IntroductionWelcome| 00:00 | AutoCAD is the world's leading CAD
application for 2-D. Learning the latest
| | 00:04 | functions and features of AutoCAD can
keep you in the lead, no matter what
| | 00:08 | industry you work in.
| | 00:13 | My name is Jeff Bartels
and I'll be your instructor as
| | 00:15 | we dig deeper into the tools and
features inside the AutoCAD application, with
| | 00:20 | AutoCAD 2009 2-D Drafting Techniques.
| | 00:23 | AutoCAD has been my passion for more
than a decade. By day, I'm the CAD manager
| | 00:28 | for a civil engineering firm where I
use AutoCAD to produce large-scale plan
| | 00:32 | sets and construction drawings. By night,
I teach AutoCAD courses and work with
| | 00:36 | students just like you. I know the
skills that students need to work in a
| | 00:40 | production environment and I know the
concepts that students typically struggle
| | 00:44 | with in the classroom. I designed
this title on techniques that have been
| | 00:48 | proven successful in my 10
years of teaching AutoCAD.
| | 00:51 | Each concept that we explore is taught
using simple line work and then we apply
| | 00:55 | what we have learned using a
practical example. We'll start out by
| | 00:59 | synchronizing our AutoCAD workspace and
settings. Then we'll take a closer look
| | 01:03 | at the creation and modification tools
available in AutoCAD, focusing on the
| | 01:07 | many sub-options of each command.
| | 01:09 | We will explore additional object
snap choices like Parallel, Extension and
| | 01:13 | From and we'll learn more powerful
ways to make selections. We'll spend some
| | 01:18 | time on layer management and learn how
to isolate, lock and filter our layers.
| | 01:22 | Finally we'll explore concepts like
draw order, loops and geometric calculator,
| | 01:28 | all of which are used frequently in
production drafting. The nice thing about
| | 01:32 | this title is that it's industry
neutral, meaning you can take what you have
| | 01:35 | learned and apply it to any discipline.
Architecture, civil engineering,
| | 01:39 | mechanical design, the sky is the limit.
| | 01:41 | You see AutoCAD is a tool that used in
many fields to design and construct many
| | 01:46 | different things. As instructor, it's
my job to teach you how to use this tool
| | 01:50 | and get you ready to work in a
production environment. So, if you are ready to
| | 01:54 | take you CAD skills to the next
level, follow me and we'll get started.
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | If you are premium member of the
lynda.com Online Training Library or if you
| | 00:04 | are watching this tutorial on a disk,
you have excess to the exercise files
| | 00:08 | used throughout this title. Now, I
have placed my exercise files folder on my
| | 00:11 | desktop, but you can place yours
wherever you like. The exercise files for this
| | 00:16 | title are arranged in folders that are
numbered based on the chapter number and
| | 00:20 | inside each chapter all of the drawings
are numbered based on the video number.
| | 00:24 | In some cases, when I thought it would
be helpful I have included a finished
| | 00:27 | example. If you are a monthly or annual
subscriber to lynda.com, you don't have
| | 00:32 | excess to the exercise files, but you
can easily follow the long. Let's get started.
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1. The AutoCAD InterfaceSynchronizing settings| 00:00 | The first thing I would like to do
before we get started is to synchronize our
| | 00:03 | AutoCAD environments. This will help
ensure that what you see me do on my
| | 00:06 | screen will work the same way on your
screen. Now take a look at my screen for
| | 00:10 | a second. I'm working with a default
AutoCAD installation. What you see is
| | 00:15 | exactly what you see right out of
the box after the program is installed.
| | 00:18 | So my screen may look a little bit different
than yours. The goal in this session is
| | 00:23 | to set up our systems such that
they are reasonably identical.
| | 00:26 | So I'm going to be asking you to make
some changes such that your setup matches mine,
| | 00:29 | and I believe in the do-no-harm
principal, so at each point along the way
| | 00:33 | I'm going to give you an opportunity to
save your current settings. Let's start
| | 00:37 | with the workspace. A workspace is a
saved collection of tools that we see on
| | 00:42 | our screen. If you would like to save
your current workspace, you can come down
| | 00:45 | and click on this gear and we can come
up and select Save Current As and we
| | 00:51 | can give our current workspace a name.
I'm going to call this my original
| | 00:57 | workspace and I'll click Save.
| | 01:01 | If you have done that, at any point in
the future if you would like to restore
| | 01:04 | this workspace, you could simply come
down and click the gear and select it
| | 01:08 | from the list. Now the workspace we
are going to be using in this title is a
| | 01:12 | stock default workspace that gets
installed with AutoCAD. I'm going to come up
| | 01:16 | and select 2D Drafting & Annotation.
Now at this point our screens should look
| | 01:21 | reasonably identical.
| | 01:22 | Now that we have taken care of our
workspace, let's take care of our settings.
| | 01:26 | I'm going to do that by opening a
drawing. I'm going to come up and click my
| | 01:28 | Open icon, and then we are going to
look inside the chapter_01 folder inside
| | 01:32 | our exercise_files directory and I'm
going to open up this first drawing,
| | 01:36 | 01_silt-fence-detail. Now I'm
using this drawing merely as a tool to
| | 01:42 | demonstrate some of our
settings that we'll be changing.
| | 01:44 | To adjust the settings in AutoCAD, we
are going to bring up our Options dialog box.
| | 01:47 | To get there I'm going to right-
click, and I'll come down and select
| | 01:51 | Options from the menu. The Options
dialog box is a place where we can go to
| | 01:55 | adjust literally hundreds of settings
that control the way AutoCAD works.
| | 01:59 | Now I'm going to be asking to make some
changes to your settings, so once again I'm
| | 02:03 | going to give you an
opportunity to save the current setup.
| | 02:06 | Wouldn't it be nice if we could take
all of the settings that we see on all
| | 02:10 | these tabs and save them with a given
name? Well that's what this Profiles tab
| | 02:14 | is for. If I click this I could see a
listing of all of my saved profiles.
| | 02:19 | Now a profile is just a collection of saved
settings. If you would like to save the
| | 02:24 | contents of your Options dialog box,
you can simply come over and click the Add
| | 02:28 | to List button. And we'll give this
profile a name. I'm going to call this
| | 02:32 | my original settings, and
we'll click Apply and close.
| | 02:40 | At any point in the future if you would
like to restore your current settings,
| | 02:43 | you can simply come back to the
Profiles tab, select your profile and you can
| | 02:48 | click Set Current. Now since I'm
going to making some changes, I'm going to
| | 02:51 | select the unnamed profile, and
let's go to the Display tab first.
| | 02:57 | The first change I would like to make
is in regards to our tooltips. I'm going
| | 03:00 | to come down and change my Number of
seconds to delay to 10. This controls the
| | 03:05 | amount of time it takes for my extended
tooltips to pop up on screen. If we set
| | 03:10 | this to 10 seconds we don't have to
worry about these guys popping up all the time.
| | 03:13 | Next I'm going to come down and click
the Colors button. This brings up a dialog
| | 03:17 | box that allows me to control the
color properties of many of my AutoCAD
| | 03:21 | interface items. The one I would like
to change is my model space background,
| | 03:25 | and that happens to be the one that's
selected by default. So I'm going to come
| | 03:29 | over to the Color flyout and click and
I'm going to set this to Black. If our
| | 03:33 | model space background color is black,
we get a much better contrast between
| | 03:37 | our layer colors. I'm going to click
Apply and close. We can see that change
| | 03:41 | happen in our AutoCAD
environment and then I'm going to click OK.
| | 03:47 | Let's zoom in on this drawing.
We'll center this a little bit on screen.
| | 03:51 | Notice as I move my cursor over this
geometry, anything my cursor passes over
| | 03:56 | highlights on screen. Now this can be
confusing especially if you are working
| | 04:00 | in a large detailed drawing. I would
like to make a change to this setting.
| | 04:04 | So let's bring back up our Options. I'm
going to right-click, we'll come down and
| | 04:08 | select Options again, and we're
going to go to the Selection tab.
| | 04:11 | I am going to come over to the
Selection Preview area and I'm going to remove
| | 04:15 | the check from When no command is
active. From now on my entities will only
| | 04:20 | highlight when I'm within an active
command. I'm going to come down and make
| | 04:24 | one more setting. I'm going to click
the Visual Effects Setting button.
| | 04:27 | This area controls how our objects are
highlighted on screen. I'm going to set this
| | 04:32 | for Thicken. This way when I'm in an
active command and I hover over an entity
| | 04:36 | it will just get a little bit
brighter on my screen. I don't have to worry
| | 04:38 | about getting the extra dashes.
| | 04:40 | Let's click OK. Now the last
adjustment I would like to make is on our User
| | 04:44 | Preferences tab. From here I would
like you to come down and click your
| | 04:48 | Right-click Customization button. And
I want you to make sure that these guys
| | 04:53 | are all set to Shortcut Menu, Shortcut
Menu, Shortcut Menu. Now these happen to
| | 04:57 | be the default settings, so if you have
never gone into this dialog box before,
| | 05:01 | your settings already match mine.
Let's click Apply and Close and I'll click OK.
| | 05:06 | If I move over my geometry now, we
can see that it does not pop up on my screen.
| | 05:11 | With our settings now taken care of, we
can be certain that your AutoCAD should
| | 05:15 | now function just like my AutoCAD,
and we're ready to take a look at the
| | 05:18 | tutorials. Let's get started.
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| Understanding rollover tool tips| 00:00 | Chances are you have already
discovered rollover tooltips. It doesn't take
| | 00:03 | long before you notice that if you
hover over an entity, AutoCAD displays a pop
| | 00:07 | up window that tells you a little bit
about the object. Let's take a look at
| | 00:11 | how the rollover tooltip function works.
| | 00:13 | I am going to zoom in on my geometry a
little bit and let's take a look at a
| | 00:16 | rollover tooltip. If I place my
cursor over this geometry and wait just a
| | 00:21 | second AutoCAD brings up a pop up that
tells me a little bit about that object.
| | 00:25 | I can see it's an arc and I can see
some of its general properties. Let's place
| | 00:29 | my cursor over this object. Once
again AutoCAD is giving me some more
| | 00:33 | information. Now if you are not
seeing the tooltips on your screen, this
| | 00:36 | feature is turned off on your system.
Let me show you where we can go to turn this on.
| | 00:40 | We are going to visit our Options
dialog box. To get there I'm going to
| | 00:44 | right-click and select Options from
the menu, and we are going to go to the
| | 00:48 | Display tab. And right here in the
Window elements area, if I come all the way
| | 00:53 | down to the bottom, I could see a
toggle that allows me to turn my rollover
| | 00:56 | tooltips on and off. I'm going to leave
mine on, and we'll come down and click OK.
| | 01:00 | Let's back up a little bit and I'm
going to pan this drawing down. Using the
| | 01:06 | rollover tooltips is a lot like
interrogating your drawing. For instance what
| | 01:10 | layer is this guy at? He's on layer det
-2, what layer is this guy at? Det-6.
| | 01:16 | What's this object? Is it a block or
is it polyline? I can see it's a block.
| | 01:21 | Now some people have a love-hate
relationship with the tooltips. They don't
| | 01:24 | like the idea of these guys popping
up whenever they hover too long. If you
| | 01:28 | happen to be one of these
people, by all means turn it off.
| | 01:30 | Let me show you one small problem with
the tooltips and it involves multiline
| | 01:35 | text. Watch this. If I place my cursor
over this text AutoCAD doesn't give me a
| | 01:39 | tooltip. This text was created using
the multiline text editor. Oddly enough if
| | 01:44 | we want our tooltip we have to place
our cursor just above or below the text to
| | 01:48 | get the tooltip to come up on screen.
So it's not the end of the world.
| | 01:51 | Just something to keep in mind if you want
your tooltips to work in most situations.
| | 01:57 | The beauty of the roll over tooltip
is that we can get information without
| | 02:00 | having to select our geometry. Because
of this, rollover tooltips can be the
| | 02:04 | fastest way to review your drawings.
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| Making changes using Quick Properties| 00:00 | If you need to make general property
changes to your objects, nothing is faster
| | 00:03 | than using the Quick Properties tool.
It's like having a miniature property
| | 00:07 | changer palette right at your cursor. I
want to start this tutorial by turning
| | 00:10 | off several of my Mode Settings. Quite
a few of these guys, I'm not going to be
| | 00:13 | using, so I'm going to turn them all
off right now. Now the ones that are on
| | 00:17 | are colored blue, if I click these they
will turn gray that let's me know that
| | 00:21 | the mode is turned off.
| | 00:23 | To use our Quick Properties tool we'll
click the icon on the end in the Status
| | 00:28 | bar. This turns the feature on. Now we
don't notice anything special happen on
| | 00:32 | screen until we select something. If I
click to select the edge of my detail,
| | 00:37 | notice AutoCAD gives me a
miniature property changer palette.
| | 00:41 | Now this guy pops up in a collapsed
state, if I place my cursor over, it will
| | 00:45 | open up and I get access to a limited
number of settings. This guy works just
| | 00:49 | like our Property Changer. So if I
would like to move this entity on to a
| | 00:52 | different layer, I can simply click in
this field, grab the flyout and I can
| | 00:56 | select a different layer.
| | 00:57 | When I'm finished, I can hit my
Escape key that deselects my object and the
| | 01:01 | palette goes away. Now I would like to
make another change. I'm going to zoom
| | 01:05 | in right over here because I have a
hatch pattern that's on the wrong layer,
| | 01:09 | let's fix that. Once again, I'll click
the hatch. My palette pops up on screen.
| | 01:13 | I can come up and click in the
field and I can easily make the change.
| | 01:18 | Let's talk about some of the settings
that control how this tool works.
| | 01:21 | I'm going to come up and click the Options
icon and we'll select Settings. Down at
| | 01:26 | the bottom of the dialog box in my Size
settings this controls the size of the
| | 01:30 | palette when it comes up on screen.
Notice that I also have a toggle that
| | 01:34 | allows the palette to collapse.
| | 01:36 | Let's take a look at Location Mode.
Notice I have two settings: Cursor and
| | 01:39 | Float. By default he is set to Cursor.
If I was to set this to Float, the next
| | 01:44 | time the palette comes up on screen I
can move it wherever I like and then it
| | 01:47 | will always come up at the same location.
| | 01:50 | Now I would like to have my settings
near my cursor. So I'm going to select the
| | 01:53 | Cursor option and I had a couple of
controls, if I click the flyout, I can
| | 01:57 | choose the location where the palette
is going to come up in relation to my
| | 02:00 | cursor. Probably the most important one
is the Distance. Currently this is set
| | 02:05 | to 50 pixels. That means the palette is
going to come up 50 pixels away from my cursor.
| | 02:09 | I am going to bump this up a little bit,
so the palette is not quite so close.
| | 02:12 | I'm going to set this to 100 and
click OK. At this point we'll back up and
| | 02:19 | let's put out our boundary back on the
correct layer. Notice when I click this,
| | 02:23 | the palette is now coming up a little
bit farther away from my cursor.
| | 02:26 | I'm going to click in the layer area,
we'll grab the flyout and we'll place this
| | 02:30 | guy back on the border layer.
| | 02:32 | If the palette itself ever happened to
be in the way, you can simply click and
| | 02:36 | hold on this handle and you can place
it wherever you like on the screen.
| | 02:40 | When I'm finished I'll hit my Escape key.
That will deselect the object. We'll close
| | 02:43 | the palette. Using the Quick
Properties tool we can make many of our property
| | 02:47 | changes much faster because the
settings are just inches from our cursor.
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| Finding answers with InfoCenter | 00:00 | When learning a program of the size and
magnitude of AutoCAD we'll undoubtedly
| | 00:03 | have questions. AutoCAD's Info Center
allows us to find the answers to our
| | 00:07 | questions without having to
navigate through hundreds of pages of help
| | 00:11 | documents. Now this drawing that we see
on screen is merely here to serve as a
| | 00:15 | background. We won't be doing
anything with this geometry.
| | 00:17 | Let's say I have a question regarding
some aspect of AutoCAD. If I come up to
| | 00:22 | the upper right hand corner of my
interface, I can see my Info Center. This guy
| | 00:26 | works very much like a Google Search on
the Internet. We can enter a keyword in
| | 00:30 | this area and then AutoCAD will search
all of its sources of information to try
| | 00:34 | and get us an answer.
| | 00:35 | Let's say I had a question regarding
ellipses. I'm going to click in this area.
| | 00:40 | We'll type Ellispe and at this point
I can hit Enter or I can click this
| | 00:45 | magnifying glass. And when I do,
AutoCAD will bring up a series of hyperlinks
| | 00:49 | that I can visit to try and get an
answer. I'm going to come down and select
| | 00:53 | Draw Ellipses.
| | 00:56 | And when I do AutoCAD takes me right
to the help document that is specific to
| | 01:00 | drawing ellipses. From here I can
navigate through the additional tabs if like
| | 01:05 | or I can follow additional hyperlinks.
Let me close this. One of the nicest
| | 01:10 | features of the Info Center is that
we can save our searches. For instance,
| | 01:14 | Ellipse is still up here as a keyword.
Let me come up and click the magnifying
| | 01:17 | glass again. Now we have
visited Draw Ellipses last time.
| | 01:21 | Notice if I hover over this hyperlink,
I have got a little star at the end of
| | 01:24 | the line. If I click this, I can save
this search as a favorite place. Let me
| | 01:29 | close the menu. That's what this star
is for. This guy right represents my
| | 01:33 | favorite searches. If I click this I
can see in the list, I now have access to
| | 01:38 | my Draw Ellipses search.
| | 01:40 | If you would like to remove a favorite,
you can simply come over and click the
| | 01:43 | star again and that guy goes away. Now
we can also use the Info Center to focus
| | 01:50 | our search to a specific source.
Let's say I had a question regarding my
| | 01:53 | ribbon. I'm going to come up and
click in the keyword area and we'll drag
| | 01:58 | across this text and I'm going to type
ribbon. This time instead of clicking
| | 02:02 | the magnifying glass I'm going to click
the flyout and from here I can select a
| | 02:06 | specific source to search for this keyword.
| | 02:09 | Let's select the New Features
workshop. This gives me hyperlinks that are
| | 02:13 | specific to that source. I'm going to
select Customize the ribbon and AutoCAD
| | 02:19 | takes me right to the New Features
workshop where I can get more information
| | 02:22 | about the ribbon.
| | 02:24 | When finished I'm going to come up and
click X to close the window. The next
| | 02:28 | time you have a question, try using
AutoCAD's Info Center. You may find it to
| | 02:32 | be the fastest way to get the
information you are looking for.
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| Using Noun/Verb methodology| 00:00 | There is an old adage that says there
are at least three different ways to do
| | 00:03 | everything in AutoCAD. Think for a
second about how many ways we can launch
| | 00:06 | commands. We can use the ribbon, we can
use the menu browser, or we can use the
| | 00:10 | command line. Not only do we have
flexibility in how we launch commands,
| | 00:15 | AutoCAD also gives us flexibility in
how we use our commands. We can use the
| | 00:19 | Verb/Noun, or the Noun/Verb method.
| | 00:21 | Now on my screen I have got a
mechanical example. This drawing is a metric
| | 00:25 | drawing and it was created such that
each unit equals 1 millimeter. Now the
| | 00:29 | changes I'm like to make don't involve
the dimensions or the centerlines, so
| | 00:33 | let's turn those layers off. I'm going
to go up to my Layer control and click
| | 00:36 | the flyout and we'll turn off both of
those layers. And then I'll click on
| | 00:40 | screen to close the menu.
| | 00:42 | Let's do one more thing. Let's take a
look at my current running object snaps.
| | 00:46 | I'm going to come down and right-click
on my Object Snap Mode and we can see
| | 00:50 | that I have a running object snaps set
for Center as well as Endpoint. Let's
| | 00:54 | hit Escape to close the menu and you
know what? As long as we are down here
| | 00:57 | let's turn on our Dynamic Input. This
way I can see my command line information
| | 01:01 | at my cursor.
| | 01:02 | Okay, let's say we have to make a
design change. Let's say I have to move these
| | 01:06 | two circles 10 millimeters towards the
center. Now these circles represent this
| | 01:11 | geometry in my Section View.
| | 01:13 | Now how would we do that normally?
