AutoCAD 2011 For Dummies

533 Pages·2010·11.665 MB·English

by  David Byrnes

Making Everything Easier!™

2011
D
A
uto C ®
A

Learn to:

(cid:129) Develop basic layouts for technical drawings

(cid:129) Use blocks, add text, and edit drawings

(cid:129) Explore 3D models and create your own
impressive 3D designs
(cid:129) Create realistic renderings

David Byrnes

Foreword by Heidi Hewett,
AutoCAD Technical Marketing Manager
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AutoCAD® 2011
FOR
DUMmIES
‰
by David Byrnes
Foreword by Heidi Hewett
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AutoCAD® 2011 For Dummies®
Published by
Wiley Publishing, Inc.
111 River Street
Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774
www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2010 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana
Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana
Published simultaneously in Canada
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or
by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permit-
ted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written
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Trademarks: Wiley, the Wiley Publishing logo, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, A Reference for the
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Easier, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/
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AutoCAD is a registered trademark of Autdesk, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respec-
tive owners. Wiley Publishing, Inc. is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.
LIMIT OF LIABILITY/DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY: THE PUBLISHER AND THE AUTHOR MAKE NO
REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO THE ACCURACY OR COMPLETENESS OF
THE CONTENTS OF THIS WORK AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WITH-
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2010925240
ISBN: 978-0-470-59539-8
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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About the Author
David Byrnes is one of those grizzled old-timers you’ll fi nd mentioned every
so often in AutoCAD 2011 For Dummies. He began his drafting career on the
boards in 1979, and fi rst learned AutoCAD with version 1.4. Dave is based in
Vancouver, British Columbia, where he works as a civil/structural drafter. He
taught AutoCAD for fi fteen years at Emily Carr University of Art + Design and
British Columbia Institute of Technology in Vancouver. Dave has authored
or co-authored over a dozen AutoCAD books and has been the sole author of
this title since AutoCAD 2008 For Dummies.
Dedication
I left the bohemian lifestyle of the AutoCAD consultant at the beginning of
2008 and rejoined the engineering company I last worked for in 1988 (luckily
they’d forgotten all about that chandelier). Working full-time (oh! the horror!)
and keeping up with AutoCAD so I can revise this book has made me some-
what inaccessible for 3 months a year, and I’m forever grateful to Annie and
Delia, still and always the two women in my life, who remind me there are
other things besides keyboards and mice (and sometimes they have to try
really hard).
Author’s Acknowledgments
Thanks, fi rst of all, to former author Mark Middlebrook for bringing me into
the AutoCAD For Dummies world. Mark asked me to tech edit AutoCAD 2000
For Dummies, then to join him as co-author of AutoCAD 2006 For Dummies,
and fi nally to take over the title altogether. I hope my torch bearing comes
close to the high standards that Mark set, and I wish him well in his new
career in the world of fi ne wine (what, me jealous?).
Thanks, too, to colleagues and friends at Autodesk: above all Guillermo
Melantoni, Heidi Hewett, and Bud Schroeder, who never seem to mind being
asked even the dumbest questions. And speaking of colleagues, thanks to my
cubicle-mates at Sandwell for showing me how things are done in the real
world of engineering.
At Wiley, Acquisitions Editor Kyle Looper was a reliable source of calm
but fi rm direction. It was a great pleasure to work with project editor Blair
Pottenger again, and copy editor Laura Miller made so many great sugges-
tions she ought to get an author credit. And thanks, fi nally, to Lee Ambrosius
who not only did his usual sterling job of tech editing, but contributed the
three chapters on 3D in Part V of this book.
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Publisher’s Acknowledgments
We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments at http://dummies.custhelp.com.
For other comments, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974,
outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax [phone].
Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:
Acquisitions, Editorial, and Media Composition Services
Development
Senior Project Coordinator: Kristie Rees
Project Editor: Blair J. Pottenger
Layout and Graphics: Joyce Haughey,
Acquisitions Editor: Kyle Looper Clint Lahnen, Ronald G. Terry
Copy Editor: Laura Miller Proofreaders: Melissa Cossell,
John Greenough, Linda Seifert
Technical Editor: Lee Ambrosius
Indexer: Becky Hornyak
Editorial Manager: Kevin Kirschner
Media Development Project Manager:
Laura Moss-Hollister
Media Development Assistant Project
Manager: Jenny Swisher
Media Development Associate Producers:
Josh Frank, Marilyn Hummel,
Douglas Kuhn, and Shawn Patrick
Editorial Assistant: Amanda Graham
Sr. Editorial Assistant: Cherie Case
Cartoons: Rich Tennant
(www.the5thwave.com)
Publishing and Editorial for Technology Dummies
Richard Swadley, Vice President and Executive Group Publisher
Andy Cummings, Vice President and Publisher
Mary Bednarek, Executive Acquisitions Director
Mary C. Corder, Editorial Director
Publishing for Consumer Dummies
Diane Graves Steele, Vice President and Publisher
Composition Services
Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services
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Table of Contents
Foreword ..................................................................... xv
Introduction ................................................................. 1
What’s Not (And What Is) in This Book ........................................................1
Who Do I Think You Are? ...............................................................................2
How This Book Is Organized ..........................................................................3
Part I: AutoCAD 101 ...............................................................................3
Part II: Let There Be Lines.....................................................................4
Part III: If Drawings Could Talk .............................................................4
Part IV: Advancing with AutoCAD ........................................................4
Part V: On a 3D Spree ............................................................................5
Part VI: The Part of Tens .......................................................................5
But wait . . . there’s more! .....................................................................5
Icons Used in This Book .................................................................................6
