Autocad - Essential Course for beginners (1h30m)

hi people and welcome to this essential course in autocad here we will cover the most important tools and techniques in a way that you can start making your projects beautifully and above all with precision this tutorial is quite long it takes 1 hour and a half and is divided in 5 parts so if you want you can take a rest at the end of each part and in order to facilitate the things for you i included a list of contents in the description you don't have to watch all the video right now if you want you can come back tomorrow or next week it doesn't matter and click on the chapter that you want to continue watching also if you click on the cart above you can open this video in a playlist where you can have easy access to the other full-length autocad courses in this channel [Music] part 1. this version is autocad 2013 and during this course we will use also version 2018 and 2019 however if you have another version it shouldn't be a problem because even different versions can change a bit the layout or the newest ones just have more features all the basic and main things are mostly the same for example if you can work in autocad 2005 without any problem it will not be too hard to get used to autocad 2018 or 2019 for example and that's because a special characteristic of autocad is that we can start any action by typing the command name for example if i want to draw a line i can type line and this will activate the command if i type options i will open the panel of options so it's very simple if i hold my mouse pointer over any icon it appears there a small box with a briefly explanation of the tool in this case it's the multiline text and the word below is the command name basically if i know the name of the command i can activate this action by inserting the name with the keyboard the name of the commands are the same for all versions of course it's possible that exists any exception and also that some of them have been experiencing improvements all over the time now i'm going to talk about the workspace and how i can use the mouse and its buttons here it's possible that it seems a bit confusing at the beginning but don't worry because you will get used easily over the time this cross is our mouse indicator and it has exactly this shape when we don't have any command active the most common way to move through different sections of the drawing is using the mouse wheel if i scroll up i zoom in and if i scroll down i zoom out to move the workspace just click and hold the wheel and slide it if you are familiar with google maps this works as the same way so it will be easy for you if you click anywhere with the right button you open the right-click menu and you can find their useful features regarding the object that you click on basically this menu changes if you click on a blank workspace or in an object but anyway some of the options are always available in the menu the left button is used for selection if i want to select from the left to the right the select area will appear in blue and i need to cover all the line in order to select it if i just cover a part it will not work as you can see here but if i open the selection from the right to the left the selection area displays in green and if you just touch the line it goes to the selection to cancel the selection just click on escape now i'm going to start teaching you to join autocad and for that i will introduce the command line it's the most basic tool in autocad and the one that you will use most of the time to draw a line i can go to the home panel at the top and click on the icon line with the left button of course another option is typing line with the keyboard and then press enter if you look at the command bar you can see that i have the command line active also the mouse indicator has changed now it doesn't have that square in the middle it appears in this form when i'm using any drawing tools and the drawing tools are the ones that you can find in this panel to start drawing i can just click somewhere here to enter the first point and click again where i want to put the second point for example here now i can enter a second line but i can also press escape to cancel the command okay so we have drawn a line however it was without any specific dimension and direction and this is not going to be very useful for us so i want to show you how to insert a horizontal line with a specific dimension for example 1000 for now the units doesn't matter as i will show you how to edit them later now please learn this tip i'm going to press enter and you can see that the last command used the command line is active again so in this kind of situations it's the quickest way to do i click to insert the first point then i move to the right now here appears this dash green line saying polar and it means that the line will be completely horizontal now i will type 1000 and press enter as you can see this line is completely horizontal and specified as one thousand to be possible to draw completely horizontal or vertical lines we need the polar tracking or polar mode now i will deactivate it which is here at the bottom to show you what will happen i will draw another line now and as you can see the dashed line is not there anymore and even if i try to draw it as horizontal as possible for sure it will get a little bit out of the place even if it's unnoticeable for that reason i strongly recommend you to make sure that the polar tracking is on or the mode that we are going to see next the ortho mode to draw only orthogonal lines i can switch on the ortho mode which is this button next to the baller mode drawing a line again i click for the first point and the cursor only lets me to draw a vertical or a horizontal line so i will type now 100 then 200 and i can continue drawing until i want this will be 100 i will draw another line and i can draw how many lines as i want when i finish i simply press escape so the last thing i will teach about the command line is to draw a line with a specific angle i will draw first a horizontal line and the next one i want to draw it with the length 200 and if i press the button tab i can specify the angle that i want i will raise the line for example 30 degrees and press enter to confirm it in the next section i will explain you how to set up and edit units one thing i recommend is drawing with scale one per one i mean if you want to draw a line with one meter of length draw it with the real length not with 1 centimeter that's because it's easier to not get confused and you only need to scale the drawing when you will plot it now if you look to the bottom left corner you can see the coordinates of the mouse pointer the first number is the x-coordinate the second the y-coordinate and the third the z-coordinate as by default we are working on a 2d plane and that plane is the x-y plane this z-coordinate is always zero another thing this symbol is called the ucs icon and ucs means universal coordinate system and its position on the workspace indicates the origin where the three cartesian axes are zero now let's learn to set up units in autocad i will type units press enter to open this panel here where it says length i can choose the type that i want in this case i'm going to use decimal units but i know that in some countries is common to use the architectural or engineering units in the precision you have all these options to choose and at this side you can choose the type of