Well, we come up and launch our Move
| | 01:17 | command. Move represents the Verb.
I'm telling AutoCAD I want to move
| | 01:21 | something. Now AutoCAD is saying, move
what? Well, these circles represent the noun.
| | 01:27 | Let me right-click to finish my
selection. I'll pick these guys up from the
| | 01:31 | center point and then I'm going to
lock my Ortho and will pull them to the
| | 01:36 | right and type 10 for 10 millimeters
and hit Enter. So by default, when we work
| | 01:42 | in AutoCAD we typically work
using a Verb/Noun methodology.
| | 01:45 | Now AutoCAD also allows us to work in
the other direction. Let's make the same
| | 01:50 | change with these two circles. We'll
do this one Noun/Verb, meaning I'm going
| | 01:54 | to select my objects first by making
a window and then I'll come over and
| | 01:59 | launch my Move command. It works the
same way. I'll select these from the
| | 02:03 | center and we'll type 10 and hit Enter.
| | 02:07 | The Noun/Verb method works with nearly
every AutoCAD command. If you happened
| | 02:11 | to be having problems with your Noun/
Verb functionality this feature can be
| | 02:15 | turned off. Let me show you where we
can go to turn it back on. We are going to
| | 02:18 | visit our Options by right-clicking and
selecting Options from the menu. We are
| | 02:22 | going to go to the Selection tab and
right down here in the Selection Mode is a
| | 02:29 | toggle that allows me to turn my Noun/
Verb selection on and off. I'll go ahead
| | 02:33 | and leave that on, we'll click OK and
before we go, let's correct our geometry
| | 02:38 | in the Section View such that it
matches our top view. I'm going to do that by
| | 02:42 | using the Stretch command and we'll
do it using the Noun/Verb methodology.
| | 02:46 | I will make a crossing window to
select this geometry that encompasses all of
| | 02:50 | the end points that I would like to
move. Then I'll come up and launch the
| | 02:54 | Stretch command and we'll stretch
this geometry from the end point here and
| | 03:00 | I'll pull to the right, we'll type 10
and hit Enter. Once again, I'll make a
| | 03:04 | crossing window over here to select
this geometry, we'll come up and click the
| | 03:08 | Stretch command and we'll stretch it
from this end point and pull to the left
| | 03:13 | and type 10.
| | 03:15 | When it comes down to it, AutoCAD
allows us to choose how we want to work.
| | 03:19 | This means we can use AutoCAD in a
way that makes us most productive.
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| Using the Object Snap menu| 00:00 | A great way to increase your
productivity is by using the Object Snap menu.
| | 00:04 | This menu allows you to work faster
because it puts your object snap choices
| | 00:08 | right at your cursor.
| | 00:09 | Since we are going to be talking Object
Snaps, let's take a look at my current
| | 00:12 | running object snaps. To do that I'm
going to come down and right-click on my
| | 00:16 | Object Snap Mode, and as usual I'm
running a Center as well as Endpoint object snap.
| | 00:22 | Now I typically have no more than two
running object snaps going at a time, any
| | 00:26 | more than that and I run the risk of
accidentally selecting an incorrect snap.
| | 00:31 | So as far as my Object Snaps go my
Endpoint and center point will be automatic,
| | 00:35 | all the others, I'm going to pull from
the Object Snap menu. Let me show you
| | 00:38 | how the menu works. I'm going to hit
Escape and what we are going to do is we
| | 00:43 | are going to finish this geometry on
the right such that it looks like the
| | 00:46 | geometry on the left.
| | 00:47 | I am going to start by creating a
sketch line, I'm going to come up and launch
| | 00:50 | the Line command, and I would like
to create a line from this end point
| | 00:55 | perpendicular to this bottom line. To
access the Object Snap menu I'm going to
| | 01:00 | hold my Shift key on my keyboard and
right-click. This gives me access to every
| | 01:05 | AutoCAD object snap right at my cursor.
Now one thing to remember as soon as
| | 01:09 | the menu comes up you can take your
hand off the Shift key. Let's select
| | 01:13 | Perpendicular from the menu and then I
can click this line. When I'm finished
| | 01:18 | I'm going to hit Escape to cancel the command.
| | 01:19 | Let's draw a line from the midpoint of
this edge to the midpoint of this edge.
| | 01:25 | I'm going to repeat my Line command. So
right-click and select Repeat LINE and
| | 01:30 | I'm going to draw that from Shift+
Right-click the Midpoint here to the
| | 01:38 | Shift+Right-click Midpoint here.
And when I'm finished I'll hit Escape.
| | 01:44 | Let's construct our circle. I can see
I have got a circle that's got a radius
| | 01:47 | of 30 millimeters. I'm going to come
up and launch my Circle command, and the
| | 01:51 | center point of my circle is going to
be at the intersection. Let's hold our
| | 01:54 | Shift key and right-click, we'll select
Intersection and I'll click my geometry
| | 01:58 | right here. And I'll type in 30 and hit Enter.
| | 02:03 | Finally we'll create the last two
circles. I'm going to find their locations
| | 02:07 | using some offsets. Let's offset this
bottom edge 25 millimeters to find the
| | 02:12 | centerline of these circles. We'll
launch Offset. We'll type 25 and hit Enter.
| | 02:20 | I'll offset this line in this direction
and I'll hit Escape when I'm finished.
| | 02:26 | Now we can offset our centerline 25
millimeters in either direction to find the
| | 02:30 | intersections that would represent the
centers of our circles. One again, I'm
| | 02:34 | going to launch Offset, I'll right-
click and select Repeat OFFSET from the
| | 02:37 | menu. I'm going to hit Enter on my
keyboard to accept the distance and I'll
| | 02:42 | offset this line to this side and this
line to this side. Now when I'm finished
| | 02:47 | I'll hit Escape.
| | 02:48 | I have just created object snaps where
those circles need to be placed. Let's
| | 02:52 | launch the Circle command and I'm going
to place this at the Shift+Right-click.
| | 02:58 | All the object snaps are right here
at my cursor. I'll select Intersection
| | 03:01 | right here and the circle has a
radius of 12.5, Enter. And we'll do our
| | 03:07 | remaining circle. I'm going to right-
click, select Repeat CIRCLE, I'm going to
| | 03:12 | place that to the Shift+Right-click
Intersection right here and then we'll hit
| | 03:18 | Enter to accept the previous radius.
And now that we are finished we can erase
| | 03:23 | some of these sketch lines. I'm going
to select these and then I'm going to
| | 03:28 | come up and click my Erase button.
| | 03:30 | Think for a minute about the number of
times each day you select Object Snaps.
| | 03:34 | If you use the Object Snap menu you can
save yourself a great deal of time when
| | 03:38 | working on your drawings.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
2. Drafting ConceptsConstructing circles using points and tangents| 00:00 | Typically when we create a circle,
we pick the circle point, followed by
| | 00:03 | entering the radius or the diameter.
Sometimes though, we may need to create
| | 00:07 | circles using alternate methods. Let's
look at some of the other ways we can
| | 00:10 | create circles using AutoCAD. If you
look at my screen, you can see that I have
| | 00:14 | gotten an array of abstract shapes. We
are going to use these shapes to explore
| | 00:18 | several other ways that we can
create circles. Before we get started,
| | 00:21 | let's take a quick look
at by running Object Snaps.
| | 00:23 | I am going to come down and right-
click on the Object Snap Mode. As you can
| | 00:27 | see, I have got a running object snap
set for center as well as end point.
| | 00:31 | Let's hit Escape to clear this menu.
Since we're going to be talking about
| | 00:34 | circles in this session, let's
take a look at the circle icon.
| | 00:36 | If I move right up here, this guy
represents the default circle command, the
| | 00:42 | central radius method. If I click the
flyout, we can see that there are six
| | 00:46 | ways to create circles in AutoCAD
depending on the information that we have.
| | 00:49 | Now, it's important to note that
there is only one circle command. Each of
| | 00:53 | these options that we see in flyout
is merely a shortcut to one of the
| | 00:57 | sub-options of the circle command they
are conveniences, it's what they are.
| | 01:01 | We're going to look at the 2-Point
method first. I would use this method if I
| | 01:05 | knew two points that represented the
diameter of my circle. Let me select the
| | 01:09 | tool and I'm going to zoom in on this
line segment on the left. If this line
| | 01:14 | represented the diameter of my circle,
I can click this endpoint and this one
| | 01:18 | to create that shape. Let's try another.
| | 01:21 | I am going to back up and I'll pan
this over a little bit. We'll come up and
| | 01:26 | click the flyout. Let's take a look at
this 3-Point method. I would use this
| | 01:30 | method if I knew three points that fell
on my circle. This can be a great tool
| | 01:34 | to use to find the center point of a
polygon that was created using AutoCAD's
| | 01:38 | polygon command. Let's
launch the 3-Point method.
| | 01:41 | Remember that our polygons in AutoCAD
are created using an imaginary circle.
| | 01:45 | I know three points that fall on that
circle, this end point, this endpoint and
| | 01:50 | this one. Let's try another option.
I'm going to back up a little. We'll pan
| | 01:54 | over; we'll focus on this geometry.
This time I want to look at the Tangent,
| | 01:59 | Tangent, Radius method. Tangent, Tangent,
Radius is a lot by creating a Fillet.
| | 02:04 | I would use this method if I knew
two points of tangency and a radius.
| | 02:08 | I am going to select the tool and let's
create a circle that's tangent to these
| | 02:12 | two rectangles that has a radius of
two inches. Notice as I place my cursor
| | 02:17 | over the rectangle, AutoCAD is looking
for a tangency object snap. Even though
| | 02:20 | I don't have that set as a running
object snap, AutoCAD is looking for it
| | 02:24 | anyway because that's what the circle
mapping needs. So I'll click I'll come
| | 02:28 | over and click this rectangle and then
I'll type in my radius of two inches.
| | 02:34 | This is architectural example, so I
have to use the quotes. The Tangent,
| | 02:39 | Tangent, Radius method
also works great with arcs.
| | 02:41 | Let's come up and launch the tool again,
it happens to be the default now and
| | 02:47 | we'll click this arc and this one
and I'll hit Enter to accept a two inch
| | 02:52 | circle. I want to look at one more,
let's pan our geometry over again.
| | 02:57 | This time we are going to look at the
Tangent, Tangent, Tangent method. This is
| | 03:00 | probably one of the most
powerful ways to create a circle.
| | 03:03 | Let's click the flyout, I'll come
down and select this method. We would use
| | 03:07 | this method if we knew three points of
tangency and I'll click this line and
| | 03:13 | this one and this one and that
circle is tangent to all three of those
| | 03:16 | entities. This feature also works
great with arcs. I'm going to launch it
| | 03:20 | again. We'll come up and click. I want
to create a circle that's tangent to the
| | 03:24 | outside of this circle, the outside of
this one and the outside of this one.
| | 03:28 | Imagine how complicated it would
be to find that circle manually.
| | 03:32 | Let's back up a little bit. I'm going
to pan over. I have got a drawing on my
| | 03:35 | screen that represents a concept for a
chair design. Now, to continue working
| | 03:39 | on this drawing, I'm going to need to
use some of the tools that we've just
| | 03:42 | learnt. Let's start by taking a look at
the back of my armrest. I would like to
| | 03:45 | round this such that it's similar to
the seat of my chair. This is a perfect
| | 03:50 | opportunity for me to create a 2-Point circle.
| | 03:53 | Let's zoom in I'll center this on
screen. We'll come up and click the flyout
| | 03:57 | and we'll select the 2-Point method.
I'll create my circle from the endpoint
| | 04:02 | here to the endpoint here and now I
can use the Trim command to clean up my
| | 04:07 | geometry. I'll select this circle and
this line and right-click. I'll trim off
| | 04:12 | this piece and then we'll click this
line. Now I won't go away because it's an
| | 04:16 | individual segment that's all right.
| | 04:17 | I am going to right-click, and
inside the Trim command, I have an Erase
| | 04:21 | sub-option. Let's select Erase, I'll
select this line and then right-click.
| | 04:26 | When I'm finished, I'll hit Escape to
get out of the command. Let's back up a
| | 04:30 | little bit. We'll pan over and
we'll take a look at this armrest.
| | 04:34 | I would like to round this corner I
think that would look nicer. Let's round
| | 04:38 | this off with a radius of one-and-a-
half inches. This is a perfect opportunity
| | 04:43 | to use the Tangent, Tangent, Radius
method. I'm going to click my flyout and
| | 04:47 | we'll select Tan, Tan. Radius. I want
my circle to be tangent to this edge and
| | 04:52 | this one and it has a radius of 1-11/2
inches, Enter. Let's clean this up using
| | 05:01 | Trim. We'll launch our Trim command
and we'll grab our circle and we'll grab
| | 05:05 | these lines. Let's right-click and I
can trim off this end of my circle and I
| | 05:09 | can trim off this end of my line and
when I'm finished, I'll hit Escape.
| | 05:13 | I am going to pan this up. Let's take a
look at the seat portion of our chair.
| | 05:18 | Now this looks very uncomfortable,
it's very straight. Let's say I would like
| | 05:22 | to lower the middle of my seat one-
quarter-of-an-inch. I would like to drop it
| | 05:26 | down between these two armrests. To do
that, I'm going to create a line. Let's
| | 05:31 | launch the Line command and we'll
create our line from the Shift+Right-click
| | 05:36 | from the midpoint of the seat and
my Ortho is locked. I'm going to pull
| | 05:39 | straight down and type 1/4 inch, Enter
and then I'll hit Escape to get out of the command.
| | 05:46 | I now have three points that fall on
that circle. I have got an endpoint here,
| | 05:50 | I have got an endpoint here and I have
got an endpoint here. Let's click the
| | 05:53 | flyout and we'll launch the 3-Point
option and I'll create my circle from the
| | 05:57 | endpoint here to here, to here and
once again we'll clean this up with Trim.
| | 06:04 | Let me grab my circle, and I'll grab
my armrests, right-click, we'll trim off
| | 06:10 | the outside of the circle, we'll
trim off the inside of the seat.
| | 06:15 | Now take a look at this. Since the seat
has been lowered, these lines no longer
| | 06:19 | touch. That's okay. We can correct this.
If I hold my Shift key and click this
| | 06:23 | line, the Trim command becomes the
Extend command and I can clean up that
| | 06:27 | geometry. Let's come over and get this
side, I'll hold the Shift and click this
| | 06:31 | line. Lastly, let's right-click and
select Erase and we'll get rid of our
| | 06:38 | sketch line and we'll hit Escape.
| | 06:40 | Now I would like to do one more thing.
I would like to create an arc from the
| | 06:45 | front leg to the back leg that matches
the height of the arc that I'm using in
| | 06:49 | the front of the chair. Now I could
do that with the Fillet command, but it
| | 06:52 | would take me a long time to fillet
these to get the exact location. Instead,
| | 06:57 | I'm going to use the Tangent,
Tangent, Tangent method.
| | 06:59 | I am going to draw a line from the Shift
+Right-click quadrant here. Now I pull
| | 07:06 | to the right and click to make a
sketch line. Let's hit Escape and then we'll
| | 07:12 | come up and click our Circle flyout
and we'll select Tan, Tan, Tan and we'll
| | 07:16 | click this line and this one and this
one. When I'm finished, I'll use Trim.
| | 07:22 | We'll grab our circle and our two lines,
and a right-click and we'll eliminate
| | 07:27 | this piece and this piece and the
bottom of our circle and then I'll
| | 07:31 | right-click and select Erase and
we'll get rid of our sketch line.
| | 07:35 | Finally, we'll hit Escape and we'll
center this guy at the screen. As you can
| | 07:39 | see, all circles are not created
alike. Fortunately, AutoCAD allows us to
| | 07:43 | create any circle we may need even if
we may not know a specific center point or radius.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating arcs| 00:00 | At first glance, the Arc command may
seem a little intimidating because of the
| | 00:03 | sheer number of choices available. You
see there are at least 11 different ways
| | 00:07 | to construct an arc depending on what
information you have. In this session, we
| | 00:12 | are going to look at the many ways
we can construct arcs using AutoCAD.
| | 00:15 | Before we get started, let's take a
look at my running object snaps. I'm going
| | 00:18 | to come down and right-click on my
Object Snap mode and I have my Typical,
| | 00:23 | Center as well as Endpoint object snaps
set. Let's hit Escape to clear the menu.
| | 00:28 | To launch the Arc command, I'm going to
come up to the Draw panel of my ribbon
| | 00:31 | and I'm going to click the tool right
here. Now when we create an arc, it's
| | 00:35 | essentially a three-click process. I'm
just going to click three times, one,
| | 00:39 | two, three. I just created an arc on my screen.
| | 00:42 | Let's create one more. This time when
we create the arc, we are going to keep a
| | 00:45 | closer eye on our command line. Let me
launch the tool again. AutoCAD is asking
| | 00:50 | for my start point and notice at the
command line I could also specify a center
| | 00:54 | at this point. I'm going to pick on the screen.
| | 00:57 | Now that I have set my first location,
I could specify a second point as well
| | 01:01 | as the center or the endpoint of my arc.
Once again we'll click and then I can
| | 01:05 | pick a point on screen to finish my arc.
Now, why did I say arc seem a little
| | 01:10 | intimidating? Well, I'm going to come
up and click the flyout next to the Arc tool.
| | 01:14 | Notice there are 11 different ways to
create arcs in AutoCAD depending on what
| | 01:18 | information you have. Now, it's
important to know that there is only one Arc
| | 01:21 | command. The default happens to be
the 3-Point arc. Each one of these other
| | 01:26 | options is merely a shortcut to the
various sub-options that are available
| | 01:30 | within the command.
| | 01:31 | Every one of these methods could be
accessed by selecting 3-Point and then just
| | 01:34 | choosing the options from the command
line. Let's hit Escape to clear this menu
| | 01:38 | and I'm going to erase these arcs. I
would like to take a second to talk about
| | 01:43 | the pieces of information that
we can use to construct an arc.
| | 01:48 | Now as we go through these components,
always remember that an arc is nothing
| | 01:51 | more than an incomplete circle. Let's
not over-complicate the issue. In most
| | 01:55 | cases if you have difficulty creating
an arc, simply create a circle and trim
| | 01:59 | it. One component we can use to
create an arc is the start point. Another
| | 02:03 | component we can use is the arc's
endpoint. We can use the center point as well.
| | 02:09 | Another piece of information that is
helpful is the radius. The radius is the
| | 02:12 | distance from the center point to the
end point of our arc. We can use the
| | 02:16 | included angle to construct our arc. Now,
an included angle is the angle drawn
| | 02:21 | from the endpoint to the center
point to another endpoint of our arc.
| | 02:25 | The included angle is sometimes called the
delta angle of your arc and looking at
| | 02:29 | my example on screen, I can see this
arc has an approximate included angle of
| | 02:33 | 90 degrees.
| | 02:34 | We can use a point on the arc as one
of our components. We can also use the
| | 02:38 | chord length. The chord length is the
straight-line distance from the start
| | 02:42 | point to the endpoint of our arc.