A Few Conventions — Just in Case ...............................................................7
Commanding from the keyboard .........................................................7
Tying things up with the Ribbon .........................................................8
Where to Go from Here ...................................................................................8
Part I: AutoCAD 101 .................................................... 9
Chapter 1: Introducing AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11
Why AutoCAD? ...............................................................................................12
The Importance of Being DWG .....................................................................14
Seeing the LT ..................................................................................................15
Checking System Requirements ..................................................................16
Suddenly, It’s 2011! ........................................................................................18
Chapter 2: Le Tour de AutoCAD 2011. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21
AutoCAD Does Windows (and Offi ce) .........................................................22
And They’re Off: AutoCAD’s Opening Screens ..........................................23
Running with Ribbons .........................................................................24
Getting with the Program .............................................................................33
Looking for Mr. Status Bar ..................................................................34
See you later, Navigator ......................................................................40
Let your fi ngers do the talking: The command window .................41
The key(board) to AutoCAD success ................................................42
Keeping tabs on palettes.....................................................................46
Down the main stretch: The drawing area .......................................48
Fun with F1 .....................................................................................................51
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vi
AutoCAD 2011 For Dummies
Chapter 3: A Lap around the CAD Track. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53
A Simple Setup ...............................................................................................55
Drawing a (Base) Plate ..................................................................................59
Drawing rectangles on the right layers .............................................59
Circling your plate ...............................................................................64
Placing your polygon ...........................................................................66
Getting a Closer Look with Zoom and Pan .................................................68
Modifying to Make It Merrier .......................................................................70
Hooray for array...................................................................................70
Stretching out .......................................................................................72
Crossing your hatches ........................................................................75
Following the Plot ..........................................................................................77
Chapter 4: Setup for Success. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .81
A Setup Roadmap ..........................................................................................82
Choosing your units ............................................................................83
Weighing up your scales .....................................................................86
Thinking annotatively..........................................................................87
Thinking about paper ..........................................................................89
Defending your border ........................................................................91
A Template for Success ................................................................................92
Making the Most of Model Space .................................................................94
Setting your units .................................................................................95
Making the drawing area snap-py (and grid-dy) ..............................96
Setting linetype and dimension scales ..............................................98
Entering drawing properties ............................................................100
Making Templates Your Own .....................................................................101
Chapter 5: Planning for Paper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .105
Setting Up a Layout in Paper Space ..........................................................106
Will that be tabs or buttons? ............................................................106
Creating a layout ................................................................................108
Copying and changing layouts .........................................................111
Lost in paper space ...........................................................................112
A view(port) for drawing in ..............................................................114
About Paper Space Layouts and Plotting .................................................117
Part II: Let There Be Lines ........................................ 119
Chapter 6: Manage Your Properties. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .121
Managing Your Properties ..........................................................................122
Putting it on a layer ...........................................................................123
Accumulating properties ..................................................................125
Creating new layers ...........................................................................127
Manipulating layers ...........................................................................133
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vii
Table of Contents
Using Named Objects ..................................................................................135
Using AutoCAD DesignCenter ..........................................................136
Copying layers between drawings ...................................................138
Chapter 7: Preciseliness Is Next to CADliness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .141
Controlling Your Precision .........................................................................141
Keyboard capers: Coordinate input ................................................144
Understanding AutoCAD’s coordinate systems .............................144
Grab an object and make it snappy .................................................148
Other Practical Precision Procedures ......................................................153
Chapter 8: Down the Straightaway. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .157
Introducing the AutoCAD Drawing Commands .......................................158