angle units i use decimal degrees which is the most common type then in this insertion scale we should set the units here that we are going to use in this file however let's suppose i forget to specify the correct units here that's not a problem as i can change the units at any time actually the units for insertion scale just have the purpose in exchanging content between files for example if i have drawn a window in a different file and that window has a width of 1.2 and the units on that file are set as meters when i bring to this file where the units are millimeters the window is automatically resized in order to measure 1200 here now i want to show you a common issue that usually happens in older versions of autocad if you have a recent version you probably don't need to deal with this but let's see it was common that our workspace was not very wide especially when we were changing the units to millimeters but this is a simple thing to solve if i draw a very long line like for example 100 000 millimeters it will not fit in the drawing but the solution for this is typing the command zoom z press enter i type a for all and as you see my workspace is much larger now in the next topic i'll show you a very basic tool that will help us to draw with precision it's the object snap on the screen you can see those lines that you may know how to draw them so i'm going to activate the command line and if i hover the pointer on the corner of a line or along the line you can see these green symbols showing up there these points are from the object snap and they help me to draw with precision for example the square indicates an end point of one of the lines if i click here the start point of the new line will be precisely from the corner i will show you what happens when i have the object snap off so i would try to draw a line from this corner and now if i zoom in i can see that there is a gap these things can make your drafting unprecise and when working in large projects you would have dozens of these situations making everything a bit of a mess as that's not what we want let's learn how this works i'm going to show you how to choose the object snap points we have to type o snap to open the settings here i can activate the modes that i need in this tutorial i will show you how to use some of them i'm going to start with the end point as i showed you before it appears in the extremities of the lines and arcs the midpoint is useful when you want to draw from the middle of the object the center only applies for circles and ellipses and to detect these points i have to touch the border of the circle without clicking and for the ellipse is the same the intersection is obviously when you want to detect a point of intersection between two lines the extension appears for example when you click on an endpoint and you drag the pointer in the same direction of your line now the perpendicular this is a little bit tricky i'm going to draw a line from here and now i have to touch the line that i want to assume as my reference i drag the mouse to find the perpendicular line so here it is i can just type the length to draw it now i want to draw a line from the same point to the perpendicular intersection of this line i highlighted here once i reach that destination line i find this sign that indicates the perpendicular point of my future intersection i click there and i have my new line orthogonal with this another parallel mode if you want to draw a parallel line just click here for example drag the mouse over the line that i want to make it parallel to detect it object snap tracking this is a very useful tool if i want to put the first point of a new line at 50 millimeters at the right from another i would touch the end point of my line and drag slowly to the right i would type 50 to insert the first point of the new line so here it is of course i can do the same to another direction now i will show you to the left side this time i will insert the distance of 100 and i can draw this line here one last thing about the object snap i recommend you to only activate the modes you are using because if you activate everything it can be a bit confusing sometimes with the green signs appearing everywhere how does the other drawing tools work if you go to the drawing section on the top you can find there are a lot of commands and there are some more if you click here in this arrow as this is a tutorial for beginners i will only show you how to use some of them the most important polylines rectangles circles and arcs i think these are the most used and enough for beginners in autocad i'm going to show you how to use the command polyline a polyline is basically a group of lines all connected to each other to draw polyline we can click on this button or we can also type with the keyboard p line or simply pl press enter and as you can see this is the same process of drawing line now i'm drawing as much lines as i need and when i finish i press escape or if i want to connect with the first point of the polyline i can simply type cl that means close and press enter so the main characteristic when i draw a polyline is that i select all these lines together because they are considered only one object if i want to draw a rectangle i can still use polyline but if i click in the command rectangle it's easier that is because first i click to insert the start point and then i only need to insert the coordinates of the opposite corner for example if i want a rectangle with dimensions 300 per 500 first i type 300 then i press the button tab and finally 500 so as you can see for rectangles is faster doing this way now i'm going to show you how to draw a circle you can click on this icon here or you can type either circle or c first i click to insert the center for example here and now i'll insert the radius of the circle 250 and press enter then if you go to the drawing panel and click on this arrow you can choose the way how you want to insert a circle for example you can chose first the center and insert a diameter you can draw a circle by inserting two or three points and also by using tangent points so if you want you can play around this because it's easy to learn to draw an arc i can click on the icon above or i can simply type a with the keyboard i click to insert the first point now i will put the second point and then the third point at the beginning it may be a little bit difficult to draw an arc but with practice you will get used to it also like the circle if you click on the arrow you can choose the points that you want to insert for drawing the arc there are several options like before okay now that you know how to use these commands you can play around with them and also discovered the other drawing tools part two in this part we are going to talk about the modify section it's very important to learn how to use most of these commands from the beginning this not only helps you to modify objects but also to save time when you are drawing another thing when you activate the command of the section modify the pointer changes to this shape i'm going to start with the most basic commands they are move copy and rotate i will start with the command move and it's very simple i'm going to type m or click in the button located there select the objects press enter then i pick a point this one for example and now i click again to put the object on the new position this time i'm going to move it 500 to the right of the endpoint now i'm