Finally, we can also use the start direction.
| | 02:47 | At what angle does my arc exit my
start point. This is also called our
| | 02:51 | direction of tangency.
| | 02:53 | In the example on screen, the start
direction would be 90 degrees because I'm
| | 02:56 | coming out of my start point straight up.
When constructing an arc in AutoCAD,
| | 03:00 | I can use any three pieces of
information that we see on the screen. Let's
| | 03:04 | return to AutoCAD and
we'll take a look at the tool.
| | 03:07 | Now, we're not going to be going
through every method of creating an arc in
| | 03:09 | this lesson. We're going to look at
several of them. If you look at my screen,
| | 03:12 | you can see I have created some
rectangles. What we're going to do is use these
| | 03:15 | rectangles to sketch out
some decorative window concepts.
| | 03:19 | I am going to zoom in on one of these.
Now this geometry was created using
| | 03:24 | architectural measurements. Let's
create our first arc. Let's say I would like
| | 03:27 | to create an arc that starts right
here and then curves up and ends when it
| | 03:32 | hits this vertical line.
| | 03:33 | Well, I know the start point of my arc,
I know the center point of my arc and I
| | 03:37 | know the endpoint of my arc must fall
on this line. Let's go up to our Arc
| | 03:41 | flyout and click. I'm going to
select the Start, Center, End option.
| | 03:45 | I will click my start point, I'll
click my center point and notice as I pull
| | 03:50 | away, I'm creating a rubber band effect
and I just need to click my last point
| | 03:54 | to finish my arc. One thing I want to
mention, AutoCAD wants to create our arcs
| | 03:58 | counterclockwise. You would think if I
was to pull down, my arc would be drawn
| | 04:03 | the other direction. It's not,
okay? Keep that in mind when you are
| | 04:06 | constructing arcs.
| | 04:07 | Let's me click my last point. I'm
going to come up and grab the endpoint of
| | 04:10 | this line. Let's create the arc on
the other side. Once again I'm going to
| | 04:14 | launch the Start, Center, End tool.
I'll click my start point, I'll click my
| | 04:19 | center point and notice that AutoCAD
wants to draw this counterclockwise,
| | 04:22 | unfortunately that's not
going to work for me in this case.
| | 04:26 | Now, I don't have to pick another
selection from the flyout. Remember those
| | 04:29 | selections are merely shortcuts to the
sub-options of the command. I'm going to
| | 04:33 | finish this arc by using the command
line. If we take a look right down here,
| | 04:37 | we can see that I can enter an angle or
a chord length at this point. I'm going
| | 04:42 | to right-click and select Angle
because I know this angle must be 90 degrees.
| | 04:48 | Now, in this case, I want the arc to go
clockwise, so I'm going to type -90 and hit Enter.
| | 04:53 | Let's finish this window by creating a
rounded top. I would like to create an
| | 04:56 | arc that starts from this endpoint that
sweeps up through the mid-point at the
| | 05:00 | top and then ends at this endpoint.
Let's click the Arc flyout. I'm going to
| | 05:05 | select the 3-Point option and we'll
create an arc from this endpoint to the
| | 05:11 | Shift+Right-click midpoint of this
line to the endpoint of this arc.
| | 05:16 | Let's pan this over. I have got
another example. In this case, let's say I
| | 05:21 | would like to create a single arc that
starts here and spans all the way up and
| | 05:25 | comes down and ends on this side. Once
again I'm going to click the Arc flyout.
| | 05:29 | We're going to try the Start, End Angle
method because I know my start point is
| | 05:35 | here, my end point is here and my angle
is going to be 180 degrees because it's
| | 05:41 | half of a circle.
| | 05:42 | Let's back up just a little bit and
we'll look at our last example. In this
| | 05:46 | case, I would like to create more of
a Gothic style window. So I'm going to
| | 05:49 | stretch this middle rectangle a
little bit taller. Let me launch my Stretch
| | 05:53 | command, we'll do a crossing window
around this geometry. I'll right-click and
| | 05:58 | then I'll pick my corner and we'll
pull straight up. Let's lock our Ortho.
| | 06:02 | We'll pull up and we'll type 1 foot, Enter.
| | 06:06 | Now, in this case, I know my start
point of my arc, I know the end point of my
| | 06:10 | arc, I also know the arc direction. So
I'm going to click my flyout. I'm going
| | 06:15 | to come down and select Start, End
direction. My arc is going to start here.
| | 06:19 | We are going to draw it to the Shift+Right
-click, midpoint of the top and I know
| | 06:26 | the arc direction happens to be 90 degrees.
| | 06:28 | That was if I pull to the right, I can
also select 0 or I can pick 180. Let's
| | 06:33 | pull up and we'll pick a point on
screen. Let's create one more arc to finish
| | 06:38 | this up. I'm going to launch the tool
again, we'll pick our start point, we'll
| | 06:43 | pick our endpoint and then my
Ortho is helping me grab my direction.
| | 06:48 | Let's back up a little bit. We'll
center this on screen. Now, examples we've
| | 06:53 | drawn are relatively simple sketches.
I'm going to turn on a layer. I'm going
| | 06:57 | to click on my Layer control. I'll select
my Finished layer and we'll click on the screen.
| | 07:01 | Hopefully, you can see the geometry
we've constructed above is simply a
| | 07:04 | starting point for creating the
windows that we see below. By adding a few
| | 07:08 | offsets and a couple of more arcs,
we can create some fairly nice looking geometry.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Generating polylines| 00:00 | A very convenient tool to use in
AutoCAD is the polyline. Now a polyline is a
| | 00:04 | multi-segmented line that can contain
straight and curved segments. Creating
| | 00:09 | geometry using a polyline is much
faster than creating individual line work and
| | 00:13 | then joining a line work together.
| | 00:15 | Now I have got some sketch geometry
on my screen. We are going to use this
| | 00:18 | geometry to play around and learn how
the Polyline command works. Let's create
| | 00:22 | a first polyline. To do that I'm going
to go up to the Draw panel in my ribbon
| | 00:26 | and I'll click the Polyline tool and
then I'm going to pick a point on screen
| | 00:30 | and I'll click a few more points and
then I'll hit the Escape key when I'm finished.
| | 00:36 | Now that workflow is no different
than the workflow that we used to draw a
| | 00:39 | traditional line, except when I click
on this geometry I can see it acts as a
| | 00:43 | single object. That's because
it's a polyline and a polyline is a
| | 00:47 | multi-segmented line. I'm going to hit
Escape to deselect this and we'll create
| | 00:53 | one more. This time we are going to
watch our command little bit closer.
| | 00:56 | Let's pick a point on screen, pick
another point and another. Take a look at
| | 01:03 | the options that we have. Notice some
of these are familiar. We have Undo and
| | 01:07 | we have Close, the same options that we
see with the traditional line command.
| | 01:11 | Let's take a look at the Arc option.
I'm going to right-click and select Arc
| | 01:17 | and notice that I'm constructing an arc
that is tangent to my previous segment.
| | 01:21 | If I click and continue on, I'm now
constructing another arc. Technically I'm
| | 01:25 | in the Arc mode right now. Let's click
again. We'll click again. Let's say I'm
| | 01:31 | like to go back to constructing
straight-line segments. I'm going to
| | 01:35 | right-click and select Line from
the menu and now the segments that I'm
| | 01:39 | constructing are straight lines.
| | 01:42 | Now that I'm finished, let's close this
polyline. I'm going to right-click and
| | 01:45 | select Close from the menu. Now
polylines are much easier to move. They are
| | 01:50 | easier to rotate. They are easier to
offset. They are easier to be erased
| | 01:54 | because all of the segments
are treated as a single entity.
| | 01:57 | Another nice aspect of the polyline is
it's easy to find their area. Since this
| | 02:02 | guy is selected, I'm going to bring
up my Property Changer. I'm going to do
| | 02:05 | that by hitting Ctrl+1 on my keyboard.
Let's move this palette over here for
| | 02:10 | right now. I'll click and hold and
we'll make it a little bit wider and now I'm
| | 02:14 | going to grab the slider and come down
and we can see the area of this polyline
| | 02:18 | is almost 30 square feet.
| | 02:21 | Now we are probably going to use this
Property Changer again, so I'm going to
| | 02:24 | anchor this to the left side of my
interface. I'm going to right-click on this
| | 02:28 | mask and I'm going to select Anchor Left.
Then we'll hit Escape to deselect our polyline.
| | 02:35 | Now one important skill you need to
have is you need to know how to trace
| | 02:38 | existing line work using a polyline.
I have got some geometry on screen.
| | 02:42 | Let's see if we can trace this using the
Polyline command. I'm going to come up and
| | 02:46 | launch the tool. We'll start at the
lower left hand corner. Now I'm in the
| | 02:50 | Straight-line mode, so I'm going to
draw to this end point. Then we'll
| | 02:54 | right-click and select the Arc option.
Since this arc is tangent I can come
| | 02:59 | over and click this end point.
| | 03:00 | Let's go back to straight lines. I'll
right-click again and select Line and
| | 03:05 | we'll go to the end point here. Once
again, I need to switch to an arc.
| | 03:08 | We'll right-click and select Arc. Now the
arc that I'm tracing is not tangent to my
| | 03:13 | line segment. Let's look at the
command line and see what else we know.
| | 03:17 | Notice that some of the options that we
see in the list are the same ones that
| | 03:20 | we have in the traditional arc command.
We have Angle, we have Center, we have
| | 03:25 | Direction. I also have Second Point.
Any time you are tracing a non-tangent arc
| | 03:30 | you will always know a second point on the arc.
| | 03:33 | I am going to right-click and
select Second Point and we'll select the
| | 03:39 | Shift+Right-click Midpoint to those
arcs and then I'll come down to the end
| | 03:44 | point to finish. We'll right-click
and go right back into the straight line
| | 03:48 | segments and we'll go to the end
point here and then when I'm finished I'll
| | 03:52 | right-click and select Close.
| | 03:54 | Now you are probably thinking you know
what, you already had that in geometry
| | 03:57 | why don't you just join it together?
Well, I could have but every circumstance
| | 04:01 | isn't going to be that easy. Let's
back up a little bit. I'm going to pan my
| | 04:05 | drawing over. On my screen, I have
got a portion of an architectural floor
| | 04:09 | plan, this happens to be the back
portion of a house. Let's zoom in a little bit.
| | 04:14 | On the back of the house, I have got a
wooden deck. Let's say I would like to
| | 04:17 | find the area of this deck. Now the
problem is I can't just join these lines
| | 04:21 | together. I have got geometry at
different layers. But what I can do is quickly
| | 04:25 | trace this geometry using the polyline.
Now I'm practicing good form. I have
| | 04:29 | created a layer called Area and that
layer is current. Let's use the polyline
| | 04:33 | to find out the square footage of our deck.
| | 04:35 | I am going to launch the command.
Then come down and we'll start at the end
| | 04:39 | point here. We'll go to the end point
here and we'll just keep following our
| | 04:43 | end points around. We'll move up to
where we meet the house. Now I'm not going
| | 04:52 | to go around the windows. I'm going to
shoot right underneath these. Likewise
| | 04:56 | I'm not going to go through the doorway.
I'm going to come all the way down to
| | 04:58 | the corner of my house here. We'll
go past these windows to the corner.
| | 05:01 | We'll come down to the corner of the house
here. Let's back up and we'll pan over and
| | 05:08 | we'll work our way around to fireplace.
| | 05:12 | When I'm finished I'll right-click and
select Close to meet my start point.
| | 05:16 | I'm going to back up a little bit and to
find the area I'm going to select my
| | 05:20 | polyline. We'll go to our full
Property Changer and right here in the area
| | 05:25 | field I can see my deck has an area of
approximately 424 square feet. When I'm
| | 05:30 | finished, I'm going to move outside of
the palette. Now I'm going to collapse
| | 05:33 | and then I'll hit Escape to deselect my entity.
| | 05:36 | Since I have placed my area of
geometry on its own layer I can easily erase
| | 05:39 | this now or I can click the flyout
and I can turn this layer off, in case I
| | 05:43 | would like to return to a layer. As you
work, look for opportunities to use the
| | 05:49 | Polyline command. Using good
foresight and creating your geometry using a
| | 05:52 | polyline may save you time later if you
need to offset, move, copy or calculate
| | 05:58 | the area of your geometry.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating boundaries| 00:00 | The Boundary command could be a
tremendous time saver when drafting.
| | 00:03 | Now Boundary function is very similar to
the Hatch command, except that it's job is
| | 00:07 | to create closed polylines.
| | 00:09 | In this session, we are going to take
a look at how we can use the Boundary
| | 00:12 | command. Take a look at the area
created by these shapes. This is the area that
| | 00:16 | I'm interested in. I like this X
shape to be its own closed polyline.
| | 00:21 | Now I could create this my trimming my
geometry and then joining it together.
| | 00:24 | I can also painstakingly trace the edge,
but there is a faster way. I'm going to
| | 00:29 | use the Boundary command. I can find
boundary in the Draw panel of my ribbon.
| | 00:33 | I'm going to click the flyout. Boundary
is located right here. Let me click the
| | 00:37 | Launch the Tool.
| | 00:38 | Now Boundary acts very much like the
Hatch command. If I look at the middle of
| | 00:41 | the dialog box, I can see that I'm
going to be creating a polyline and we are
| | 00:45 | going to be creating it using the Pick
Points method. Let's click Pick Points.
| | 00:49 | I'll click inside the shape. AutoCAD
traces the boundary and I'll right-click to finish.
| | 00:55 | I am going to use the Move command and
we'll move this geometry outside and I'm
| | 01:01 | sure you will agree that it's much
faster to create a boundary than it is to
| | 01:03 | trace that manually. Now we don't have
to stop with a single boundary. If we
| | 01:08 | launch the command again, I'm going
to come up and click the Draw panel, so
| | 01:11 | like the command. We'll click Pick
Points. I'm going to click inside this shape
| | 01:16 | and this shape and this shape and
this shape and when I'm finished I'll
| | 01:19 | right-click. Each of these is its own
individual closed polyline. Let me hit
| | 01:24 | Escape to deselect.
| | 01:26 | Couple things to remember about the
Boundary command. When you create a
| | 01:29 | boundary, AutoCAD creates it on the
current layer. You can see these guys were
| | 01:33 | created on layer area. One other thing,
when we are generating a boundary we
| | 01:37 | have to make sure we have closed
geometry. Take a look at this. This geometry
| | 01:41 | obviously has a problem.
| | 01:42 | Let's try and create a boundary from
this interior shape. I'm going to launch
| | 01:47 | the command by right-clicking. I'm
going to select Repeat Boundary. We'll click
| | 01:52 | Pick Points and then we'll click inside
this shape. Now in my case, the gap is
| | 01:57 | obvious. If you get this error you
have a problem with your geometry. Let's
| | 02:01 | close this. I'm going to hit Escape to
cancel the command. Let's take a look at
| | 02:05 | what we can use the Boundary
command in a real world example.
| | 02:08 | I am going to pan my geometry over. On
my screen I have got an architectural
| | 02:13 | floor plan. This is the back portion of
a house and behind the house I have got
| | 02:17 | a wooden deck and this cyan line
represent a concrete patio. Let's use the
| | 02:23 | Boundary command to find out the square
footage of our patio. To do that we'll
| | 02:26 | launch the command. I'll click my Draw
panel and we'll select Boundary.
| | 02:31 | I'll click Pick Points and I'll
inside the shape and right-click.
| | 02:35 | When I'm finished I'll select the
shape. We'll go over to the full Property
| | 02:39 | palette and I can see the area of my
concrete patio is approximately 300 square
| | 02:44 | feet. I'm going to move outside the
palette. Let it collapse and then I'm going
| | 02:48 | to hit my Escape key to deselect. The
next time, you need to calculate an area
| | 02:52 | or trace some line work, consider
using the Boundary command. Boundary is the
| | 02:56 | fastest way to generate polylines in AutoCAD.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Exploring Hatch settings| 00:00 | When using AutoCAD's Hatch command,
there are more things to consider than
| | 00:03 | simply selecting a closed object or an
internal point. In this session, we are
| | 00:07 | going to explore some of the other
available settings that give us even more
| | 00:10 | control over our Hatch.
| | 00:12 | Now, on my screen, I have got some
abstract geometry. We are going to use this
| | 00:15 | line work to explore some of the
additional Hatch Settings available in
| | 00:18 | AutoCAD. Let's say I would like to
hatch the area in between this large circle
| | 00:23 | and these squares. I'm going to come up
and launch the Hatch command right here
| | 00:27 | on our Draw panel. I'm going to accept
the default Hatch Settings and I'm going
| | 00:32 | to come up and click Pick Points.
| | 00:33 | Now I'm going to click inside this shape.
When I do, notice AutoCAD finds this
| | 00:38 | boundary and this one, notice it's also
finding a couple of extra ones that we
| | 00:42 | wouldn't expect. No matter, I'm
going to right-click and let's select a
| | 00:45 | Preview. Take a look at this. AutoCAD
is hatching a little bit more than I would like.
| | 00:51 | Now, this isn't exactly what I want
but it does represent AutoCAD's default
| | 00:54 | hatching method. I'm going to bring
back the dialog box by clicking a point on
| | 00:58 | my screen. I'm going to slide my dialog
box over and let's click this More Than
| | 01:02 | symbol so that we can see
all of our Hatch Settings.
| | 01:05 | Now, I'm going to slide it back. If
we look right here in the Island's area
| | 01:10 | this shows us how AutoCAD handles
interior islands that it finds. By default
| | 01:15 | this is set to Normal. That means
AutoCAD is going to hatch every other island.
| | 01:19 | If I set this to Outer, AutoCAD will
only recognize the first island that it
| | 01:23 | finds and if I set it to Ignore,
AutoCAD won't find any of the islands.
| | 01:28 | So, in our case, what we want is Outer.
Let me select this and I'm going to
| | 01:32 | come down and click Preview again. And
this is what we want. Let me right-click
| | 01:37 | and finish my Hatch. Now, you may be
wondering every time you create a Hatch
| | 01:40 | pattern, do you have to worry about
Normal, Outer or Ignore? No, you don't.
| | 01:44 | Let me show you another way that
we can achieve this same Hatch.
| | 01:47 | I am going to click Undo. Let's launch
the Hatch command again and I'm going to
| | 01:51 | set my Islands to Normal. Let's click
Pick Points, we'll click inside the shape
| | 01:57 | and we notice that it's selecting a
little bit too much. Let's right-click and
| | 02:01 | select Enter to bring back the
dialog box. I'm going to come up to the
| | 02:04 | Boundaries area and I'm
going to click Remove boundaries.
| | 02:08 | Now, I can select the boundaries that
I would like AutoCAD to ignore and then
| | 02:12 | I'll right-click and select Preview.
When finished, I'll right-click to
| | 02:16 | complete my Hatch. I'm going to back up
and then pan over and let's take a look
| | 02:19 | at these shapes. Let's say I would
like to Hatch these three circles.
| | 02:23 | I'll launch my Hatch command, I'm going to
click Select objects and then I'll click
| | 02:28 | this one, this one and this one and
we'll right-click and select Preview.
| | 02:32 | That's what I want. I want
right-click to accept my Hatch.
| | 02:35 | Now, here is my problem. If I select
this Hatch entity, we can see that all
| | 02:39 | three of these guys are treated as a
single Hatch object. Let's hit Escape.
| | 02:43 | That means if I was to make a change
to my geometry, for instance, if I erase
| | 02:48 | this circle and right-click, I'm not
going to need this Hatch pattern anymore.
| | 02:51 | If I erase the Hatch pattern, I end
up loosing the Hatch for the other two
| | 02:55 | circles. Let's click Undo. We'll bring
our circles back and let me show you how
| | 03:00 | we can hatch this a better way.
| | 03:01 | I am going to launch my Hatch command.