The Straight and Narrow: Lines, Polylines, and Polygons .....................160
Toeing the line ....................................................................................161
Connecting the lines with polyline ..................................................163
Squaring off with rectangles .............................................................169
Choosing your sides with polygon ..................................................170
Chapter 9: Dangerous Curves Ahead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .173
(Throwing) Curves ......................................................................................173
Going full circle ..................................................................................175
Arc-y-ology ..........................................................................................177
Solar ellipses.......................................................................................179
Splines: The sketchy, sinuous curves .............................................180
Donuts: The circles with a difference..............................................182
Revision clouds on the horizon .......................................................183
Scoring Points ..............................................................................................185
Chapter 10: Get a Grip on Object Selection. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .189
Commanding and Selecting ........................................................................189
Command-fi rst editing .......................................................................190
Selection-fi rst editing .........................................................................190
Direct object manipulation ...............................................................190
Choosing an editing style ..................................................................190
Grab It ...........................................................................................................192
One-by-one selection .........................................................................192
Selection boxes left and right ...........................................................193
Perfecting Selecting .....................................................................................195
Object Selection: Now You See It . . . ........................................................199
Get a Grip ......................................................................................................201
About grips .........................................................................................201
A gripping example ............................................................................201
Move it! ................................................................................................204
Copy, or a kinder, gentler Move .......................................................205
A warm-up Stretch .............................................................................206
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viii
AutoCAD 2011 For Dummies
Chapter 11: Edit for Credit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .209
Your AutoCAD Tool Kit ...............................................................................209
The Big Three: Move, Copy, and Stretch ..................................................212
Base points and displacements .......................................................212
Move ....................................................................................................214
Copy ....................................................................................................215
Copy between drawings ....................................................................216
Stretch .................................................................................................217
More Manipulations ....................................................................................220
Mirror ..................................................................................................221
Rotate ..................................................................................................222
Scale ....................................................................................................222
Array ....................................................................................................223
Offset ...................................................................................................225
Slicing, Dicing, and Splicing ........................................................................227
Trim and Extend.................................................................................227
Break ...................................................................................................229
Fillet and Chamfer ..............................................................................230
Join.......................................................................................................232
Chapter 12: A Zoom with a View. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .235
Zoom and Pan with Glass and Hand .........................................................235
Navigating your drawing ...................................................................236
Time to zoom ......................................................................................240
A View by Any Other Name . . . ..................................................................242
Looking Around in Layout Land ................................................................244
Degenerating and Regenerating .................................................................248
Part III: If Drawings Could Talk ................................ 251
Chapter 13: Text with Character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .253
Getting Ready to Write ................................................................................254
Simply stylish text .............................................................................256
Taking your text to new heights ......................................................260
One line or two? .................................................................................261
Your text will be justifi ed ..................................................................262
Using the Same Old Line .............................................................................262
Turning On Your Annotative Objects .......................................................265
Saying More in Multiline Text ....................................................................267
Making it with Mtext ..........................................................................267
It slices, it dices . . . ............................................................................271
Doing a number on your Mtext lists ................................................273
Line up in columns — Now! ..............................................................275
Modifying Mtext .................................................................................276
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