going to show you the command copy this time i type co or copy and it works as the same way as the command move the only difference is that it keeps the original objects this time i'm going to choose this base point i copy the objects to a distance f500 to the left i also want to show you another and a very useful way of the copy command we are going to activate the command again select the objects press enter and select the base point now if you look to the command bar it says specify second point or array we are going to activate array by typing a and here we have to enter the number of items to array i put 5 and you can see on the screen that we will have 5 items displayed in a row and this is very important with the same distance between each other i'm going to specify 2000 for the distance how to use the command rotate we are going to type ro or rotate select the objects and press enter i'm going to specify a base point for example this one i can rotate the figure around that point as you can see then i can click for example here okay now imagine that we want to rotate the figure to the position that it was before so if we do the same process we pick a point our reference line will not be horizontal this time and when we place the object it will not be with precision and it means that we have to use a different way ok we are going to repeat all the process again and when we have to specify the base point we are going to type r for reference with this i will pick two points for specifying a reference line the first one will be this and the second is another so with this way i can rotate around this line and to make it horizontal just use the polar tracking for example now it says polar i can click as you can see the figure is finally straight okay let's go through the next command this one i consider very useful to step out from creating simple objects and moving or creating an exact copy of them it's the command offset the icon is located on this place here and it's used to create parallel lines and curves and also concentric circles i'm going to show you an example with this polyline here i want to create an internal polyline with this distance specified as 150 i click on the icon and i will insert 150 for the specified distance then i click on the object and then i click here to offset to the inner side here you have it on the next example i have this line and i want to make multiple parallel lines i'm going to type o for offset and this time i will specify a distance of 200. i click on the line and then i'm going to type m for multiple so with this i'm able to draw parallel lines with the distance of 200 between each other next i want to show you the options through in the offset command i type o again now instead of typing the distance i can type through or t and with this i can place the parallel line where i want so i will place the line using some object snap points as my reference for example this endpoint i will also do it at the top of this window and at the top of the wall here now that you know how to use offset you can try it and practice we have an example of offset for an ellipse and an arc if we have a complex polyline with arcs included it also works now if we have the same figure but splitted in lines and arcs the offset will be separately and this is what happens basically to offset the objects like before you need to convert the lines to only one polyline on the next section i will explain you how to trim objects here i have drawn these three parallel lines additionally i made two more intersecting them i want to cut off these sections and for that i will do it with the command trim which i have it there i click on the icon and then i select the object and press enter finally i click on the parts that i want to remove so as you may understood with this tool i trim any section between any intersection of the selected lines now imagine if i want to cut off all these parts of the parallel lines i activate trim again and this time i will only select this line along the three parallel lines as i have left the diagonal line unselected it will delete everything to the left from the vertical line here it is okay now i'm going to show you the command extend you can find it clicking on the arrow at the right side of the trim command so this is useful when we want to extend lines towards another object i'm going to extend the horizontal lines till the diagonal line i will select all press enter and then i click on the lines that i want to extend so it's done as you can see the command stream and extend are not difficult to use although you must practice next part i'm going to explain you the command mirror it's very simple and i'm going to show you how it works for example i want to mirror this figure then i create a virtual mirror and finally the object will be copied symmetrically so i'm going to explain you the process slowly to activate the command i can type mi or mirror or click on the button located at the modify section i'm going to select the objects and press enter then i have to specify the mirror line but i want a new figure to be located at the distance of 100 from the existing one hovering the end point i drag to the right type 50 and press enter so i have specified here the first point of the mirror line then i need a second point in order to make a vertical line also the length of the mirror line doesn't matter only the direction i click and here i press enter again to remain the source objects another thing before specifying 50 for the distance from the object to the mirror line with that i can have the total distance of 100 now i want to show you another useful situation to use mirror if we need to create a symmetric figure we can just draw half of it and when i have to place the mirror line it draws exactly where is the end point i move up click here and it's done so if you need to make very complex symmetric drawings you can save a lot of time doing this way we can also draw the mirror line with a different direction i will make a horizontal line from this endpoint and the objects are now mirrored in this different way so it's also possible to draw diagonal mirror lines however in this situation i just wanted vertical or horizontal mirror lines and to make sure of that i had the polar tracking turn on now i'm going to explain to you how to use the command fillet and the command chamfer which can be used to modify corners as you can see here the command fillet will change the corner to an arc which i specify typing the radius the command chamfer will change the corner to align which in this case i specify it typing the distances from the corner to the intersections so i'm going to start with the command fillet ok i'm going to draw a rectangle with the command line and i will specify the dimensions as 100 per 50. once i finish i click on the command fillet which i can find it over there i will try to convert to an arc this corner i select this line and when i select the second line i realize that no arc was created this usually happens when i'm using the command for the first time as the radius by default is zero let's repeat the process again i click on fill it now look to the command bar and you can see these options and one of them is the radius i type r now i need to enter the radius for example 10 i'm going to choose the lines again and as you can see i have put in this corner an arc of radius 10. then i will apply fill it to the other corners press