This time before we select our objects,
| | 03:05 | I'm going to move into the Options area
and select Create separate hatches and
| | 03:10 | then I'll click Select objects. We'll
grab this one, this one and this one and
| | 03:14 | right-click. Let's select Preview. That
looks good. I'll right-click again and
| | 03:19 | now each of these Hatch
objects is its own individual entity.
| | 03:23 | Having separate Hatch objects can be
much more convenient if you have to make
| | 03:26 | changes later. Let's hit Escape to
deselect and I would like to take a look at
| | 03:29 | another example. This geometry isn't
closed and the gap is pretty obvious.
| | 03:34 | Let's find out how wide this gap is.
| | 03:36 | I am going to come up to Tools tab and
click. I'm going to come over and select
| | 03:40 | the Distance command and we'll find the
distance from the end point here to the
| | 03:44 | end point here. And I can see the gap
is just shy of being an inch and a half.
| | 03:49 | Let's hit Escape. I'm going to go back
to the Home tab and let's try and Hatch this.
| | 03:54 | We will launch the Hatch command. I'm
going to click Pick Points. We'll pick
| | 03:58 | inside the shape. Notice AutoCAD
cannot find a valid Hatch boundary. Let's
| | 04:02 | click OK. I'm going to right-click and
select Enter to bring back the dialog
| | 04:07 | box. Notice on the right side, I have
got an Option called Gap Tolerance.
| | 04:10 | Here is where I can enter the largest gap
that's acceptable to me when I'm creating
| | 04:14 | Hatch. I'm going to type two inches and
then I'll come up and click Pick Points
| | 04:19 | again. And we'll pick inside the shape.
| | 04:21 | Notice AutoCAD says, hey! This
boundary isn't closed, but you know what, it
| | 04:24 | does fall within our tolerance. I'm
going to select Continue hatching this
| | 04:28 | area. Notice AutoCAD closes my shape.
I'll right-click and select Preview.
| | 04:33 | That's what I want. I'll right-click to
accept my Hatch. I'm going to back up a
| | 04:37 | little, little pan over. I have
got an architectural example now.
| | 04:42 | This is an elevation view of a well
house. Let's say I would like to hatch the
| | 04:45 | brick pattern on the outside of this
building. I'm going to zoom in on this
| | 04:49 | side. I'll launch the Hatch command.
I'm going to select a New Pattern.
| | 04:53 | I'm going to click the Ellipses button.
We are going to look at the Other
| | 04:56 | Predefined tab and notice some of my
patterns start with the letters AR.
| | 05:00 | This stands for architectural, meaning
these patterns are pre-scaled for an
| | 05:04 | architectural drawing.
| | 05:05 | So, if I select Architectural Brick
Standard (AR-BRSTD), this pattern will come
| | 05:09 | in at the size of a standard brick.
Let me click OK. I'll click Pick Points,
| | 05:14 | we'll pick right inside here and I'll
right-click and select Preview. Now, this
| | 05:18 | doesn't look too bad but if I zoom in a
little bit closer we can see my bottom
| | 05:22 | course of bricks isn't accurate.
Bricks wouldn't look this way in the real world.
| | 05:26 | The reason why this is incorrect is
because our Hatch is based on our Origin or
| | 05:30 | our (0,0) coordinate. What I'm going to
do is adjust the Origin of my Hatch to
| | 05:34 | be the corner of this building and
then my brick should look accurate.
| | 05:38 | I'm going to pick on screen to bring back
my dialog box and then I'm going to come
| | 05:42 | down to the Hatch Origin area. I'm
going to select Specified Origin and then
| | 05:46 | I'm going to click to set new origin.
| | 05:49 | I would like to set my origin at this
end point. Let's click Preview again and
| | 05:55 | notice my bricks are now good. When I'm
finished, I'll right-click to accept my
| | 05:59 | Hatch. Let's finish the building.
We'll launch the Hatch pattern. I'll click
| | 06:05 | Pick Points and I'm going to click
inside this shape and this one. Now, I don't
| | 06:09 | want to hatch my window, so I'll right-
click and select Enter to bring back the dialog box.
| | 06:14 | We will select Remove Boundaries
and will take away this one and will
| | 06:17 | right-click, select Preview and this
looks good, I'm going to right-click to
| | 06:21 | accept my hatch. As you can see there
is more to AutoCAD's Hatch command than
| | 06:26 | first meets the eye. A little
exploration beyond the Default Settings can make
| | 06:30 | a big difference in the
appearance and quality of our work.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Producing gradient fill hatches| 00:00 | Let's face it. Most of the drawings
that we create in AutoCAD are printed in
| | 00:03 | black and white. Now, when you are
trying to sell an idea to a client,
| | 00:07 | sometimes a black and white print can
look a little boring. One way we can
| | 00:10 | improve the appearance of our exhibits
is by using Gradient Fill Hatch. In this
| | 00:14 | lesson, we are going learn how to
add Gradient Fill Hatch to our AutoCAD drawings.
| | 00:18 | As you can see, I have got a very
boring drawing on my screen. Generally
| | 00:21 | speaking, I have got the outline of a
pond, I have got a tree and I have got a
| | 00:25 | line that represents a portion of our
site. Now, I'm not doing a big drawing
| | 00:29 | right now. I'm just doing an example.
| | 00:30 | We are going to try add some life to
this drawing by hatching it with some
| | 00:34 | Gradient Fill Hatch. Now, I'm
practicing good form, I have created a layer for
| | 00:38 | my Hatch. I'm going to be placing all
of my Hatch patterns on the same layer.
| | 00:41 | You can place yours on different
layers if you like; it's entirely up to you.
| | 00:45 | To create my Hatch, I'm going to go up
and launch the Hatch command and then we
| | 00:48 | are going to come over and click the
Gradient tab. Now, our Gradient is a
| | 00:53 | smooth transition from one color to
another. As you can see, I have got two
| | 00:57 | options, a One Color Gradient and a Two
Color Gradient. We are going to look at
| | 01:00 | the One Color first.
| | 01:01 | Now, you may be wondering how we can
have a One Color Gradient. In reality, we
| | 01:05 | are blending our first color with a
Tint or a Shade of the same color. I can
| | 01:11 | adjust that by moving this slider.
I have got nine different Gradient Options
| | 01:15 | available. I'm going to select the one
in the upper left and let's Hatch our
| | 01:19 | pond. I'm going to come up and click
Select objects. We'll select the Pond,
| | 01:24 | let's right-click and select
Preview. Notice I have got a nice smooth
| | 01:28 | transition of color.
| | 01:29 | Now, I would like this to look if
though there is a light source coming from
| | 01:32 | the upper left side. So, I'm going to
bring back my dialog box by clicking on
| | 01:36 | screen and let's change the angle of
this Gradient. I'm going to come down to
| | 01:41 | the Angle area and I'm going to set
this to 135 degrees and I'll hit Tab.
| | 01:47 | Notice how all of these samples change.
| | 01:49 | Let's click Preview again. That's
exactly what I want. When I'm finished, I'll
| | 01:53 | right-click to accept my Hatch. Let's
Hatch the grass area this time. I'm going
| | 01:57 | to launch the Hatch command. This time
we'll click the Gradient tab and will
| | 02:01 | create a Two Color Gradient.
| | 02:03 | To select my first color, I'm going to
click the Ellipses. This brings up our
| | 02:06 | AutoCAD Color Picker. Now this looks a
little bit different than what we are
| | 02:09 | used to. That's just because a
different tab is current. If I click Index
| | 02:14 | Color, this is what we are use to
seeing. Let's jump back to the True Color
| | 02:17 | tab. On this tab is where I
can construct an RGB color.
| | 02:21 | Here is how it works. In this matrix on
the left, I can click to set my cursor
| | 02:25 | to select my color. I can also click
and hold and drag, if I drag this up.
| | 02:31 | The higher I get in the matrix,
the more vibrant or saturated my color is.
| | 02:35 | The lower I go, the more muted or
grayscale my color becomes. I want to go with a
| | 02:40 | nice green color, so I'm
going to push this up. Release.
| | 02:44 | Once I have chosen my color, I can
come over to my Brightness slider and
| | 02:47 | click-and-hold and I can drag this up
and down to adjust its brightness.
| | 02:51 | I'm going to make my first color a little
dark, we'll go right here and I'll click
| | 02:55 | OK. Let's choose a second color, I'm
going to use the same method. I'm going to
| | 02:59 | click the Ellipses button, we'll
choose a green and I'll grab my Brightness
| | 03:03 | slider and I'll drag this down a little
bit. When I'm finished, I'll click OK.
| | 03:07 | I am going to go with the same
Gradient Pattern and I'll come up and click
| | 03:11 | Select objects. We'll select this one,
I'll right-click and we'll Preview.
| | 03:16 | That will work, let's right-click to
accept our hatch. Let's Hatch the tree.
| | 03:21 | Once again, I'm going to launch the Hatch
command, we'll click the Gradient tab.
| | 03:25 | Once again, I'm going to go with Two
Color, I'm going to click my Ellipses
| | 03:28 | button and we'll make our tree color
a little bit darker and will click OK.
| | 03:32 | Will make the second color a
little bit lighter and will click OK.
| | 03:37 | Now, since my tree is spherical, I'm
going to go with the Radial Gradient.
| | 03:41 | But I want my light source to be in the
upper left-hand side. So I'm going to come
| | 03:45 | down and remove the check from
Centered and then I'm going to change my Angle
| | 03:50 | to zero degrees and hit Tab. That's
exactly what I want, let's click Select
| | 03:55 | objects. I'll select my tree, we'll
right-click and we'll select Preview and
| | 04:03 | then we'll right-click to accept the
hatch. I would like to create one more
| | 04:05 | hatch, let's make a drop shadow for this tree.
| | 04:08 | I am going to zoom in, we'll use the
Copy command, I'll copy my tree edge and
| | 04:14 | right-click. I want to pick a point on
a screen and I'm going to drag this down
| | 04:17 | to right about here and click and
then I'll hit Escape. Let's launch the
| | 04:22 | Gradient Hatch command again. Now
actually there is a shortcut to the Gradient
| | 04:26 | Hatch, if I click the Flyout in the
Draw panel, I can click this icon, to take
| | 04:31 | me right to the Gradient tab. I'm
going to leave my first color alone.
| | 04:35 | I'm going to click the second color and
I'm going to make this a nice gray for my
| | 04:40 | shadow and I'll darken it up a little bit.
| | 04:43 | Let's click OK, I'm going to go with
the Cylindrical Gradient and let's rotate
| | 04:48 | this a little bit. I'm going to come
down and change the Angle to 315 degrees
| | 04:52 | and hit Tab. That will work. I'll come
up and click Pick Points, we'll click
| | 04:57 | inside this shape and we'll right-
click and select Preview and then I'll
| | 05:02 | right-click to accept my hatch.
| | 05:04 | Now, I don't need this circle anymore,
let's erase it. I'm going to back up a
| | 05:08 | little bit and I'm going to copy some
of these trees around my site. I'm going
| | 05:12 | to start out by copying one, by
creating a window and will copy it over to the
| | 05:17 | left side. Let's scale this guy down
a little bit. I'm going to launch the
| | 05:23 | Scale command. We'll select this tree
and right-click, I'll scale it from it's
| | 05:28 | center point and will use a
Scale Factor of 0.3 and hit Enter.
| | 05:34 | And then we can finish up our site by
creating some tree copies. I'll copy this
| | 05:40 | tree to here, here. We'll drop one
over here. We'll drop a couple more over
| | 05:47 | here. We'll copy this small tree,
we'll place a couple of them here, couple
| | 05:58 | here. I'm trying to be careful of my
running Object Snaps, let's go down and
| | 06:03 | turn that feature off and
then we'll drop in a few more.
| | 06:10 | Lastly, we'll get rid of these guys
that we don't need. I'll highlight them and
| | 06:16 | I'll click my Erase icon. By am making
a wise use of Gradient Fill Hatch, you
| | 06:22 | can quickly take an average
looking drawing and make it look like a
| | 06:25 | professional presentation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using points as markers| 00:00 | Points represent the most basic
geometry that we can create AutoCAD. A point
| | 00:04 | is an object used to mark a specific
location in our drawing. Much like the
| | 00:08 | treasure map concept where x marks the
spot, in AutoCAD a point will mark the
| | 00:12 | spot. The AutoCAD Point Object is
probably the simplest, most basic object you
| | 00:17 | can create. Let's make our first point.
To do that I'm going to come up to the
| | 00:21 | Draw panel and click the flyout. Now
the Point tool is located right here.
| | 00:24 | Let me come into model space and I'll
click to set my first point. And then I'll
| | 00:30 | click a couple of more times and
will make a few more points. When I'm
| | 00:33 | finished, I'll Escape to cancel the command.
| | 00:36 | Let's zoom in a little bit. Now I don't
know how good your vision is but these
| | 00:40 | points are pretty hard to see. I would
go so far as to see the default point
| | 00:44 | setting in AutoCAD is about as bad as
it gets, because these points are barely
| | 00:48 | visible. Let me show you where we
can go to change the appearance of our
| | 00:51 | points. I'm come up to the menu browser
and click. Then I'm going to come down
| | 00:55 | to the Format menu and we'll come
over and down and select Point Style.
| | 01:00 | In the Point Style dialog box, the
upper half controls the appearance of our
| | 01:04 | points and the lower half controls
their size. As you can see the default
| | 01:08 | setting shows our points as a single
pixel. Now I would like to have more of a
| | 01:12 | traditional point appearance. So I'm
going to click the plus symbol, then we
| | 01:16 | can come down and adjust their size.
By default our points in AutoCAD are
| | 01:20 | measured as a percentage of our screen
size. I can see these points are going
| | 01:24 | to be 5% of my screen. Now this is
nice because the points are always
| | 01:28 | predictably sized on our monitor
but it's not very good when we plot.
| | 01:32 | Instead I'm going to come down and
click Set Size in Absolute Units. This way
| | 01:36 | my points will be predictably sized on
my paper. I'm going to change the size
| | 01:40 | to 10 units and we click OK. Notice the
change in the appearance of my points.
| | 01:46 | Now that we know how to create point
objects, let's use points in a practical
| | 01:50 | example. I'm going to back up, pan over
and let's zoom in a little bit. This is
| | 01:56 | a civil engineering example. This
happens to be a drawing of a vacant lot.
| | 02:00 | The Cyan line represents my boundary line.
If we look at the East side of the
| | 02:04 | property we can see I have got an
existing road. Now my lot has several lines
| | 02:08 | running through it, let me zoom in a
little bit. These lines represent Contour
| | 02:12 | lines. Contour shows us the three-
dimensional elevation of our property and in
| | 02:17 | this case it is doing it in even two-
foot increments. Looking at my contours I
| | 02:21 | can easily tell where the high and
low points of my lot are located.
| | 02:24 | Let's say we are a developer who wants
to subdivide this lot. One of the first
| | 02:29 | steps in the process is to have
someone take soil boring at the site. Knowing
| | 02:33 | the condition and type of soil will
dictate what and where we can build. So I'm
| | 02:37 | going to create some point objects to
represent where we are going to take some
| | 02:40 | soil borings.
| | 02:41 | Let's first select how we would like
our points to look. I'm going to come up
| | 02:44 | to the menu browser and click. We'll
come back down to Format and we'll come
| | 02:48 | over and select Point Style. I'm going
to use a traditional soil-boring symbol
| | 02:53 | by clicking this option and then I'm
going to change my size to 25 units and
| | 02:58 | I'll click OK.
| | 02:59 | Let's come up and launch the Point
command. And in this case I'm going to turn
| | 03:04 | off my Running Object Snap, so I
don't accidentally grab a contour line.
| | 03:10 | And let's say I would like to create a
soil boring right here. When I'm finished
| | 03:13 | I'll hit my Escape key to get out of
the command. Now typically we label our
| | 03:17 | soil borings. Let's draw a piece of
text on this. I'm going to come up and
| | 03:20 | launch my Text command. We'll pick on
screen. I'm going to accept the default
| | 03:24 | height and rotation and we are going
to type 1 and hit Enter and Enter to
| | 03:31 | finish the text. Now I would like to
create a couple of more boring locations.
| | 03:35 | Since this one is already labeled, I'm
going to copy this one to a few other
| | 03:38 | locations in the site.
| | 03:39 | Let's launch the Copy command. Select
our point and our text, I'll right-click
| | 03:46 | and I'm going to use the Object Snap
that's associated with points to pick up
| | 03:50 | this geometry. I'm going to hold my
Shift key and right-click and select Node.
| | 03:55 | We'll use the Node Object Snap to snap
to a point object. Let's pick this up
| | 04:01 | from the Node here and we'll place
one here, we'll place one here and we'll
| | 04:05 | place one down here.
| | 04:07 | When I'm finished all hit escape and
we can edit our text. Let's double-click
| | 04:11 | on this one and change it to 2. I'll
hit Enter, we'll click this one and we'll
| | 04:17 | change it to 3. Then we'll hit Enter
and then I'll click this one and will
| | 04:22 | change it to 4.
| | 04:24 | When I'm finished I'll hit Escape to
exit the command. At this point the
| | 04:27 | drawing is ready to plot and give to
the surveyor, such that he can stake the
| | 04:31 | locations of our soil borings. Even
though points are the most basic of all the
| | 04:34 | AutoCAD entities, they do serve an
important purpose and there is no better way
| | 04:39 | to identify locations in your drawing.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Drafting with construction lines and rays| 00:00 | The construction line and the ray
represent old school drafting techniques.
| | 00:04 | You see back in the paper and pencil
days we used to create multi-view drawings
| | 00:08 | using a method called orthographic
projection. Orthographic projection allowed
| | 00:12 | us to quickly create multiple views of
objects through the use of construction lines.
| | 00:16 | While this concept are maybe
considered classic board drafting, the tools
| | 00:20 | can still be very effective today
when using a computer. Now I'm currently
| | 00:23 | sitting in a blank drawing. I have
just launched my AutoCAD and I'm in the
| | 00:27 | default drawing1.dwg. We are going to
use this drawing to learn how to create
| | 00:32 | rays and construction lines.
| | 00:34 | Both of these tools are available on
the Draw panel of our ribbon. Let me come
| | 00:38 | up and click the flyout and right here
is the icon for Ray and here is the icon
| | 00:42 | for a Construction Line. Both of these
guys are used to create sketch geometry
| | 00:47 | in our drawing. Let's look at a ray first.
| | 00:49 | I am going to click the tool, then
will I pick a start point on screen and
| | 00:52 | notice as I move my cursor AutoCAD is
allowing me to create a line of infinite
| | 00:56 | length at whatever location or angle
I click. Now free picking a point isn't
| | 01:01 | the most accurate way to create a ray,
so I'm going to come down and lock my
| | 01:05 | Ortho and this will limit my movement
to 90 degree angles. Let me click. Notice
| | 01:11 | I'm still in the command. I can click
again to create another ray. Ray also
| | 01:14 | works well with Polar. I'm going to
come down and turn on my Polar feature and
| | 01:18 | then I'll right-click and set it to 45
degree increments. And now I can create
| | 01:24 | rays at 45-degree angles. When I'm
finished I hit Escape. Now if I hover over
| | 01:31 | one of these entities I can see it's a ray.
