the workspace after activating the command single line text the first prompt is to specify the height even the default one is 500 I can press enter to use this one or change to a different one if I want how to convert multi-line text to single line text and vice versa okay I'm going to insert a multi-line text object for the text style I'm going to use standard and if you look at the label there you can see it's the current Style type the Alias t press enter and then click a new wire to start defining the window that I want to fit the text in and now as this style doesn't have a specific height already defined I can change it here if I want so let's set 150 for example okay now let's Place three lines of text and as my point is just to explain to you how this works I'm going to put text 1 text 2 and text 3. finally click anywhere to confirm the multi-line text now imagine that later I decided to separate each line so this is very easy you just need to explode it and from now on we have three single line text objects here now the other way around in this file I have this floor plan and in each room I added a label as two single line texts with different heights each one is for the name of the room and the text below indicates the area in square meters so it's also possible to merge both on the M text and there is a command for that its name is a bit complex by the way txt 2 m t x t yes it's strange but actually it's not hard to memorize as it means text to M text but don't worry because once you type the first two letters it shows up on the command list then you press enter and notice that the texts became a bit closer and the reason is to follow the spacing that is defined in a multi-line text between its lines OK this is a multi-line text now and if you double click on it you can access the text editor as usual for changing the settings if needed another thing this tool still works even if the objects are displayed randomly around the screen the only problem is when applying text to M text they may not organize how we expect so you have to do it manually simple in closed text in object now look at the labels that we had on the floor plan but to simplify the things I copied them to an empty space here because I think it's easier to understand properly how this tool works ah and to be even better let's move also the areas which are in a smaller size a bit below now let's switch to the express tools menu and specifically at the text panel these are basically some Advanced operations regarding texts and their look there is also this command the txt2mtxt that I was focusing earlier in this video but okay what we need now is this button enclosed to object I'm going to click on it then I select all the objects press enter and then the first prompt is to insert an offset factor and be aware that this is not a distance it's just a factor that still has inconsideration the size of the text as a first attempt I'm happy with these one value so I press enter and for the type of object let's go for rectangle then we have here two options constant and variable and to understand better the difference there is nothing like seeing the result I click on variable and now the object size differs according to the length and size of each text so that's why the rectangle in bedroom 1 is wider than in path if I choose constant instead then there is another box asking me what I want to maintain constant if the width the height or both so this time I'm going to choose both and now all the rectangles are exactly the same even the ones around the areas whose text height is smaller basically the system takes the largest rectangle and places it around the remaining objects now let's look what happens when we change the offset Factor if I set it to 5 the objects become bigger the only problem that it's maybe hard to guess the size that the object will have unless you have a lot of practice but you can try a few times until you find the value that you are looking for finally there are two more types of objects that we can use circles and slots and the available settings are exactly the same as for the rectangles one last thing the text and object keep their independence in a way that in this situation the circle is not following the text if I change the text size this was something when I was exploring this command I didn't understand what variable and constant meant I thought when we change the text height or the text itself the object would adapt to the new size but it didn't actually variable and constant only works for a multiple text selection [Music] mirror text in AutoCAD by default text objects are not mirrored when we use that command to make a symmetry copy of a specific drawing as you will see in this situation the texts are copied but without inverting the letters just because I think most of the time we don't want that to happen however if in a hypothetical situation we need to display the text backwards we only need to change the system variable mirror text enter and here we have two options if I set 0 which is the mode by default the text is not mirrored so to enable this ability I set 1 press enter and now if I apply the command mirror to these objects at the right look that now the texts are backwards insert the field in a text this is a very interesting and useful Advanced option available in AutoCAD a field is basically a way to insert data that we expect to change during the cycle of a drawing ah this is actually the definition that you can see on the Autodesk website by the way as an example I provided to you this file where I have attached an image from a satellite view of a part of a town right in the center of Africa now suppose the image is already scaled to have its real proportions in meters the unit I specified for this project now I'm going to add a polyline to measure a specific area let's make it around these houses and the accuracy here is not very important I just want to show you how this works then let's add a text object and I will type for it area of the terrain with the current value displayed here and the main point is that the area updates automatically if I decide to change the size of that polyline so I right click with the mouse and go to insert field in this window from the category list we can add date and time that could be useful for a layout sheet among other options let's pick up objects and then press this button to select a specific object which in this case is this body line I click on it and then at the right section there are several parameters that we can display let's choose area and that the section at the right first we can see a preview of the result above and this means it's going to be 3248 square meters then here we can choose the format at this moment decimal is fine for me below it's the Precision and in additional format we have extra options like conversion factor in case we need to display the result in a different unit than the one I set for the project and an additional text for example I can add an indication of square meters as a suffix click on OK and close the window now the error is displayed within the text also notice that the values are showing highlighted but don't worry in case you want to print as on the paper this rectangle around the number will not appear finally as I mentioned before the great thing of using Fields is that I can change the area of the polyline and the value updates automatically okay sometimes we have to save the drawing and open it again to notice the change but you can always use the command Regen to update the value in this precise moment so it was everything for today but this time before leaving I want to mention that I just started the page of patreon for gazing plan there you can support this channel to help me keep creating more content here I would really appreciate that even of course I'm already grateful that you find these videos available and that they are helping you to speed up your knowledge without your support nothing of this would be possible so thank you very much for watching see you next time

Channel: CAD in black

Views: 59,781

Keywords: autocad tutorial, course in autocad, autocad training

Id: 2LumoE9KjoY

Length: 248min 41sec (14921 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 24 2023