enter to activate the command again i select these two lines and you can see that another arc was created here at this site now i'm going to apply to the corner below but this time i want to change the radius to 20. i type r and enter 20. then i select the lines and it's done on the next part i will show you how to apply fill it on polylines i am drawing the same figure but this time as a polyline instead of lines now that i finished i type f for fillet i will enter p for polyline i enter 10 for the radius and when i select it creates arcs for all the corners all except this one where i started and finish the polyline in fact there was a missing step to convert all the corners to arcs i have to type cl to close it first and by doing this is like the polyline doesn't have a start and an end point so the polyline will continue also in this corner if i just fill it again you can see that it's now applied for all the corners at one time let's see another option regarding the command fillet i activate the command again and this time i'm going to type t as you can see i can switch between trim and no trim i choose no trim and when i select the objects the original is not going to be deleted if i want to use fillet in several corners in one time i activate fillet i type m for multiple and i'm able to do the operation for several corners without need to activate the command again now i'm going to show to you how to use the command chamfer it works as the same way as feel it but the corner will be changed to a line instead the process is simple click on the arrow next to the command fillet and choose chamfer i will type d for distance now for the distance 1 i put 10 and for the distance to 20. press enter for the distance 1 that i put 10 i choose this line and the second distance click here so this is how the command chamfer works also like the command fillet the option stream multiple and polyline can be used also in chamfer how to use the command scale to change the size of an object basically this is used to increase or decrease the size of a drawing and i recommend you to not use this command for printing purposes it's better to draw always in the scale one per one however if you need to scale a drawing in order to print it don't worry we will learn that later in a specific chapter of this tutorial to change the scale of a drawing i will click on the icon in the modify section or type scale or sc now i select the objects that i want to scale and press enter then i select the base point and when i drag the pointer i realized the rectangle is getting too large at the moment it's using a factor of 35 it means that if i click now the size of the object will increase 35 times but without any precision because of that i should insert a scale factor going back i will set it as 2 and the line sizes will change to the double size now i will type the command distance or di so i can measure this line and as you can see the length has changed to 200. another thing if this dimension doesn't appear in your workspace you have to switch on this button dynamic input also press f12 if instead i want to scale my drawing to a small size i have to insert for the scale factor a value under 1. for example if i insert 0.5 the lines decreased to their half now imagine that i want to change the scale in order to have design as 130 i turn on the command again select everything then choose the base point and if you look to the command bar there is an option called reference i will type ref or r and with this option i will choose two points and type the new distance between them i choose this as the first point and this one another here the second point now i want this distance to be 350. it's done and those are my new distances now let's have a look to a different situation to use references with scale this time i don't know the distance i just want the length of this door to match the spacing below i will repeat the previous method i will choose now the base point type reference and like before i choose two points of my reference then i need to click on the second point now instead of typing the distance i type p for points and then choose these two points because i want to fit the door here okay now these two distances are the same finally i just need to move the door there and it will fit exactly in that place charan perfectly fit now let's learn how to stretch objects let's convert the figure below on the figure above for that i'm going to use the command stretch i can type s or find the icon at the modify panel there now i have to select the lines that i want to extend and also the end section on the right but i have to keep these lines unselected because i don't want to move them this is important after pressing enter i pick this point and as you can see i extend the lines i'm going to type with the keyboard the length that i want to extend if for the same figure i select all lines except this first one i will move also the second vertical line another situation if instead i choose all this figure this will be moving all the object and the stretch will not have its proper effect [Music] part three in this part we are going to learn to insert and edit dimension lines how to add layers edit them or change one object from one layer to another how to insert text and finally how to print a project with a specific scale and in a specific paper so let's start with the dimension lines and here we will learn how to make exactly this example to insert the dimension line i can type with the keyboard dim linear or alternatively you can switch here to annotate and then click in this icon i'm going to insert a new dimension line and here is where a lot of people struggles as you can see the numbers are too small and this is because autocad has standard dimension sizes and that doesn't matter what you are drawing so the numbers can be too big or too small this means that i have to open my dimension style manager and i can do it by clicking in this button alternatively i can also use the command dim style so first i recommend you to create a new dimension style clicking here i will type the name of my new style for example floor plan and i'm going to choose standard measurements i click on continue and as you can see the dimension style manager is quite complex with a lot of things that i can edit however with a few changes i can put my dimension lines in a good size first i will go to symbols and arrows tab and change the arrow size which is too small the distance that i show you here is 300 so i can put for my arrow size a value according to that distance for example 100 the second thing i will edit is my text if i go to the text height i can see that it's too small again i will put 100 as before now i can click on ok and close to activate the changes i have to click on the dimension line and change here this tab to floor plan as you can see this looks now much better but however it's not exactly what i want because i want the units displayed emitters open again the dimension style manager and let's modify it in primary units tab i'm going to change the precision to only two decimals and here as a suffix let's put m for meters finally because i want to change from millimeters to meters i have to set up this scale factor as 0.001 click on ok and close so the dimension is now exactly as i want in the next few minutes we are going to learn how to work with layers and for that i will be using this floor plan so let's open the layer