Now there is nothing magical about
| | 01:34 | this type of line.
| | 01:35 | If I was to trim this geometry
it would become standard line segments.
| | 01:39 | I'm going to click Erase and we'll erase
this geometry. Let's take a look at the
| | 01:44 | construction line. I'm going to go up
to the Draw panel again and click the flyout.
| | 01:47 | We'll click the Construction Line tool.
Once again I'll pick a point on screen.
| | 01:52 | Notice the difference as I move.
Now I'm creating a line of infinite
| | 01:57 | length in both directions.
| | 01:59 | So I'm going to leave this at a 45-
degree angle and click. I have just created
| | 02:02 | my first construction line. When I'm
finished I'll hit my Escape key. Now the
| | 02:07 | construction line has a few more
options than the ray. Let's take a look at
| | 02:11 | some of those. I'm going to click the flyout.
We'll select Construction Line. Take a look
| | 02:16 | at my command line. I have got
several options down here. I'm going to
| | 02:19 | right-click. Notice I have Horizontal,
Vertical or Angular. Let's select
| | 02:24 | Vertical and note that each place I
click I'm creating a vertical construction line.
| | 02:28 | Let's hit Escape. Obviously we can
create those horizontally or at any angle we select.
| | 02:34 | Let's erase this geometry. I'll make a
crossing window here. We'll remove this.
| | 02:39 | Probably one of the more valuable
features of the Construction Line is the
| | 02:42 | Bisect feature. Bisect allows us to
bisect an angle. Watch this. I'm going to
| | 02:47 | come up and launch my Line command
and I'm going to pick three points on my
| | 02:51 | screen and then I'll hit my
Escape key on my keyboard.
| | 02:55 | Let's launch the Construction Line now.
I click my flyout and we'll grab
| | 02:59 | Construction Line. I'm going to right-
click and select Bisect and I can bisect
| | 03:05 | this angle by clicking the vertex
point and then I can click the end point of
| | 03:09 | my first line and the end point of my
second line. And when I'm finished I'll hit Escape.
| | 03:13 | Now that we have got the general idea
of how to create construction lines and rays,
| | 03:17 | let's try and use these tools in
a practical example. I'm going to open a
| | 03:21 | drawing. Let's come up and click the
Open icon. We are going to look inside the
| | 03:24 | chapter_02 folder inside our exercise_
files directory and let's come down and
| | 03:28 | open up drawing 8, the toy block
drawing. On my screen I have got metric
| | 03:34 | example. This is a drawing of a
standard toy brick and this drawing was created
| | 03:38 | such that each unit equals one
millimeter. Now over on the right I have got a
| | 03:42 | dimensioned isometric view. I have also
constructed the top view of this brick.
| | 03:46 | Let's see if we can create the front
view and the right side view through the
| | 03:49 | use of construction lines and rays.
| | 03:51 | Now I'm practicing good form. I have
got a layer called sketch that I'm going
| | 03:55 | to be placing all my sketch lines on.
Let's come up and launch the Construction
| | 03:59 | Line tool. I'm going to right-click
and set this to Vertical and then I'll
| | 04:04 | click the end point here and the end
point here to project the width of my part
| | 04:08 | down to the front view. When I'm
finished I'll hit the Escape key on my keyboard.
| | 04:13 | Now I'm going to create a rectangle.
I'll come up and launch the Rectangle tool,
| | 04:16 | and I would like my rectangle to start,
Shift+Right-click, Nearest this point.
| | 04:21 | Then I'll right-click and
select Dimensions and if I look at my
| | 04:25 | Isometric View I can see my rectangle
has a dimension of 24x6. So we'll type 24
| | 04:31 | and hit Enter and 6, Enter. And then
I'll click one more time to finish my rectangle.
| | 04:37 | Let's explode this geometry. I'm going
to come up and click my Explode command.
| | 04:40 | We'll grab this rectangle and right-
click. Each of these pegs extends up 2
| | 04:44 | millimeters. Let's offset our geometry.
I'm going to click Offset. We'll type 2
| | 04:50 | for our distance and we'll offset this
line up, and I'll hit Escape. I'm going
| | 04:56 | to use construction lines again to
project the locations of my pegs down to the
| | 05:00 | front view. Now I'm going to be using
the quadrant object snap in this tutorial
| | 05:04 | frequently. So I'm going to come down
and right-click on my Running Object
| | 05:07 | Snaps and let's turn on Quadrant.
| | 05:09 | Once again we go to the Draw panel
and click. I grab my construction line.
| | 05:15 | I'm going to right and select Vertical
and let's project this quadrant and this one,
| | 05:21 | this one and this one, this one
and this one. When I'm finished I'll hit
| | 05:25 | my Escape key and then we'll use the
Trim command to clean up our geometry.
| | 05:30 | I'm going to window all of this and right
-click. We'll remove the tops of the lines,
| | 05:35 | we'll remove the bottoms of the lines,
we'll zoom in. We'll remove the
| | 05:40 | lines from the interior and then I
can use a crossing window to remove the
| | 05:46 | remaining line work.
| | 05:52 | Let's center this on screen and let's
create our right side view. To do that
| | 05:56 | I'm going to project my elevations to
the right. Once again I'll launch the
| | 06:00 | Construction Line. I'll right-click
and I'm going to select Horizontal this time.
| | 06:04 | And then I'll grab all of my elevations.
Now we are using this tool for a
| | 06:09 | mechanical example. This tool also
works great if you are an architect and you
| | 06:13 | are aligning objects between your plan
view and your elevation views, or if you're
| | 06:17 | a civil engineer and you are aligning
your geometry between your plan views and
| | 06:21 | your profiles. I'm going to hit
Escape and it would be very nice if I could
| | 06:25 | project my line work from the
top view over to the right side.
| | 06:28 | Actually I can. I can do that through
the use of a 45-degree angle. Let's click
| | 06:32 | the Draw panel. I'm going to grab the
Ray tool. I'll pick a point right here
| | 06:37 | and my polar is still locked at 45
degrees. So I'll pull up until this snaps
| | 06:41 | and then I'll click. Then I'll hit
Escape. And let's project our widths over to
| | 06:46 | this 45-degree angle line. To do that
I'm going to go back to my construction line.
| | 06:51 | We'll right-click and we'll
set that to a Horizontal. I'm going to
| | 06:55 | project the overall width and
I'm going to project the pegs.
| | 06:59 | Let's click the Quadrant here and here
and here and here and I'll hit Escape.
| | 07:05 | Now we can project each of these
intersections down. Since I'm going to be
| | 07:09 | selecting several intersections, let's
also turn that on as a Running Object
| | 07:13 | Snap. I'm going to right-click and
select Intersection. Let's go back to
| | 07:17 | Construction Line, we'll right-click,
select Vertical and I'll place one here,
| | 07:24 | here, here, here, each
location where I have an intersection.
| | 07:30 | And when I'm finished I'll hit my
Escape key. Finally we can clean this up
| | 07:34 | using our Trim command. We'll create a
crossing window around this geometry and
| | 07:38 | right-click. We'll remove the sketch
lines on the right side, the top and
| | 07:43 | the left. We'll get rid of the lines on
the bottom, and the lines on the inside,
| | 07:49 | and then I can remove the
remaining pieces of geometry and then I'll
| | 07:54 | right-click and select
Erase to remove everything else.
| | 07:59 | And we'll hit our Escape key to get
out of the command. Anytime you can use a
| | 08:02 | construction line to project your
geometry, you are allowing your drawing
| | 08:07 | to enter your distances for you. This
construction line technique may have its
| | 08:11 | roots back in the paper and pencil days
but it can still works its magic today
| | 08:15 | when helping us construct
and verify our geometry.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Modification ConceptsUsing the Edge function of Trim and Extend| 00:00 | One of the perceived drawbacks of the
Trim and Extend command is that you can
| | 00:03 | only trim or extend intersecting
line work. In this session, we are going
| | 00:07 | to learn how to trim and extend
any geometry, whether it intersects on a
| | 00:10 | line work or not.
| | 00:11 | Now, if you take a look at my screen,
you can see I have got some line
| | 00:13 | segments. Let's say I would like to
extend these three lines such that they
| | 00:17 | meet this vertical line.
| | 00:19 | To do, I'm going to launch the Extend
command. I'll click my vertical line as
| | 00:23 | my boundary edge and right-click. And
then we can extend this line and this one
| | 00:27 | and notice I can keep clicking this
all day and this guy is not going to
| | 00:31 | extend, because if it was to extend,
it would not physically meet this vertical line.
| | 00:36 | Now, that's okay. That's just he
default functionality of the Extend command.
| | 00:40 | I'm going to hit Escape to deselect
this line work. And then I'm going to
| | 00:44 | undo and I'll show you how we can do
this extension. I'm going to launch the
| | 00:48 | Extend command again, we'll select
our boundary edge, and I'll right-click.
| | 00:54 | This time take a look at my command
line. Notice that I have got an option
| | 00:56 | called Edge. I'm going to right-
click and select Edge. Now, Edge has two
| | 01:02 | settings, Extend and No Extend.
By default, it's set to No Extend.
| | 01:07 | Let's right-click and we'll change this to
Extend. This will cause AutoCAD to see my
| | 01:12 | boundary edge extending
infinitely in either direction.
| | 01:16 | So if I click these lines, these guys
extend to the extension of my boundary edge.
| | 01:21 | Now, when I finish I'll hit the
Escape key to cancel the command.
| | 01:25 | This feature works with arcs as well.
I'm going to launch my Arc command and let's
| | 01:29 | create an arc on the screen. Once
again, the launch Extend, we'll click our
| | 01:34 | boundary edge and right-click and
notice that each of these lines will extend
| | 01:38 | to the extension of that arc. I'm
going to hit Escape because I want to show
| | 01:43 | you that this feature also
works with the Trim command.
| | 01:45 | I am going to come up and click Move.
We'll select this line and right-click
| | 01:50 | and we'll move him over here. Let's
trim these three lines, based on this
| | 01:55 | cutting edge. I'll select the Trim
command, we'll click our cutting edge and
| | 02:00 | right-click. Notice that, Trim also
has an edge option. If I right-click and
| | 02:05 | select Edge, notice it's already set
for Extend. That's because Trim and Extend
| | 02:11 | share the same edge setting. So, if
we set it for one, we're setting it for both.
| | 02:15 | I am going to hit the Enter key on my
keyboard to accept Extend and I can click
| | 02:20 | each one of these lines and they will
trim to the extension of my cutting edge.
| | 02:25 | And then I'll hit Escape
to get out of the command.
| | 02:27 | Now, one thing to remember about your
edge setting. This setting is saved in
| | 02:31 | your AutoCAD Registry. Meaning once
you have set this, it's set forever until
| | 02:35 | you change it. If you open a different
drawing, if you come back tomorrow and
| | 02:39 | launch your AutoCAD, your Edge setting
is still going to be turned on. It's on
| | 02:42 | until you turn it off.
| | 02:44 | Let's try and use this setting in a
practical example. I'm going to back up.
| | 02:48 | We'll pan over and just zoom in on this
geometry. On my screen, I have got an
| | 02:52 | architectural example. This happens
to be a concept drawing of a window.
| | 02:56 | I would like to make some
geometric changes to this line work.
| | 02:59 | Let's say the client would like this
window to be bigger. Let's say it's going
| | 03:02 | to be on the back of their house and
they have got a beautiful view and they
| | 03:04 | want as much glass on the back of
their house as possible. What I would like
| | 03:08 | to do is square off these corners and
then I'm going to create one large arch
| | 03:12 | that spans the entire window.
| | 03:14 | So, I'm going to start by clicking my
Erase icon. It will get rid of these
| | 03:17 | arcs. Then I'll right-click. Then
I'll click Extend, I'll select at this
| | 03:22 | boundary edge and right-click. And now
extend with this outer line and this
| | 03:26 | line up to meet that edge. When
I'm finished, I'll hit Escape.
| | 03:30 | Now I'll launch my Copy command and
we'll copy this line and this line and
| | 03:34 | right-click. I'll copy from the end
point here up to the corner and now I'll
| | 03:39 | hit Escape. Now, let's extend this line
so that it meets the outer edge of our window.
| | 03:43 | Watch this. When I launch
my Extend command, take a look at the
| | 03:47 | command line. On the third line up,
we can see the current settings.
| | 03:52 | Edge equals Extend. This is how you can
tell if your Edge setting is turned on or
| | 03:55 | off when you first launch the command.
| | 03:57 | Let me select my boundary edges and
right-click. I'll then extend to this line
| | 04:03 | and this line to meet the outer edges
of my window. And when I'm finished,
| | 04:06 | I'll hit my Escape key. Finally, we'll
erase this arc because we don't need it any more
| | 04:11 | and we'll create a new one. I'm
going to pen this down and I'm going to
| | 04:15 | launch the Arc command and we'll create
an arc using Start, End, Angle. I know
| | 04:19 | the start point of my arc is over here,
the arc is going to End over here and
| | 04:23 | it's going down at angle of 180 degrees.
Enter. And using the Edge option,
| | 04:29 | we were able to quickly revise
the geometry of this window.
| | 04:32 | Edge allows us to Trim or Extend
to nearly any geometry on our screen,
| | 04:36 | which can certainly be
a time saver when drafting.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Revising line work using Lengthen| 00:00 | Wouldn't it be nice to be able to
click on a line and say I want this line to
| | 00:03 | be 5ft long and have the length
automatically change to 5ft? Well, we don't
| | 00:08 | have to wish for this command.
We already have it. In this session,
| | 00:11 | we are going to learn how to use AutoCAD's
Lengthen command to modify our existing geometry.
| | 00:16 | As you can see, I have got a straight
line segment and I have got an arc.
| | 00:18 | As a courtesy, I have also included some
dimensions such that we can easily keep
| | 00:22 | track of their lengths. Now, this is an
architectural example. We can see that
| | 00:26 | in the dimensions.
| | 00:27 | Let's say I would like to change the
length of this straight line. I would like
| | 00:30 | it to be 5ft long. To do that, I'm
going to use the Lengthen command. Now, we
| | 00:35 | can find Lengthen in the Modified
panel of our ribbon. When we click the
| | 00:38 | flyout, then I'll select the
Lengthen command. Now, Lengthen has several
| | 00:42 | sub-options. I'm going to right-
click and I'm going to select Total.
| | 00:46 | We would use Total when we know the
total length that we would like to make of
| | 00:49 | our line. I'm going to type in 5ft for
my length and hit Enter. And then I can
| | 00:55 | select my object to change and I'll right-click
and select Enter to get out of the command.
| | 01:00 | Now this command also works for arcs.
Let's launch it again. I'm going to
| | 01:04 | right-click and select Repeat LENGTHEN.
Once again, I'm going to right-click
| | 01:08 | and select Total and let's make this
arc 5ft long as well. 5Ft happens to be
| | 01:13 | our default, so I'm going to hit Enter
on my keyboard. And we'll select Arc and
| | 01:19 | right-click and select
Enter to get out of the command.
| | 01:22 | Ironically, we have just used the
Lengthen command to shorten these identities.
| | 01:27 | Let's look at another sub-option. I'm
going to right-click and we'll go right
| | 01:29 | back into the Lengthen command. Let's
right-click and we'll select Delta. Delta
| | 01:34 | means amount of change, how much longer
or shorter would I like my identity to be.
| | 01:39 | In this case, let's make our geometry
2ft longer. I'm going to type 2ft and hit
| | 01:44 | Enter. It knows when I click my segment
AutoCAD adds 2ft. Also notice that the
| | 01:49 | changes are made to the end point
closest to where I pick. So, I can add 2ft to
| | 01:54 | that end, and I can add 2ft to this
end of the arc if I like. And when I'm
| | 01:58 | finished, now I'll right-click and
select Enter. If I wanted to make my segment
| | 02:02 | shorter, I could use the Delta
option with a negative distance.
| | 02:05 | Let's jump back into command. I'm going
to right-click and select Lengthen.
| | 02:08 | I'm going to right-click. I can also set
my
line lengths based on a percentage or
| | 02:13 | I can come down and select Dynamic.
Dynamic means drag the change. If I click
| | 02:19 | this identity and move my cursor,
notice I'm able to drag and free pick a new
| | 02:23 | length for this line. We can
do the same thing for the arc.
| | 02:27 | Dynamic can be a great way to locate
intersecting geometry. Once again, when
| | 02:32 | I'm finished, I'll right-click and
select Enter. Now, my Pole feature is
| | 02:36 | starting to get in the way. I'm going
to come down and turn that off. And let's
| | 02:39 | look at where we may use the
Lengthen command in a real world example.
| | 02:42 | I am going to zoom out a little bit
and we'll pan over. On my screen, I have
| | 02:47 | got an architectural drawing. This is a
sketch of a backyard shed. Currently, I
| | 02:52 | have the rectangular shape and the doors.
At this point, I would like to create
| | 02:55 | my roofline.
| | 02:56 | Let's create a Gable style roof. Now, a
Gable has a single peak at the middle.
| | 03:01 | Let's say I would like the peak of the
roof to be 10ft high. What we'll do is
| | 03:04 | re-launch our Offset command. I'm going
to type in 5ft for a distance and I'll
| | 03:09 | select my left edge and we'll offset
it towards the middle. And then I'll hit
| | 03:13 | Escape. I'm now having line segment
that represents the middle of my shed.
| | 03:19 | Now, I'll use the Lengthen command and
we'll make this line 10ft long. I'll do
| | 03:24 | that by right-clicking and selecting
Total. I'll type in my total length of
| | 03:28 | 10ft and hit Enter. And then I'll
select my line. Let's back up just a little
| | 03:34 | bit. Now, I'll hit Escape to get out of
the command and I can use a polyline to
| | 03:38 | finish the roof. We'll draw a line from
here to the end point, to the end point
| | 03:42 | here, and when I'm finished I'll hit Escape.
| | 03:45 | Now, this cable is nice, probably the
doors have a barn like quality. Let's try
| | 03:49 | and create the barn style roof. I would
like to add two more peaks: one on the
| | 03:53 | left side and one on the right. And I
would like to place them a foot and a
| | 03:57 | half over and 2ft up from the outside
corners. So, once again, I'm going to
| | 04:02 | launch my Offset command, I'm going to
set my distance for 1ft 6 inches, Enter.
| | 04:09 | It will offset this edge over and
this edge over and now I'll hit Escape.
| | 04:16 | Then I'll launch my Lengthen command. I'm
going to right-click and select the Delta
| | 04:21 | option and I would like to make these
2ft longer that happens to be the default
| | 04:25 | right now. So, I'll hit Enter to accept
that and I'll click this line and this one.
| | 04:31 | When I'm finished, I'll hit Escape.
And we can launch our Polyline and we can
| | 04:36 | connect the dots. We'll go from the end
point here to here, to the end point of
| | 04:40 | the peak. We'll grab this end point and
then we'll come down and click this one.
| | 04:45 | Let's hit Escape to get out of the
command. I'll create a nice crossing window,
| | 04:48 | across this geometry and I'll click my
Erase icon to remove the line work that
| | 04:53 | I don't need. At this point, my
geometry has somewhat of the simplistic look.
| | 04:57 | I do have some additional geometry on
another layer. If I click my flyout,
| | 05:02 | I'll turn on my Moulding layer and then
click on screen and this gives our drawing
| | 05:06 | more of the finished look.
| | 05:07 | AutoCAD's Lengthen command can be a
valuable tool when drafting. It allows us
| | 05:11 | to set our existing line work to any
length we want and can be one of fastest
| | 05:15 | ways to make changes to a drawing.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Trim function of Fillet and Chamfer| 00:00 | If you think about it, the Fillet and
Chamfer command not only create rounded
| | 00:04 | or beveled corners, they also clean up
our geometry when finished. Sometimes
| | 00:08 | though, we may want to create a
fillet or a chamfer and keep all of our
| | 00:11 | existing line work. In this session,
we are going to look at how to use the
| | 00:14 | Trim option within the
Fillet and the Chamfer commands.
| | 00:17 | Now on my screen I have got a
civil engineering example. This drawing
| | 00:20 | represents a proposed restaurant and
parking lot and I can see my site is
| | 00:25 | located on the corner of two existing
roads, Windmoor Avenue and First Street.
| | 00:29 | Since this is a civil example, each
unit in this drawing represents one foot.
| | 00:33 | I am going to start off by zooming in
on this access to Windmoor Avenue. Now,
| | 00:38 | typically you won't see a proposed
parking lot acces, meaning an existing road
| | 00:41 | to a 90-degree angle, because it's too
hard for the cars to turn to get into
| | 00:45 | the parking lot.
| | 00:46 | So what I would like to do is fillet
or round this corner with a 25-foot
| | 00:50 | radius. That is a typical radius used
for parking lot design. I'm going to come
| | 00:54 | up and launch my Fillet command, let's
right-click and select Radius and I'm
| | 00:59 | going to set a Radius of 25 for 25 feet
and I'll hit Enter and then I'll select
| | 01:05 | my first object and I'll select my
second object and here is my problem.
| | 01:09 | When I did my fillet, I lost my
existing edge of pavement. Why? Because when we
| | 01:14 | run the Fillet command, AutoCAD cleans
up the geometry for us. In this case, I
| | 01:18 | don't want AutoCAD cleaning up the
geometry. I want to keep this line. So I'm
| | 01:22 | going to click Undo. It will put that
line back and I'll show you a different
| | 01:26 | way we can create this fillet.
| | 01:28 | Let's launch the command again. I'm
going to right-click, set my Radius to 25
| | 01:34 | and I'll hit Enter and then take a
look at my command line. Notice I have an
| | 01:37 | option called Trim. I'm going to right-
click and select Trim from the menu and
| | 01:43 | trim has two settings, Trim and No Trim.
| | 01:45 | Trim essentially means clean up. No
Trim means leave the existing geometry the
| | 01:50 | way it is. I'm going to set this to No
Trim and then I'll click my first line
| | 01:55 | and my second line. AutoCAD creates the
fillet but it leaves the geometry alone.
| | 02:00 | Take a look at this. Since the lines
I was filleting around two different
| | 02:03 | layers, AutoCAD created my arc on the
current layer. Let's change that and
| | 02:08 | we'll select the arc in my Quick
Properties tool. I'll click the flyout and
| | 02:12 | I'll put this on the p-lot layer and
then I'll hit Escape to deselect the entity.
| | 02:18 | Then I'm going to click my layer
control and it will set the proposed lot layer
| | 02:21 | current. That way when I create my
next fillet, it will already be on the
| | 02:25 | correct layer. Let's select Fillet
again. It remembers my previous setting.
| | 02:30 | I'll click this line and this one to
create my arc. Then I can clean this up
| | 02:35 | using the Trim command, we'll use this
arc and this one and right-click and it
| | 02:40 | will trim off these two lines. When I'm
finished I'll hit my Escape key to get
| | 02:43 | out of the command.
| | 02:44 | I am going to back up. Now let's pan
over and we'll look at this access. Notice I
| | 02:49 | have got the same problem. Once
again I'm going to clean this up with the
| | 02:52 | Fillet command. When I click Fillet,
take a look at my command line. Notice
| | 02:56 | that we can see that AutoCAD remembers
our previous settings. I can also see
| | 03:00 | the state of my Trim setting.
| | 03:02 | One thing to remember about Trim,
once you turn that off, it's off forever
| | 03:07 | until you turn it back on again. So if
you are working in a different drawing,
| | 03:10 | you come back tomorrow and launch your
AutoCAD, Trim is always going to be off
| | 03:13 | until you turn it back on.
| | 03:15 | Now these settings happen to be exactly
what I want, so I'm going to click this
| | 03:18 | line and this one. I'm going to right-
click, I'm going to go right back into
| | 03:22 | the Fillet command and we'll click
this line and this one and then we'll trim
| | 03:26 | up the excess geometry. Select
these and right-click and select Enter.
| | 03:33 | I am going to zoom in. Let's take a
look at this property corner. Since this is
| | 03:38 | a restaurant, we are going to create
a dedicated easement right here.
| | 03:42 | It's going to be a 45-degree angle.
We are going to use that easement for our
| | 03:46 | signage. To do that, I'm
going to use the Chamfer command.
| | 03:49 | To launch Chamfer, I'm going to come
up and click the flyout, select Chamfer.
| | 03:53 | Now this is another case where I don't
want to lose my existing line work.
| | 03:57 | So I'm going to right-click and select
Trim. Chamfer also has a Trim option.
| | 04:02 | Notice it's already set to No Trim.
That's because Fillet and Chamfer share the
| | 04:07 | same trim setting. So if you set up for
one, you are setting it for both. Let's
| | 04:11 | leave this set to No Trim.
| | 04:12 | I am going to make this Chamfer
using the Angle method. So I'm going to
| | 04:16 | right-click and select Angle and I'm
going to go with the default, 30 foot
| | 04:20 | chamfer length, Enter and we'll go
with default 45 degree angle, Enter. I can
| | 04:26 | click my first line and my second and
then I'll select this entity. We'll go to
| | 04:32 | our Quick Properties tool, click in
the field and we'll put this on the
| | 04:35 | proposed easement layer. When I'm
finished, I'll hit Escape to deselect the line.
| | 04:41 | From now on when we create a Chamfer or
a Fillet, we have a choice. We can have
| | 04:45 | our corners cleaned up automatically or
we can use the Trim sub-option to keep
| | 04:49 | our existing geometry.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Offsetting through points| 00:00 | Most times when you use the Offset
command you will enter a distanced offset.
| | 00:04 | Sometimes it can be more convenient to
not enter a distance. In this lesson, we
| | 00:09 | are going to look at how to create an
offset through an existing point. Before
| | 00:12 | we get started, let's take a look at my
current running object snaps. I'm going
| | 00:16 | to come down and right-click on the
Object Snap mode and you can see that I
| | 00:19 | have a running object snap set for
Center as well as Endpoint. I'm going to be
| | 00:23 | using Intersection as well in this
session, so I'm going to turn that one on now.
| | 00:28 | Okay, let's say I would like to
offset this line through the center of the
| | 00:31 | circle. Now, I don't know how far apart
this geometry is and in fact it doesn't
| | 00:35 | matter. I don't have to know the
distance. Let's come up and watch the Offset
| | 00:39 | command and notice that in the command
line, I get an option called Through.
| | 00:43 | I'm going to right-click and select
through. Let's click my lined offset and I
| | 00:48 | would like to offset it
through the center of this circle.
| | 00:52 | Using the Through option I'm
letting a point in my drawing determine my
| | 00:55 | distance. Let's hit Escape to get out
of the command. I'm going to click Undo
| | 00:59 | to take away my line. And let's try
the same thing with this arc. Once again
| | 01:05 | I'm going to launch the Offset command.
Now Through happens to be the default
| | 01:09 | so if I just hit Enter on my keyboard,
it will take me to the Through option.
| | 01:13 | Let's select this arc and we'll offset
it through the center of this circle.
| | 01:17 | We don't have to stop there. I can
click this arc again and I can offset it
| | 01:21 | through the intersection of these lines.
And when I'm finished I'll hit Escape.
| | 01:25 | Any time you can offset through an
existing point, you are letting your drawing
| | 01:29 | do the work for you. I'm going to click
Undo to take away these lines. Now, the
| | 01:34 | Through option is a fantastic tool. It
does have a slight problem now that I
| | 01:38 | want to bring to your attention.
| | 01:39 | I am going to turn on a layer. Let's
come to the layer control and click.
| | 01:43 | I'm going to turn on to turn on layer
problem. And then I'll click on screen to
| | 01:46 | close the menu. I'm sure you will
agree to this, that if I was to offset this
| | 01:49 | arc it wouldn't physically pass
through these entities. Knowing that let's
| | 01:53 | offset this arc through this
intersection. I'm going to launch Offset.
| | 01:57 | We'll hit Enter to accept the default of
Through. I'll select my arc and I would like
| | 02:02 | to offset it through this intersection.
Let's hit Escape and let's find out how
| | 02:06 | accurate this was.
| | 02:07 | I am going to come up and launch my
Extend command. Let's select this line and
| | 02:11 | right-click and let's extend my arc to
the line segment. Notice the arc does
| | 02:16 | not pass through the intersection. I'm
going to hit Escape to get out of the
| | 02:19 | command. So if you are offsetting
an arc using the Through option, it's
| | 02:23 | important that your arc physically pass
through your point. If it doesn't, you
| | 02:28 | won't have a completely accurate offset.
| | 02:30 | Now that we have seen the Through
option of the Offset command, let's look at
| | 02:33 | where we might use this in a real
world example. I'm going to pan my drawing
| | 02:36 | over. We'll zoom in here a little
bit. On my screen I have got a metric
| | 02:42 | example. This geometry was drawn such
that each unit equals 1 centimeter.
| | 02:46 | This is a concept drawing for a small piece
of furniture. This is a nightstand;
| | 02:51 | it's basically rectangular in shape.
I have got a drawer down here. This area is
| | 02:55 | open. And I'm currently experimenting
with some arcs on these inner edges.
| | 03:00 | Now, looking at the drawing the way it
is now, I don't care too much for these
| | 03:03 | legs. So I'm going to erase these and
we'll try something different. I'm going
| | 03:06 | to launch my Erase command, we'll
select these lines, we'll right-click.
| | 03:11 | Then I'm going to extend this line to meet
either edge, we'll launch our Extend
| | 03:15 | command, we'll grab the outside
edges, that's our boundary edges, and
| | 03:18 | right-click. And then I'll click either
end of my line to extend, and I'll hit
| | 03:23 | the Escape key when I'm finished.
| | 03:24 | Since I'm playing around with this
arc concept, maybe the legs would look
| | 03:28 | better if I incorporated the arc into
the legs. Let's say we would like each of
| | 03:32 | these legs to be 10 centimeters wide
at the top. So I'm going to find that
| | 03:36 | point, I'm going to click my Offset
command, I'm going to type in 10 for 10
| | 03:40 | centimeters. And we'll offset this edge
in and we'll offset this edge in, then
| | 03:46 | I'll hit Escape. To keep these lines
from causing any confusion, I'm going to
| | 03:50 | trim them off at the bottom of my
nightstand. Let me launch the Trim command,
| | 03:54 | we'll click the bottom edge, right-
click and I'll remove these ends of my
| | 03:59 | lines. And when I'm
finished, I'll hit my Escape key.
| | 04:02 | Let's define our leg by offsetting
this arc through this intersection.
| | 04:07 | I'm going to launch my Offset command. I'm
going to right-click and select Through.
| | 04:11 | We'll select our arc and I would like
offset it through this end point. Now we
| | 04:16 | have seen before that this isn't going
to be an accurate offset because the arc
| | 04:19 | does not physically pass through that
point. Let's hit Escape to get out of the
| | 04:23 | command and I'm going to click Undo to
back up one step. And before I offset
| | 04:27 | these arcs I'm going to extend them.
Let me click Extend and I'll click this
| | 04:31 | edge and this edge as my boundary
edges. And I'll right-click and then I'll
| | 04:35 | extend this arc and this arc. I'll
hit my Escape key when I'm finished.
| | 04:40 | Now I know when I offset these arcs
they will physically intersect my point.
| | 04:44 | Let's offset again. I'll click my
Offset command. I'll right-click and select
| | 04:48 | Through. I'll offset this arc through
this end point and I'll offset this arc
| | 04:54 | through this end point. Let's hit
Escape to get out of the command and then
| | 04:57 | we'll clean our geometry
using the Fillet command.
| | 05:00 | I am going to come up to the Modify
panel and click my flyout. I'm going to
| | 05:03 | select Fillet. Now I can see in the
current settings that my Radius is 0, which
| | 05:08 | is good, I want to create a sharp corner.
But my trim happens to be turned off
| | 05:12 | right now. So I'm going to right-click
and select Trim, we'll turn that back
| | 05:17 | on. I would like to create multiple
fillets, so I'm going to right-click again
| | 05:22 | and select Multiple. And I'll fillet
this arc to this line, this arc to this
| | 05:28 | line, this line to this arc, and we'll
click our last two entities to finish
| | 05:33 | the legs. When I'm finished I'll hit
Escape and we can clean up the rest of our
| | 05:37 | geometry using Trim.
| | 05:38 | We will launch the Trim command and
I'll click this edge and right-click, then
| | 05:42 | I'll eliminate this end of my arc and
this end arc. And then I'll right-click
| | 05:46 | and we can use the Erase option within
the Trim command to get rid of these two
| | 05:50 | lines. When I'm finished I'll hit my
Escape key. Using the Offset Through
| | 05:55 | option, I was able to incorporate
this arc into my legs. And if we were to
| | 06:00 | throw a dimension on this, we'll
create a dimension from the end point here,
| | 06:04 | Shift+right-click, Perpendicular to
this edge. I can see that leg meets my
| | 06:09 | criteria of being 10
centimeters wide at the top.
| | 06:12 | The next time you need to create an
offset, don't forget the Through option.
| | 06:16 | Through allows your drawing to
set your offset distances for you.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Removing geometry with the Break command | 00:00 | Removing parts of your geometry
doesn't always require a cutting edge and
| | 00:03 | the Trim command. In this lesson we are
going to learn how to use the Break command
| | 00:07 | to make changes to our line work.
| | 00:09 | As you can see I've got some simple
line work on my screen, we are going to use
| | 00:12 | this geometry to learn the
functionality of AutoCAD's Break command. Before I
| | 00:16 | create my first break, I'm going to
come down and turn off my running objects snaps.
| | 00:19 | Sometimes when using the Break command
our running object snaps can get in the way.
| | 00:23 | Now let's say I would like to remove a
portion of this line. I'm going to do
| | 00:28 | that through the use of the Break command.
| | 00:30 | Let's come up the Modify panel, Break
is located right here and the workflow
| | 00:35 | for Break is essentially clicking two points.
| | 00:37 | Watch this. I click once, I'll click
twice and AutoCAD removes the geometry
| | 00:42 | between my two clicks. Let's undo to
bring that line work back. We are going to
| | 00:47 | run the Break command again. This time
we are to go a little bit slower. Notice
| | 00:50 | AutoCAD asking me to select object.
| | 00:53 | Essentially this first pick that I make
is serving two purposes, it's selecting
| | 00:57 | the object and it's defining my first
break point. Then I'll come down and
| | 01:01 | select my second break point to finish
the command. This is one of the reasons
| | 01:05 | I turn off my running object snap
because I run the risk of starting my break
| | 01:09 | point at the end point of the line.
| | 01:10 | Now you may be thinking it appears we
create our breaks by free picking points
| | 01:14 | on our screen. Is there a way to
create a precise Break? Yes, there is. Let's
| | 01:19 | break this polyline. I'm going to come
up and launch my Break command again and
| | 01:24 | let's break it from the midpoint at the
top to this end point. Even though this
| | 01:28 | says Select objects, I'm going to
hold my Shift Key and right-click and I'm
| | 01:32 | going to select Midpoint. And I'll
click right here and then for my second
| | 01:36 | break point, I'll hold my Shift Key and
right-click. We'll select Endpoint and
| | 01:40 | I'll click right here. And using
those object snaps I was able to make a
| | 01:44 | precise Break.
| | 01:45 | Let's break this circle. I'm going to
come up and launch the Break command and
| | 01:48 | let's say I would like to remove a
portion right here. Let me click once and
| | 01:53 | then I'll come down and click again
and that's not what I wanted. Let's click
| | 01:57 | Undo. When you use the Break
command on a circle, your break will move
| | 02:01 | counterclockwise from your first to
your second click. So if I want to remove
| | 02:06 | this notch, I'm going to launch the
Break command and I'm going to come at it
| | 02:10 | counterclockwise. I'll click here
and then I'll click here to remove that
| | 02:14 | portion of my circle.
| | 02:15 | Probably the most helpful break we can
make in our drawing is when we break an
| | 02:19 | entity at a single point. For instance,
I've got some intersecting lines on the
| | 02:22 | right side of my screen. Let's say I
would like to break this line segment
| | 02:27 | right at this intersection such that
it becomes two individual lines. Now I'm
| | 02:31 | going hit Escape to deselect. Now
there's a special Break icon for the single
| | 02:35 | point break. Let me come up and click
the Modify flyout and the single point
| | 02:40 | break icon is right here, notice the
similarity between the icons. Let's click.
| | 02:45 | I can then select my object and then
I'm going to define my break point as
| | 02:49 | being the Shift+right-click
intersection right here. And if I click this line
| | 02:55 | now I can see its two individual segments.
| | 02:58 | Let's hit Escape. And let's take a look
at where we might use the Break command
| | 03:01 | in a real world example. I'm going to
back up. We'll pan over and will zoom in.
| | 03:07 | The drawing that we have on screen is
a civil engineering example. This is a
| | 03:11 | site plan for a proposed restaurant
and parking lot. I'm going to zoom in on
| | 03:15 | this street label.
| | 03:18 | Now anytime you handle line work that
passes over your text, you run the risk
| | 03:21 | of having your text being illegible.
So I'm going to use the Break command to
| | 03:26 | eliminate this line behind my text. To
do that I'll launch the Break tool, I'll
| | 03:31 | click the line right here and I'll
come over and click the line over here.
| | 03:35 | We can do the other side by right-
clicking, going right back into the Break
| | 03:38 | command, I'll click the line here
and we'll click here to remove the line
| | 03:43 | behind my text.
| | 03:44 | Finally, we'll take care of our other
street, we'll zoom in a little bit,
| | 03:49 | I'll right-click and we'll go right back
into Break. We break the line from here to
| | 03:53 | here. I'll right-click and we'll
do the last one from here to here.
| | 04:03 | As you can see you don't always have to
use the Trim command to remove portions
| | 04:07 | of your geometry. In some cases it
can be faster to use the Break command.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modifying existing hatches| 00:00 | Back in the old days modifying
your hatch was a painful process.
| | 00:04 | Today, however, hatch is a dynamic object.
It can be easily changed with just a few
| | 00:08 | clicks of the mouse. In this lesson we
are going to learn how to make changes
| | 00:11 | to our existing hatch objects.
| | 00:13 | On my screen I've got an
architectural example, this is a drawing of an
| | 00:16 | elevation view of a well house. Our
goal in this session is to make some
| | 00:20 | changes to this hatch. Let's start
out by zooming in on this circular area.
| | 00:26 | Originally, I wanted to have two
different patterns here but I've changed my mind.
| | 00:29 | Instead I would like the pattern
at the center of my circle to match the
| | 00:33 | rest of my hatch. So I'm
going to have to make a change.
| | 00:36 | To edit a hatch pattern in AutoCAD
we can simply double click on it.
| | 00:40 | This brings up the Hatch Edit dialog box.
Notice we have access to the exact same
| | 00:45 | settings and controls as we had when
we originally created the hatch. Since I
| | 00:49 | want to match an existing hatch object,
I'm going to come down and click the
| | 00:52 | Inherit Properties button. And then
I'll select the hatch object that I would
| | 00:56 | like to match. AutoCAD populates the
dialog box with all of those settings.
| | 01:01 | Let's come down and click Preview and
take a look. Now this doesn't look too
| | 01:05 | bad but it's not perfect. If I zoom in
a little bit closer we can see that my
| | 01:09 | brick patterns don't line up. This is
an origin issue. The copy that I made
| | 01:14 | obviously doesn't have the
same origin as the original.
| | 01:17 | I'm going to pick on screen to bring
back my dialog box. If I look at the lower
| | 01:21 | right corner I can fix this problem.