properties manager click in this icon over there or you can also type layer with the keyboard if you look at this list here i have separated in layers different categories of objects for example i created a layer called doors for the doors the layer windows is for the windows of course and i did the same for the other elements now i'm going to show you how to edit layers for each layer there are few options that i can change i'm going to start with the color for example i click in the color of the layer dimensions and let's change it from orange to green i recommend you to use light colors if you are working in a darker workspace but now you may think if i use light colors and i want to print they might be difficult to see for example here the dimension lines are hard to see but there is an option that i can change the color of the layer just in the viewport i drag this window to the right and there will be more options for the layer properties this column that is called vp color indicates the color that will be printed i'm going to click to change the color for the dimensions so i want this yellow a bit darker when i print now it's much easier to see the damage lines one more important thing any layer that is in white in the model space it will automatically be black on the paper aside from the colors i can change the line type clicking here now if i go to load i can see all these options for example i would choose this type select it again here and click ok but if you go to the drawing it looks like that the line type hasn't changed and we can only see it if we zoom a lot however if we switch to the layouts tab we are able to see the dash line properly and in the paper will be exactly like this all this can be edited on line type scaling at the properties panel if you want to learn more about how it works click on the card that appears above to change the line weight i click here and i can choose the size that i want i select this of one millimeter for example and click ok now you may notice that nothing has changed in the drawing because by default all the lines are displayed with the same size as it's easier to work but don't worry because when you print the line weight will be correct in any case if you want to display them on the screen just click on this icon now i'm going to show you how to insert a new layer click with the right button anywhere in this box and then click on new layer after i type the name for the layer for example line now i can edit the layer as i want for example change the color to red then i can edit the layer as i want if you look here you can see this stick in the layer dimensions this means that this layer is currently selected so if i draw for example a line now it will be displayed in the layer dimensions as it's in orange like the others also this tab shows the layer that is currently active if i want to move an object to another layer it's simple first i have to select the object then i click on this tab and choose the layer that i want to move to i choose line here it is and also a red color now i'm going to show you how to turn off a layer it's simple do you see these lights here if i click in one of them i switch off the layer i click on the bulb of the layer doors and if you look to the drawing you can notice that the doors disappear now imagine that i want to switch off other layers except the layer doors for example to do that i double click on doors to activate it after i click with the right button now i click on select all but current i click on the light of one of the selected and all of them switch off this is great if we want to select all the objects of a specific layer another thing i can also click next to the light this freezes the layer and apparently that's exactly the same as turning it off but the difference is with freeze is like deleting the layer temporally basically this is useful for complex drawings with dozens of layers if i freeze a bunch of them autocad may use less memory now i want to show you how to insert text it's very simple and there are two ways to do it the first way i show you here is to insert a single line text to do it i click in the arrow under the icon text and select single line text if you cannot find it you can also type with your keyword text ok now i will click where i want to insert my text the first thing i have to specify the text height which will be the size of the line that i draw now then i will insert the direction of the text as i want my text horizontal i draw a line in this direction i click and i can now type the text as you can see it's like the text above but a bit bigger when i finish i click somewhere with the mouse and then escape now if i want to add text with the same size as this one i click on the text then right click in the blue square go to quick properties and here we can see the height of the text which is 360. i close and now i will insert a new text and this time i will type 360 for the text height and by doing that it will match the text size of the text above so you can see that most texts are equal now let's learn a trick to add multiple titles with the same size i type copy select the text press enter click on the text and click again on the places where i want to copy it so this is very useful for floor plans when i finish just double click on each text to edit it for example this one i write kitchen and i do the same for all the rooms the second way to add text is multi-line text if i click on the same arrow now i choose multi-line text or i can type with the keyboard text or just t now this way will open a text box and i have to specify the horizontal range of the text when the text overflows the space it goes automatically onto the next line i can click here and now i can start writing the multi-line text is better when we want to insert a long text in this tab we have all the options to edit the text and among them you can see the text height here in this blank in the next chapter i'm going to show you how to print a drawing with a specific scale it's a very important feature in autocad as an example i will be using this site plan and i want to print it in a scale of 1.200. this procedure is not difficult but it has several steps if it looks a bit confusing for you don't worry because after two or three times of practice you will get it okay if you look at this part of the screen you can see those tabs here this one that says model is our current workspace and as you know this is where we make all the drawings now i'm going to switch to layout1 and here you can see a sheet of paper with all the drawings that i have in this file this is the paper space for printing and it has this paper size set by default so we may have to change it depending on the scale that we need now i want to show you a characteristic of the layout the viewport which is this rectangle here this acts like a portal it displays the area that i will print for example i click on the viewport then i select this point on the corner and i move it a little bit to this side as you can see the viewport became smaller and also this part of the drawing is now hidden and will not be in the printing so in the layout we have two different modes paper which is the current one and model when we have the paper active and i scroll with the mouse wheel i zoom in all the workspace also if i hold the wheel to use the pen i move all the paper around i'm going to switch to the model by double click inside the viewport