Notice in my Inherit options, I'm using
| | 01:26 | the current hatch origin. Instead I
would like to use the source object's hatch
| | 01:31 | origin, let's click Inherit
Properties again. We'll click the hatch that I
| | 01:35 | would like to match. I'll click
Preview. And notice now my brick patterns
| | 01:40 | lineup exactly.
| | 01:42 | Now that I'm finished, I'll right-click
and accept my hatch. I'm going to back
| | 01:45 | up a little bit. We'll pan this up.
Notice that I have created some new windows
| | 01:51 | since I've hatched this drawing. Now I
don't have to erase this hatch and start
| | 01:55 | over, I can simply make a change to it.
To do that I'm going to double click on
| | 01:58 | the pattern and in the dialog box, I'm
going to come up and click Add boundary.
| | 02:03 | And I'll select this boundary, and
this one to add to my hatch pattern. Let's
| | 02:09 | right-click and select Preview. That's
exactly what I want, I'll right-click
| | 02:14 | again to accept my hatch.
| | 02:16 | Let's back up a little and I'm going to
select this hatch pattern on the right.
| | 02:20 | When I do, notice I'm also selecting
the hatch pattern on the left, both of
| | 02:25 | these patterns were created at the same
time. So AutoCAD looks at them as being
| | 02:29 | a single hatch object.
| | 02:30 | Well, here is my problem, if I make
catastrophic changes to the right side of
| | 02:34 | this building so much so that I have
to erase my hatch pattern. I'm going to
| | 02:38 | lose this one as well. Let me show you
how we can keep this from happening.
| | 02:42 | I'm going to hit Escape to deselect my
pattern and then I'll double click on it to
| | 02:46 | make a change. I'm going to come over
to the Options area and I'm going to
| | 02:49 | select Separate hatches. And
then I'll come down and click OK.
| | 02:54 | Now each of these hatch patterns is
its own entity, which will be a lot more
| | 02:58 | convenient if I have to make changes
later. I'm going to hit Escape to deselect
| | 03:03 | and let's zoom in on the hatch pattern
on the left side. I'm going to double
| | 03:09 | click on this pattern and when the
dialog box comes up we can see in the
| | 03:12 | Options area that this hatch is
Associative. I'm going to click the check to
| | 03:17 | remove the associativity
and I'm going to click OK.
| | 03:20 | Now normally you wouldn't turn off your
associativity, but you might lose it if
| | 03:24 | you erase or trim a portion of your
boundary. I'm showing you this because I
| | 03:27 | want you to know that we can still
make some changes to our hatch even if the
| | 03:31 | associativity has been lost. For
instance, I'm going to make this window eight
| | 03:34 | inches wider, I'm going to do that by
using the Stretch command. Let's come up
| | 03:38 | and click Stretch, I'm going to zoom
in a little bit, we'll click right here
| | 03:43 | and we'll make a crossing window
around the edge of our window. And then I'll
| | 03:46 | right-click and I would like to
stretch my window from the end point here,
| | 03:50 | let's turn on our running objects snaps.
And my Ortho was locked, I'm going to
| | 03:55 | pull this window to the
right and type 8" and hit Enter.
| | 03:59 | Notice the hatch didn't go along for
the ride. This isn't a problem because
| | 04:03 | AutoCAD hatch is trimmable. Let's
watch the Trim command, I'm going to select
| | 04:08 | my window as my cutting edge and right-
click and then I'll select my hatch.
| | 04:13 | Now we may have to click it a couple of
times, but notice I'm able to clean the
| | 04:17 | hatch out of this window area. When
I'm finished, I'm going to hit Escape to
| | 04:21 | exit the command.
| | 04:21 | Now you are probably thinking, "Hey!
That's great, I can trim my hatch. Can I
| | 04:25 | also extend my hatch?" No,
unfortunately not. That's not an option that we have
| | 04:30 | at this time. One more question you may
have, if you lose the associativity of
| | 04:34 | your hatch, is there any way to get it
back again? Well, kind of. Let me show
| | 04:39 | you how we can do that.
| | 04:40 | I'm going to double click on this
hatch pattern and when the dialog comes up
| | 04:44 | I'm going to select the Recreate
boundary option. I'm going to come down and
| | 04:48 | select Polyline, because I would like
my boundary to be a polyline. And would I
| | 04:53 | like to associate my hatch with the
new boundary? Yes, I would. So I'll hit
| | 04:57 | Enter on my keyboard.
| | 04:59 | Let's come down and click OK and
take a look at what happened. AutoCAD
| | 05:03 | generated a new boundary for this
hatch object and if the hatch is now
| | 05:07 | associative to this new boundary. So
if I wanted to move this window, I could
| | 05:11 | come up and launch the Move command,
let's zoom in, I'm going to click right
| | 05:15 | here, we'll make a window and click.
I'll then right-click and we'll pick the
| | 05:19 | window up from this end point and
we'll drag it back in this direction and
| | 05:22 | we'll type 8", Enter.
| | 05:26 | Notice that once again my hatch
updates. At this point I can choose to keep
| | 05:30 | these new boundary lines or I could
erase them and I can recreate this boundary
| | 05:34 | again later if necessary.
| | 05:37 | Being that our hatch objects in
AutoCAD are dynamic and trimmable, making
| | 05:41 | changes to our hatch is now easier than ever.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Aligning geometry| 00:00 | The Align command is one of the more
powerful features in AutoCAD. It gives us
| | 00:03 | the ability to move, rotate and scale
in a single step. Once you start using
| | 00:08 | this command, you will find yourself
using it all the time. As you can see,
| | 00:12 | I have got some simple line work on
my screen. You are going to stack this
| | 00:15 | geometry very similar to how you
would stack wooden blocks. We are going to
| | 00:19 | that using AutoCAD's Align command.
| | 00:21 | Align allows us to line up one entity
with another. Now, the Align command is a
| | 00:26 | modification tool, however you will
not find it in the Modify panel in the
| | 00:30 | ribbon. Instead, we are going to access
this command through our menu browser.
| | 00:33 | So I'm going to come up and click the
menu browser, we'll come down to the
| | 00:36 | Modify menu and then I'm going to grab
the slider bar, click and hold, we'll
| | 00:41 | drag this to the bottom. We are going
to look inside the 3D Operations menu and
| | 00:45 | we're going to select Align right here.
| | 00:47 | Now Align is not a 3-dimensional
command per se, it also works just fine with
| | 00:52 | 2-dimensional geometry. Now, the Align
command works a lot like Move. So, if I
| | 00:55 | would like to stack this square on top
of this one, I'll select my square and
| | 01:00 | then I'll right-click. Now I'm
going to select a series of source and
| | 01:03 | destination points. How do I
want to match up this geometry?
| | 01:06 | I am going to click this Endpoint for
my first source point and then I'm going
| | 01:10 | to click this Endpoint for my
destination. These are the points I would like to
| | 01:14 | match up. Then I'll click my second
source point and I'll match that to this
| | 01:20 | destination point. AutoCAD is now
asking me for a third source point. That's
| | 01:25 | because this command works in 3-
dimensional space as well. In our case, the
| | 01:29 | third point isn't necessary so
I'm going to hit Enter to continue.
| | 01:32 | Finally, do I want to scale my objects
when I align them? I'm going to select
| | 01:36 | No. When I do, that square snaps right
into place. Let's run the command again,
| | 01:40 | this time we're going to look a little
bit closer at our source and destination points.
| | 01:44 | To launch the command I'm going to
right-click and select from the menu.
| | 01:48 | I'm going to select this square this time
and right-click. Now, I would like to
| | 01:52 | stack this square such that it's
centered on the top of this one. So for my
| | 01:56 | first source point I'm going to Shift+
Right-click and I'm going to select the
| | 02:00 | Midpoint, the bottom of this square,
and I would like to place that to the
| | 02:05 | Shift+Right-click Midpoint
of the top of this square.
| | 02:10 | When using the Align command, your
first source and destination points will
| | 02:14 | always match right on the money. That
means after the alignment, this point
| | 02:18 | will be equal to this one. The
second source and destination will set the
| | 02:22 | rotation. So I'm going to select this
source point and I'll match that up to
| | 02:27 | this destination point.
| | 02:29 | Once again, I'll hit Enter to continue.
Do I want to scale my objects? I'll
| | 02:33 | select No. If we want really close,
we'll see the square snap into position and
| | 02:37 | then rotate to that second point.
Let's run it one more time. This time we're
| | 02:41 | going to look at this Scale option.
| | 02:43 | I'm going to right-click and launch
Align. I'll select this triangle and
| | 02:48 | right-click and then I'll click this
corner as my first source point and will
| | 02:51 | match it to this corner of my square.
I'm going to select this corner as a
| | 02:55 | source point and will match it to this
corner on my square. Let's hit Enter to continue.
| | 03:00 | Now do I want to scale my objects when
I do my align? If we scale, AutoCAD will
| | 03:05 | scale our entity such that the
distance between our source points equals the
| | 03:09 | distance between the destination points.
So if I click Yes, this triangle is
| | 03:13 | scaled perfectly to match the top of
that square. Now that we understand the
| | 03:17 | functionality of the Align command,
let's try and use this in a real world example.
| | 03:21 | I am going to back up, we'll pan over,
zoom in a little bit. On my screen I've
| | 03:27 | got a Civil Engineering example. This
happens to be a concept drawing for a
| | 03:31 | small community park. Now, I have
started up by creating some outlines for the
| | 03:35 | components I would like to have in my
park. I'm currently working on adding
| | 03:38 | more detail to this drawing and what
I would like to do is finish the Basketball Court.
| | 03:43 | Now rather than redrafting all of my
court geometry, I'm going to steal a
| | 03:47 | Basketball Court from another file. I'm
going to come up and click Open. We are
| | 03:50 | going to look inside the chapter_03
folder inside our exercise_files directory
| | 03:56 | and I want you to select drawing number
seven, 07_basketball_court drawing and
| | 03:59 | click Open.
| | 04:01 | To move this geometry into the other
file, I'm going to split my screen in half
| | 04:04 | so I can have a side-by-side view of
both drawings. To do that I'm going to
| | 04:09 | come up and click the View tab on my
ribbon and I'm going to come over to the
| | 04:12 | Window panel and I'm going
to select Tile Vertically.
| | 04:15 | Now I'll click inside my park drawing.
I'll back up a little bit. We'll pan
| | 04:19 | this over. I'll click inside my
Basketball Court drawing. We'll center him on
| | 04:24 | screen. To move the geometry from one
file to the other, I'm going to select it
| | 04:30 | by making a window and then I'll click
and hold on the edge and I'll drag this
| | 04:35 | into the other file and release. Let's
close the Court drawing, I don't want to
| | 04:39 | save changes and I'll maximize my park.
I'm going to zoom in. Let's use the
| | 04:45 | Align command to match my
Court geometry to my boundary.
| | 04:49 | To launch the Align command I'm going
to right-click. I'm going to come down
| | 04:52 | and select Recent Input and select ALIGN.
I can then select this geometry using
| | 04:57 | a window and right-click and I
would like to match this Endpoint to the
| | 05:01 | Endpoint right here and I would like
to match this Endpoint to the Endpoint
| | 05:06 | here. I'll hit Enter to continue,
and No, I do not want to scale.
| | 05:13 | The Align command is probably the
fastest and most accurate way to line up
| | 05:17 | entities in your drawing. It can truly
be a lifesaver when aligning geometry,
| | 05:21 | scaling images or correcting mistakes.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding and removing vertices from polylines| 00:00 | Making changes to a polyline doesn't
always require us to use the Explode
| | 00:04 | command. If we use the Pedit command,
we can make significant changes to our
| | 00:08 | line work and it's easier than you
might think. In this lesson, we are going to
| | 00:12 | look at how to add, remove or
change the vertices of a polyline.
| | 00:16 | As you can see this geometry looks
like a large letter H. This line work was
| | 00:20 | created using the Polyline command.
We are going to use this geometry to
| | 00:23 | explore some of the features of the
Pedit command. Pedit is the command we use
| | 00:27 | to edit our polylines.
| | 00:29 | Now, when using Pedit there are
several sub-options. So I'm going to make a
| | 00:32 | suggestion, I'm going to suggest
that we turn off our Dynamic Input
| | 00:36 | momentarily. I'm going to come down
and click this mode to turn it off.
| | 00:40 | This way the large menus won't
get in the way on my screen.
| | 00:43 | The Pedit command is located in the
Modify panel of our ribbon. If I move up
| | 00:46 | and click the flyout, the icon is
located right over here. Let me click to
| | 00:50 | launch the command. Then I'll click to
select my polyline and take a look at
| | 00:55 | the command line. Notice
all the options that we have.
| | 00:58 | The option we are going to focus on in
this session is the Edit Vertex option.
| | 01:02 | I'm going to right-click and select
Edit Vertex. Since, we are in the Edit
| | 01:07 | Vertex mode, the X represents the
vertex that we can edit. Also, notice the
| | 01:11 | additional options down at the command
line. Let's look at how we can jump from
| | 01:15 | one vertex to another.
| | 01:17 | Notice at the command line I've got the
options, Next and Previous. This is how
| | 01:21 | we can change the location of our X.
Now I can access the sub-options by
| | 01:25 | right-clicking, but with this specific
command, it's actually faster to make
| | 01:29 | our selections using our keyboard.
Notice N happens to be my default. N means Next.
| | 01:34 | So if I hit Enter on my keyboard, my X
jumps to the next vertex. If I hit Enter
| | 01:40 | again, and again, and again, I can have
that X jump from one vertex to another.
| | 01:45 | Notice that each of these sub-options
contains a capitalized letter. If I type
| | 01:49 | that letter on my keyboard,
I can select that sub-option.
| | 01:51 | I'm going to hit the letter P for
previous and hit Enter. That now becomes the
| | 01:56 | default. So if I hit Enter, Enter, I
can take him back up one vertex at the
| | 02:00 | time. It's important to know the
direction of Next and Previous. Next follows
| | 02:05 | the direction your polyline was drawn.
Let's look at how we can move a vertex.
| | 02:09 | I'm going to hit M for Move and then
I'll hit Enter and then I can pick a point
| | 02:13 | on screen to specify a new location for
this vertex. Let's say I would like to
| | 02:17 | remove some vertices from this polyline.
In this case, I would like to remove
| | 02:21 | the geometry that represents this
square shape, such that my polyline is a
| | 02:26 | straight line all the way across the top.
| | 02:28 | Well, I'm going to hit N for Next, and
hit Enter, Enter, Enter, I'm going to
| | 02:32 | get up to the point where I would
like to make my change. Then I'm going to
| | 02:35 | type the letter S on my keyboard to
access the Straighten option and I'll hit
| | 02:39 | Enter. Notice the Straighten option
has its own menu. Well, we have seen Next
| | 02:44 | and Previous. Let's take a look at Go.
| | 02:46 | The Straighten option is a lot like a
toggle. Now that it's turned on, I'm
| | 02:49 | going to hit N for Next and hit Enter.
I'll hit Enter again, and Enter again,
| | 02:54 | and then I'm going to hit G for Go.
What AutoCAD will do is it will shoot a
| | 02:58 | straight line from where I turned on
my straightening to the point where I
| | 03:02 | launched Go. Let me hit Enter, and
those vertices have been removed from my
| | 03:06 | polyline. Let's look at how we
can add vertices to a polyline.
| | 03:09 | I would like to turn on a layer so
I'm going to come up and click the Layer
| | 03:12 | Properties palette and then I'm
going to come down and turn on the sketch
| | 03:16 | layer. As long as my palette is up I'm
going to right-click on the mast and I'm
| | 03:21 | going to anchor this to
the left side of my screen.
| | 03:24 | Let's watch the Pedit command again.
I'll come up and click the Modify flyout
| | 03:27 | and we'll select Pedit. I'll select
my polyline. Then we'll right-click and
| | 03:32 | select Edit Vertex. Now I would like
to insert some vertices such that my
| | 03:36 | polyline bends around these points.
| | 03:39 | One important thing to remember, if
you are adding a vertex to your polyline,
| | 03:43 | it will be added after the current
vertex location. So I'm going to hit N for
| | 03:48 | Next. I'll hit Enter again to get to
this point and them I'm going to hit I for
| | 03:52 | Insert, Enter. I would like to insert
a vertex at the center of this circle.
| | 03:58 | I'll hit I again, Enter.
| | 04:00 | We'll insert one at the center of this
circle. I'll hit I, Enter. We'll drop
| | 04:05 | one at the center here. I'll hit I,
Enter, and we'll drop one at the center of
| | 04:09 | this circle. When I'm finished, I'll
hit Escape to exit the command. Let's look
| | 04:14 | at what we might use this
tool in a practical example.
| | 04:17 | I am going to zoom-out, we'll pan over,
zoom-in. On my screen I've got a Civil
| | 04:23 | Engineering example. This is a
drawing of a proposed parking lot. Now this
| | 04:27 | parking lot used to have an access to
both Windmoor and First Street. But if I
| | 04:31 | zoom in down here, I can see the access
has been removed, the geometry has been
| | 04:35 | changed. The only thing that remains
is the hatch pattern and the hatch boundary.
| | 04:39 | Well, rather than re-hatching this
whole parking lot, I'm going to edit my
| | 04:44 | hatch boundary using the Pedit command.
So we'll come up and click the Modify
| | 04:48 | flyout. We'll select Pedit. I'll
click my hatch boundary and then I'll
| | 04:53 | right-click and select Edit Vertex.
| | 04:55 | I'll hit N for Next. We'll hit Enter
a few more times and let's move this
| | 05:01 | vertex to the corner of my parking lot.
I'll hit M for Move, Enter, and I would
| | 05:06 | like to move that to the Endpoint here.
I'm going to back up just a little bit.
| | 05:11 | Now none of this geometry is necessary,
let's straighten everything from this
| | 05:15 | point to this point.
| | 05:17 | So we'll hit S for Straighten to turn
on the straightening toggle. Then I'll
| | 05:21 | hit Enter for Next, Next, Next, Next,
we'll work our way all the way around to
| | 05:26 | this point and we'll hit G for Go. When
I'm finished, I'll hit my Escape key to
| | 05:31 | get out of the command. Since my
hatch was associated to that boundary, my
| | 05:35 | hatch updates automatically to the new geometry.
| | 05:40 | As you can see, modifying a polyline
doesn't always require us to explode the
| | 05:43 | geometry, make the changes, and then
join it all back together. By using the
| | 05:47 | Pedit command, we can avoid the hassle
and edit our polylines in a single step.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Dividing and measuring line work| 00:00 | You might think that finding specific
distances along your line work is a time
| | 00:03 | consuming process. Well, it's actually
quite simple if we use AutoCAD's Divide
| | 00:08 | or Measure command.
| | 00:09 | As you can see, I've got some simple
line work. This geometry was created using
| | 00:13 | architectural measurements. I'm going
to select this line segment and since my
| | 00:17 | Dynamic Input mode is turned on, if I
hover over this grip, I can see this line
| | 00:21 | is 20 feet long. Let's hit Escape.
| | 00:24 | Let's say I would like to divide this
line into 10 equal increments. To do that,
| | 00:29 | I'm going to use the Divide
command. I can find the command in the Draw
| | 00:32 | panel of my ribbon. Let me click the
flyout and then I'm going to click the
| | 00:36 | flyout next to my Point tool because
the Divide command is associated with
| | 00:40 | points. Let's select Divide. I can then
select my object and then I can enter
| | 00:45 | my number of segments. I'm going to
type 10 and hit Enter. Notice it doesn't
| | 00:49 | look like it did anything.
| | 00:50 | Well, it did do something. AutoCAD
inserted a point object at every location
| | 00:55 | that would divide that line into 10
equal segments. The problem is we just
| | 00:59 | can't see our points. Let's fix that.