or clicking in this button here so if i move and zoom now it only works inside the viewport i'm going to leave the site plan in the center of the model as i want to print it in a scale of 1 per 200 i need to click in this icon to choose the scale and you can see all this list however if the scale that i want is not there i can still create a new one by click in this button that says custom but let's choose 1.200 and as you can see the drawing has zoomed a lot meaning that my paper is too small for this scale and i have to change it to a bigger one to change the paper size i go to the layout one right click and choose page setup manager then i click on modify and now i am in the page setup window here is where i can choose the printer and the paper size first let's click here to choose the printer as i want to export to pdf i can choose this option dwg to pdf and remember that dwg is the extension for autocad files now in the ribbon below i can choose the paper size i'm going to select a1 why because i already know that it will fit the drawing but if in your case you don't know the size you have to try different ones to find the appropriate finally i click on ok and then close as you can see i have now a much bigger paper so what i need now is to increase the viewport and fit the drawing i click on the corner and drag it to the other side as i am in the paper mode i double click inside to switch it to the model so that i can drag the drawing to fit it in the center you may notice that this part is not fitting so i have to increase the viewport a bit now i am ready to print but at this moment the viewport will also appear in the paper so how can i hide the viewport there are two options i can drop the viewport to outside of the paper which is not my favorite but the second option i can create a special layer for the viewport and then freeze it i will open the layers window right click inside the window and select new layer i name it as viewport then i select a viewport and move it to its correct layer on this tab above finally i click again in the same ribbon and then in this icon to freeze it now i cannot see the viewport finally i'm ready to print but before it's important to confirm that the scale is correct i switch to model and here you have it to print i go to the layout 1 tab right click and choose plot once i have my printer selected i can click on ok now save the file and here you can see the drawing in pdf with the scale of one per two hundred part 4 in this chapter i'm going to explain how to combine multiple lines to form a single object i will be using the commands group and block and this works for almost any kind of drawing i'm going to start explaining the command group and it's very simple and quick it's a very good idea if we only need to use the object once or twice so i select everything that i want to convert right click and here from this list i choose group as you can see if i hover the figure everything is highlighted and it acts as a single object if i don't want to have these objects grouped anymore just click with the right button and then you can click on ungroup which is under group and it's done now an important thing don't use the command explode to get rid of the group because it simply definitely doesn't work and the reason is technically we are not converting the lines in one object we are just grouping them that subject is create a block which is exactly what we are going to see next are very useful elements in autocad they can be quite complex and actually we could easily make a one hour tutorial just for them but here i will just explain you the basics so you can start using them easily first of all you should have the objects that will be part of the block on the layer zero as later you can move to the layer that you want without having any problems okay when we have a bit of practice we can do differently but for now i recommend you to do in this way to start i can type block or click in the button create located at the block panel the block definition window opened and it's where i can set up the block first i have to choose the name for example figure now on the first column it asks to choose a base point i click here on pick a point and this returns to my main screen i'm going to choose the point that is more suitable for me this one i click on ok and finally i need to select the objects as i haven't selected before press enter and the block is done if i click on it i select everything now i'm going to explain why the command block is so useful if i click on insert on the block tab a window opens here i can choose the block that i want if you click on this tab you can see only the block that i create as it shows just the blocks in this file i can also change the scale there click ok and insert another block where i want actually it's a block reference you can notice it when you hover with the mouse so what is the difference between blocks and block references block is the object that i created that you can find in the list at the black panel it's like that i added it to the library of this file block references are the objects that we add to the workspace basically references to the block each of them can be assigned in a different layer have a different scale or a different rotation for example here i have two different block references of the same block now suppose that we have the block copied lots of times and we want to erase for example the circle i can edit the block i go to edit now choose the figure i click on ok and it's going to open my block editor here i can make the changes that i want i'm going to select a circle and delete it save the changes close the block editor and as you can see all the circles were erased from all the blocks how to insert dimension lines in order to appear always with the same size in the paper the scale doesn't matter how to fill close boundaries with a command hatch and some tips to use it and finally i want to show you how to calculate areas let's learn how the annotative dimensions work so first of all i will click on the tab annotate then in the dimension section i click in this little arrow to open the dimension style manager here i will click on the annotated style and then click in modify to edit it now we are in the section text and we can see here the text height which is set up as 3 millimeters as this is a good size for viewing in the paper i will not change it then i go to symbols and arrows and also the row size is 3 which is good for me so i click on ok and close now i can start but before i will show you a new tip which is available since autocad 2016 i'm going to type dim layer press enter i have to insert a name for a new layer where i want the dimension lines in for example dimensions and by doing this every time that i create a new dimension line it goes automatically to that layer so let's start drawing annotative dimensions first i want to draw these two dimensions here and this viewport is in a scale of 1 per 100 so the first thing i have to do is to change the scale in this icon and select 1 per 100 now i can type dim linear or click on the icon over there press enter now i'm going to draw the dimension line i click in the first point and then in the second point but as you can see the text is very small and it happened because i forgot to change to the current dimension style so going back let's change the style here and select annotative now it should be fine so i click on the first point and the second point i place it here for the next dimension i press enter to reactivate the previous command now i click on this point and then the second here it is so if we go to the layout you can see that the arrows and the text are visible and when i print the text and the arrows height will be exactly three millimeters as it's what i specified before now let's draw the lines which are on the viewport with scale 1 30. so what do you think i should do is simple do the same process change the scale to 1.30 now i will draw again the dimension line here and then draw these other two here when i zoom out to see all the drawing you can notice that the dimensions i just made are much smaller than the other ones in fact if i go to the layout you can see that they have the same size in both viewports and i also need to tell you another thing you cannot see the dimensions here because i drew them in a scale of 1.30 so they will only appear in the viewport that has the same scale which is this one on the right now the last thing i want to talk in this chapter it's very important are these icons here about annotation objects the first one here that says show annotation objects if it's switched on all my annotation lines are displayed in the drawing now i'm going to deactivate it and look what happens the dimension lines i have there disappeared and the only ones that you can see were made with the scale 1 by 30. if i change to 1 per 100 you can see only the other ones on the next section i'm going to explain to you the command hatch this command is used for filling enclosed areas as a solid fill or with a pattern or a gradient filled to use this command we can click on the icon there select an enclosed area and click so as you can see i filled this enclosed area with the color defined in my current layer which is white for the shape we can use one of the patterns located in this panel there so the first one that says solid fills the enclosed area with only one color and the others fill with the pattern that is indicated in each image let's choose this one but as you can see it looks like nothing happened and this is because the scale of the pattern is too small as the spacing is only one millimeter you can see it at the scale setting there let's change it for example to 10 and you can see the difference there then we can press enter or escape to leave the command are types of objects like polylines lines blocks text etc and you can realize it when you click or hover a hatch pattern okay now that you know the basics to use the command hatch i must say something it's recommended to create a separate layer for the hatch command if we are working in a project with lots of hatch objects the computer may get a bit slow especially when we are using very detailed patterns so in those situations we can simply freeze the layer where we have the hatch objects like dim layer there is a similar system variable for hatches also released in autocad 2017 i'm going to type hp layer and press enter type the name for the special layer for example hatch then if i activate the hatch command i can see that i add to the list a new layer so from now each time i use the command hatch the objects go automatically to that layer now imagine that i want to fill several areas where i want them to act as a single object simple i click in one area then click on another just right away and keep clicking in the areas that i want to fill now an important thing it's better to do this process with a solid pattern because if i use one of the others they are a bit heavier and the computer may get a bit slow also sometimes especially for large and more complicated areas the field may take few seconds to appear and if you make a mistake in the feeling you can go back by pressing ctrl set and then continue when i finish press enter or escape if i want to fill with a specific pattern it's better to specify it in the end to change the color i can go to the layer hatch and switch it for example to green now pay attention to this example imagine that i want to apply hatch to this area it could be to indicate a different apartment for example what i need to do is to create here a rectangle and then apply hatch there this is the process first i create a new layer for the rectangle i name it as border now i'm going to change the color for example i choose this pink one activate a layer now i'm going to draw a rectangle over there i click in this point this is not with precision so the second point can be there now if i want to apply hatch to the rectangle i should turn off all the layers except the layer border i click with the right button here and then i choose select all but current it selects all the layers except the active one then i click in one of the lights there to switch off all the layers except border now i can activate again the command hatch by tapping h and i can click inside the rectangle oh he didn't appear yes it happened because i also switched off the layer hatch so turn on the layer and then do the same for the other ones select all and click in one of the lights the next step i have to select the hatch of the rectangle i click with the right button i go to draw order and click in send to back and now i am able to see all the other objects but if i select again the hatch and go there where says hatch transparency it's set to zero but if i drag this bar i can set the transparency for example i leave it here then press escape and i can see it more transparent okay on the next section i'm going to show you how to calculate areas in autocad it's very simple and i will show you two ways the first way is what i use most of the time you can type with the keyboard area or the alias aaa another way is finding the command on the utilities panel here now i will calculate the area for this room and what i need to know is to click on all the four vertices i will start in this one and don't forget to have the object snap turned on in order to snap to the top once you finish press enter and the calculated area will show up in this box in this case i have the units of millimeters and that's the reason why i have this long number here but in square meters that is just 14. the second way i will show you here is calculate the area of a polyline or a region for this kind of situations where you need to click on a lot of vertices that will take a long time i activate the command again but this time i'm going to choose the option object i press enter i select a polyline it calculated the area automatically so this is very useful for site plans maps irregular shapes and other cases that takes time to draw all the boundary part 5 now let's have here a newer version of autocad the version 2019 and this time i'm going to explain you the command array and also some extra commands of the section modify length them break and align let's start how to use the command array and you can see those types when you click on this arrow we will start with the first one rectangular array and this mode displays the copied objects arranged in the matrix like the red window in this example here i'm going to click on the icon then i select the objects that are part of the window press enter and now you can see that a special tab for array creation appears on the ribbon there we can control the number of items and the spacing between them now let's talk a bit about the settings in this blank we insert the horizontal spacing between the objects at this moment is 2700 which is the distance between the first and second objects let's change it to for example 5000 then press enter or click on another blank and you can see the difference now next let's insert the vertical spacing which in my case is 2600 here you have it as you can see the windows are now disposed along three floors which is the number of rows the number of columns in this case is 4. ok i'm going to select the array again and i can do it by just clicking in one of the windows the array is now a single object and with these grips i can modify the distances or change the number of items i'm going to explain to you how they work if i click in the first one which is represented by a square i can move the array to a different position for example i want to move it 1000 meters if i click in the triangles located on the second column and the second row i can change its spacing between for example i click there for the vertical spacing if i click in that grip i change the spacing but the horizontal one the grips at the last column and at the last row change the number of items if i click here and drag to the right i increase the number of columns and the new value it can be 20 for example now let's learn how to use the polar array this time i need to click in the arrow next to the command and select polar array i'm going to choose these two lines press enter and for the center point of the array i select the center of the circle this time i copied the objects in a specific number around the center of the array now let's look at the ribbon it's a bit different and in the first column you can still have the number of items and two new options angle between and fill let's have a look i'll click there and change the number of items to 24 and if you look at the spacing between it has decreased it to 15. now suppose if instead of 15 i change it to 10 the number of items remain but they couldn't fill all the circle and that's why this angle is now less than 360. and this number of 230 it's exactly this angle now let's look at this part of the ribbon in rows as you can see there is only one because i only have one row of items displayed around the center if i change it to a different number for example 5 it basically changes to 5 orbits is currently set to 266. i'm going to show you a bit closer here consequently the total distance is this one 1062. the last column is for the axis z so in 3d i click and hold the mouse wheel and move the pointer around so i change it to the view and now even i have here three levels the distance between each level is very small if i put 300 for example you can see the difference the last array type that i'm going to talk is path array imagine that we have a curve here and we want to place a certain object all along that curve for example a circle i choose path array this time select the object that i want to display all along the curve press enter and then select the curve very good it's done but if i want to display the circles with a specific distance between them i need to make some editings i'm going to select the array path and then i click in this triangle to change the distance by placing a circle in another position i increase the distance and the number of items is also less and the spacing between this time is the distance along the path from the first up to the second item okay then i'm going to show you more modify commands that you can find under this section here and i'm going to explain to you just some of them even they are not very common in some occasions they can be useful command lengthen as you may guess this is used to modify the length of lines or line sections that are part of a polyline i'm going to click on this arrow and then the command is this one just click on it and if you look at the command bar there are several ways to modify the length of the line first i'm going to choose total length which is displayed here as the current selected which is displayed here i click on the line and then i just need to type the total length for example 60 and then if i click at the right of the line the 60 millimeters is added to this side if i click on the left it's the same but at the left side let's activate the command again and this time i will choose delta d e with this option i can type a value to add to the current length if i type 20 and hover the line i add the length of 20 or to the right depending on each side i click to shorten the line i can simply insert a negative value but if i continue clicking i increase the value the number of times that i want another way is percent simply i insert a percentage length if i type 70 the new length of the line will be 70 percent of its original basically 30 percent less finally i can use the option dynamic i type d y press enter click on the line and as you can see i extend it by moving just a pointer if i want until this vertical line i can click here using the object snap point like the options rule on the command offset now i'm going to explain you document break there are two types break and break at a point first i'm going to start with the normal break this creates a gap between two points in a line or in a polyline i click on it i'm going to this rectangle and the place where i click is automatically considered as the first point and the thing is that this was without any precision basically if i type f i can redefine the first point so i'm going to this place click outside the object and it will be projected to its closest point then i can click again for the second point here and you can see that it created a gap there now let's learn break at the point in this case i select first the object and then i only need to click in one point for example if i click exactly here the polyline is splitted between this nearest point and the origin as you can see now i have two polylines command the line i can align an object with another one first i need to select the object that i want to move this one i press enter and then i select a source point for example this one and after the point where i want to move the object after i can select the second point and imagine that i decided i want this point here i click and then if i press enter i will be asked if i want to scale the objects based on the alignment points if i say yes the rectangle has to be resized but let's answer no instead i keep the dimensions of the object but i connect only in the first point going back if i would click yes you can see that the object is scaled in order to connect both points now still in the same example but this time the second point let's put it on the opposite corner can you guess what is going to happen the rectangle will be aligned along the diagonal axis and if i choose to not scale the object it stays there and the result one i choose yes it's this okay guys it was everything in this tutorial thank you very much for watching and now you can put into practice the concepts that you have been learning here ah an important thing don't forget to subscribe to kevin black yes it's the name of this channel if you haven't realized and there you can access to all the content short tutorials full length courses and exercises take care and see you next time

Channel: CAD in black

Views: 9,174

Keywords: autocad essentials, complete course, long course, long tutorial, full tutorial for beginners, autocad 2013, cad in black

Id: GHi6Xtn63hY

Length: 91min 23sec (5483 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 08 2021