I'm going to come up and click my menu
| | 01:02 | browser. I'm going to come down to the
Format menu. We'll come over and down
| | 01:07 | and select the Point Style. I'm going
to select the X for my point symbol and
| | 01:12 | I'm going to set its size and Absolute
Units and we'll set it to 3 units and
| | 01:16 | I'll click OK.
| | 01:18 | Now, it's not too hard to find these
points on a straight segment. What if we
| | 01:21 | had to divide this complicated arc?
Once again I'm going to launch the Divide
| | 01:25 | command by clicking the Draw flyout,
select the Divide icon. I'll click my
| | 01:30 | object and I'll type 10 segments and
hit Enter. These points would be much
| | 01:35 | harder to find because the
distance is being found along the arc.
| | 01:39 | Let's erase these point objects. I'm
going to come up and launch the Erase tool.
| | 01:42 | I'll make a window around these,
and I'll right-click. Now that we know
| | 01:46 | how to divide our entities into equal
increments, let's look at how we can
| | 01:49 | insert point objects at specific
measurements along our line work.
| | 01:53 | To do that, I'm going to use the
Measure command. I'm going to come up to click
| | 01:56 | the Draw flyout. We'll select our
Point flyout and I'll select the Measure command.
| | 02:02 | Let's create a point object every three
feet along this line. So I'll select my
| | 02:06 | object to measure. Note where I'm
clicking on the line, and my length of
| | 02:10 | segment will be 3 feet, Enter. When
you use the Measure command, AutoCAD will
| | 02:15 | start measuring from the end point
closest to where you picked and whatever
| | 02:19 | distance is leftover will show
up at the other end of the line.
| | 02:23 | Let's use Measure on this polyline.
I'm going to right-click and select Repeat
| | 02:27 | MEASURE. Let's find a point every 13
feet along this line. I'll click the polyline,
| | 02:32 | I'll type in 13 feet, hit Enter,
and we can see that AutoCAD measured
| | 02:37 | 13 feet, 13 feet, and this was the
remaining distance left on the end.
| | 02:42 | Now that we understand how to divide or
measure our geometry, let's try and use
| | 02:45 | these tools in a practical example.
I'm going to pan over. We'll back up a
| | 02:49 | little bit. We'll center this on screen.
This is an architectural example.
| | 02:53 | This happens to be an elevation view of
a small house. Now I'm currently working on
| | 02:57 | the front porch railing. As you can
see, the handrail and the bottom are
| | 03:01 | finished. At this point,
I need to insert my rails.
| | 03:05 | Now, I have drawn my first rail off to
the side. If I zoom in on this guy and
| | 03:08 | click the top, I can hover over this
grip and see that my rail is 3 inches
| | 03:12 | wide. Now, the local ordinance in my
area says the maximum distance between my
| | 03:16 | rails cannot exceed 4 inches. So if
the distance between my rails is 4 inches
| | 03:21 | and my rails are 3 inches wide,
I should place my rails 7 inches apart.
| | 03:26 | We are going to do that by using the
Measure command. Let me hit Escape to
| | 03:29 | deselect. I'll back up. I'll center
this on screen again. I'm going to click
| | 03:35 | the Draw flyout. We'll select the
Measure command, we'll measure this object,
| | 03:41 | and my length of segment is
going to be 7 inches, Enter.
| | 03:45 | Now, I can copy my rail to each of
those locations. We'll launch the Copy
| | 03:49 | command. We'll make a window around
the rail and right-click. I would like to
| | 03:53 | copy it from the Shift+Right-click,
mid-point at the top, and I'm going to
| | 03:58 | place this to each one of these points.
| | 03:59 | Now, point objects use the node object
snap. So let's come down and right-click
| | 04:04 | on our Object Snap mode and we'll turn
on the Node Object Snap, and then I'll
| | 04:08 | click here, here, here, here, and we'll
drop a rail at each one of these nodes.
| | 04:13 | When I'm finished, I'll hit my
Escape key to get out of the command.
| | 04:17 | Now, here is my problem. Since AutoCAD
started measuring from this end, my gap
| | 04:22 | on this side is too wide. Let's center
these rails on this line. To do that,
| | 04:27 | I'm going to launch my Move command.
Let's make a window around my rails and
| | 04:32 | then I'll right-click. I'm going to
pick them up from the node of the middle
| | 04:36 | rail and I'm going to place them to
the Shift+Right-click, Midpoint of this line.
| | 04:43 | Now, I don't need my points anymore,
so I'm going to launch my Erase command,
| | 04:47 | and we'll make a crossing window to
select these and I'll right-click.
| | 04:51 | Let's make a quick check on this side to
make sure we meet the ordinance. I'm going
| | 04:54 | to click the Tools tab on my ribbon.
We'll select Distance. What's the distance
| | 04:59 | from the end point here? Shift+Right-
click, Perpendicular to this edge.
| | 05:04 | I can see we are just less
than 4 inches, so we are fine.
| | 05:10 | The next time you need to find
specific measurements along your line work,
| | 05:14 | don't reach for your calculator. Use
the Divide or Measure command and let
| | 05:17 | AutoCAD find the locations for you.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Matching properties| 00:00 | Most often when you change the
properties of an object, you do it one property
| | 00:03 | at a time. Well, what do you do if you
want to change several properties?
| | 00:07 | In this lesson, we are going to look at
how to use AutoCAD's Match Properties
| | 00:10 | tool. This is a tool that will let us
change multiple properties in a single click.
| | 00:14 | If you look at my screen, you can see
I'm working on a detail for a light duty
| | 00:17 | furniture caster. At this point, I
would like to add some more line work. So,
| | 00:21 | I'm going to zoom in on this pen. We'll
launch the Line command and I'm going
| | 00:25 | to draw line from the end point here to
the end point here. When I'm finished,
| | 00:29 | I'll hit Escape to exit the command.
| | 00:31 | Now here is the problem. This line was
drawn correctly, but it's on the wrong
| | 00:34 | layer. That's all right. We can fix
this with the Match Properties tool.
| | 00:38 | Now Match Properties is located in the
Properties panel of our ribbon. Let me come
| | 00:41 | up and click the icon to launch the tool.
| | 00:44 | What we'll do first is we'll select a
source object. This kind of represents
| | 00:47 | the properties that we would like to
match, and then we'll immediately click
| | 00:51 | the entity that we would like to
assume those properties. When I'm finished,
| | 00:54 | I'll right-click and I'll select Enter.
| | 00:56 | I have just set this line to the same
properties as this one. So now, it's on
| | 01:00 | the correct layer. I'm going to backup
a little bit, we'll pan this up. Now,
| | 01:03 | this shape represents a steel plate.
Notice my wheel passes behind the plate.
| | 01:09 | In this case, I would like this portion
of my wheel to appear as hidden lines.
| | 01:13 | Now, I have already broken this
geometry out as separate arcs. Let me hit
| | 01:16 | Escape, and we'll adjust the
appearance of these arcs using match properties.
| | 01:21 | Now, if you look at my ribbon, we can
see my Properties panel is collapsed.
| | 01:24 | That's all right. I can simply click
this flyout to access the tool. I'll then
| | 01:27 | select an entity that represents what
I want. Then I'll select the entities I
| | 01:32 | would like to change. When I'm finished,
we'll right-click and select Enter.
| | 01:36 | Now, some people use the Match
Properties tool solely as a means of moving
| | 01:39 | entities from one layer to another.
Match Properties is actually capable of
| | 01:42 | doing quite a bit more. Watch this. I'm
going to backup a little bit, we'll pan
| | 01:46 | over. I would like to
create another radial dimension.
| | 01:49 | To do that, I'm going to come up to my
Dimension flyout. We'll select Radius,
| | 01:53 | I'll select this arc, and
I'll pull out a new dimension.
| | 01:57 | In this case, I have more than one
problem. Not only is my radial dimension on
| | 02:00 | the wrong layer, it's also the
completely wrong dimension style and settings.
| | 02:04 | The problem, we'll fix
this with Match Properties.
| | 02:07 | To launch the command, we'll come up
and click the flyout, we'll select the
| | 02:10 | tool, I'll select the dimension that
represents what I want, and then I'll
| | 02:13 | select the dimension I would like to
change. In this case, I matched several
| | 02:18 | properties with a single click.
| | 02:20 | Let's take a look at how much control
the Match Properties tool has. I'm going
| | 02:23 | to launch the command again. I'll do
that by right-clicking and selecting
| | 02:27 | Repeat MATCH Prop. Then I'll select any
entity in my drawing, and if we look at
| | 02:31 | the command line, we can see I
have a sub-option called Settings.
| | 02:35 | Let's right-click and select Settings
from the menu. In this dialog box, I can
| | 02:39 | see a listing of all of the properties
that I can change using the tool. Now,
| | 02:43 | it's not just general properties.
Notice I can also match the properties of
| | 02:46 | Dimensions, Text, Hatch as well as other things.
| | 02:50 | By going through and checking and
unchecking these boxes, we can set our Match
| | 02:53 | Properties tool to match as many or as
few properties as we like. I'm going to
| | 02:57 | turn these back on, and since we see
that Match Properties also matches our
| | 03:01 | hatch, let's try and make a
change to the hatch in our drawing.
| | 03:04 | I am going to come up and click OK to
close the dialog box, and then I'm going
| | 03:07 | to hit Escape to cancel the command.
Let's zoom in on our hatch. To make a
| | 03:13 | change to my pattern, I'm going to
double-click on it, and in the Hatch Edit
| | 03:17 | dialog box, I'm going to change
its scale to 0.2 and hit Enter.
| | 03:22 | Now, if I would like to use the same
settings on the Hatch pattern below, I'll
| | 03:25 | simply launch the Match Properties
tool, click the pattern I would like to
| | 03:29 | match, and then I'll select the
pattern I would like to change. When I'm
| | 03:32 | finished, I'll right-click and select Enter.
| | 03:36 | The Match Properties tool is a great
way to make quick changes to your drawing.
| | 03:40 | If you have one entity that meets
your desired settings, you can use that
| | 03:43 | entity to change all of the others.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Clipboard functions| 00:00 | In this session, I'm going to show you
how to use a tool that you are probably
| | 00:02 | already familiar with. That tool is
the Windows Clipboard. I'm sure at some point,
| | 00:07 | you have to use the Cut, Copy or Paste
feature inside of a word processing program.
| | 00:12 | In this lesson, we are going to learn
how to use the Windows Clipboard inside
| | 00:15 | of AutoCAD. On screen, we can see a
civil engineering example. This drawing was
| | 00:18 | created such that each unit equals one
foot. This drawing represents a concept
| | 00:23 | plan for a small community park.
| | 00:25 | I am going to start off by zooming in
on this area in between the trees and
| | 00:29 | this geometry that we see represents a
picnic table and a large garbage can.
| | 00:33 | We are going to use this geometry to
learn how to use the Cut, Copy and Paste
| | 00:37 | features inside of AutoCAD.
Let's look at Cut first.
| | 00:40 | Using Cut is just like moving our
geometry. Let's say I would like to move my
| | 00:44 | table and my garbage can someplace
else in my park. To do that, I'm going to
| | 00:48 | select the geometry by making a window
selection. And then I'll right-click and
| | 00:53 | notice my menu contains the
standard Windows Clipboard functions.
| | 00:56 | I am going to select Cut. This cuts
the geometry to my clipboard. At this
| | 01:00 | point, if I would like to place the
geometry someplace else, I can right-click
| | 01:04 | and select Paste, then I
can drop it wherever I like.
| | 01:07 | Now, before I put this down, notice why
I'm holding my geometry. I'm holding it
| | 01:12 | from the lower-left corner of an
imaginary rectangle that surrounds my line
| | 01:16 | work. I'm going to back up a little bit
and we'll click and drop it right here.
| | 01:19 | Now, the Windows Clipboard
functionality is also available to menu browser.
| | 01:23 | If I come up and click the big letter A,
if we go to the Edit menu, we can see the
| | 01:28 | same functions right here. If you are
someone who likes using your Ctrl key
| | 01:31 | sequences, those are also available in
AutoCAD. I'm going to move outside the
| | 01:36 | menu and hit Escape to let that collapse.
| | 01:38 | Let's use the Windows Clipboard to copy
our picnic table. To do that, I'll make
| | 01:42 | a window selection around the table.
I'll right-click and I'll select Copy.
| | 01:47 | This copies the geometry to my
clipboard. Let me hit Escape to deselect.
| | 01:50 | If I would like to place a copy in the
drawing, I'll right-click and I'll select
| | 01:54 | Paste. We'll place it right over here.
| | 01:57 | Now, using the Cut and Copy feature
in this way is great but it's not very
| | 02:00 | precise. This time let's copy some
geometry, and we'll use precise coordinates.
| | 02:05 | Let's say I would like to copy this
garbage can and place it down here such
| | 02:08 | that it's in the same location
relative to this picnic table.
| | 02:12 | To do that, I'm going to select the
geometry and right-click. This time I'm
| | 02:15 | going to select Copy with Base Point.
This gives me the ability to copy my
| | 02:19 | geometry to my clipboard using a
specific coordinate. I'm going to copy this
| | 02:24 | from the endpoint of my table. Let's
hit Escape to deselect the geometry. Now,
| | 02:28 | I'll right-click and select Paste and
then I'll place this to the corresponding
| | 02:33 | point on this table. Using the Copy
with Base Point method, I'm able to copy
| | 02:38 | and paste my geometry with precision.
| | 02:40 | Let's look at a couple of Copy and
Paste shortcuts. Here is a quick way we can
| | 02:44 | do a Cut. I'm going to select my
geometry, and then I'm going to click-and-hold
| | 02:49 | on one of the highlighted edges. And
I'll drag this over to another location
| | 02:53 | and I'll release. That is the
equivalent of doing a Cut and Paste.
| | 02:57 | Let's look at a shortcut for Copy.
Once again I'll select my geometry.
| | 03:01 | I'll click-and-hold on one of the
highlighted edges. As I drag this on my screen,
| | 03:06 | I'm going to hold down my Ctrl key,
notice my icon changes. It gives me a plus
| | 03:10 | symbol. That's a visual cue that I'm
going to make a copy. And I'll move right
| | 03:14 | over here and release my
mouse button to copy my geometry.
| | 03:17 | Now, neither of these shortcuts give
us much precision, but if you are moving
| | 03:21 | things like symbols or text or picnic
tables, typically you don't need specific
| | 03:25 | coordinates. I would like to look
at one more function. I'm going to
| | 03:28 | right-click. In the menu, notice I have
got an option called Paste to Original
| | 03:32 | Coordinates. This option works great,
if we are moving geometry from one
| | 03:35 | drawing to another or one layout to another.
| | 03:39 | Let's say I email this drawing to a
landscape architect to do the design for
| | 03:42 | the playground area. Let's say he
created his line work in the drawing that I
| | 03:46 | sent him. Let's also say that I just
received his finished drawing via email.
| | 03:51 | I'm going to open up that drawing.
I'll click the Open icon. We are going to
| | 03:54 | look inside the chapter_03 folder
inside our exercise_files directory.
| | 03:59 | I'm going to select number 11, the 11_
playground drawing. Then we'll click Open.
| | 04:03 | Now, this is the drawing exactly as
I have received it from the landscape
| | 04:06 | architect. If I zoom in, I can see the
geometry that he added to the drawing
| | 04:10 | that I sent him. I would like to move
this geometry into my current file.
| | 04:14 | I'll do that by selecting it with a window
selection. We'll select this geometry and
| | 04:19 | we'll select this geometry. Then I'll
right-click and select Copy, to copy it
| | 04:24 | to my clipboard. When I'm finished,
I'll hit my Escape key to deselect and
| | 04:27 | we'll close this drawing.
| | 04:31 | Now that I'm back to my current file,
I'll right-click and I'll select Paste to
| | 04:35 | Original Coordinates. Notice that
the geometry pops up at the exact same
| | 04:39 | coordinates in my drawing. As you can
see the Windows Clipboard uses the same
| | 04:44 | workflow in AutoCAD as it does
in many of your other programs.
| | 04:47 | In AutoCAD, however, we get a little
bit more control because we can choose the
| | 04:50 | coordinate of which we cut,
copy or paste our geometry.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Snapping to CoordinatesUsing Apparent Intersection, Nearest, Node, and None| 00:00 | I'm sure you have noticed that you can
create the majority of your line work
| | 00:03 | using only a handful of object snaps.
In this lesson, we are going to look at
| | 00:06 | some of the less popular object snap
choices. Now these guys may not be your
| | 00:10 | first choice, but it's nice to know
that they are always there when we need them.
| | 00:13 | On my screen, I've got an architectural
example. This is an elevation view of a
| | 00:17 | small house. Since we are going to
be talking about object snaps in this
| | 00:20 | session, let's take a quick look at my
current running object snaps. I'm going
| | 00:24 | to come down and right-click on the
Object Snap tool and we can see that I have
| | 00:28 | Center as well as Endpoint set
for our running object snaps.
| | 00:32 | Let's hit Escape to clear the menu and
I'm going to zoom in on the porch area.
| | 00:36 | Now I'm at the point I would like to
create a window and I would like to place
| | 00:40 | my window 2 feet from the edge of my
doorframe. So let's offset the frame.
| | 00:45 | I'm going to click the Offset command.
We'll type 2 feet and hit Enter and then
| | 00:51 | I'll select my line and we'll offset it
in this direction. Then I'll hit Escape
| | 00:55 | to cancel the command.
| | 00:56 | I would like to draw a window that's 3
feet wide and 4 feet tall, and I would
| | 01:01 | like the top edge of my window to be
equal to the top edge of my door. So let's
| | 01:06 | come up and launch the Rectangle
command to create my window geometry.
| | 01:10 | Now essentially the window needs to be
created at the intersection of this line and
| | 01:13 | this one. These lines don't
intersect. Actually they don't have to.
| | 01:18 | I have an object snap that's perfect
for just this occasion. I'm going to
| | 01:21 | Shift+Right-click and select Apparent
Intersection and then I'll select this
| | 01:26 | line and I'll select this one and
AutoCAD finds the apparent intersection.
| | 01:31 | Apparent Intersection allows us to
snap to the extended intersection of two
| | 01:35 | entities. I'm going to right-click
and select Dimensions. We'll finish our
| | 01:39 | window. I would like it to be 3 feet,
Enter, by 4 feet, Enter, and then I'll
| | 01:45 | click on screen to finish the
rectangle. Now I don't need my offset line
| | 01:49 | anymore, so I'll zoom in and I'll
select this and then I click the Erase button
| | 01:53 | and center this on screen again.
| | 01:55 | Now that I have created my window,
I would like to divide it into nine
| | 01:57 | individual windowpanes. To do that
I'm going to explode the window. I'll my
| | 02:02 | Explode tool and we'll select the
rectangle and right-click and I'm going to
| | 02:06 | create my individual panes
by using the Divide command.
| | 02:09 | So I'm going to come up to the Draw
panel and click the flyout. Select the
| | 02:13 | flyout next to my Point tool and we'll
select Divide. I'll then click this line
| | 02:17 | and I would like to divide it into 3
segments, Enter. This right-clicking goes
| | 02:21 | right back into the command. I'll
select this line and we'll divide this one
| | 02:26 | into three segments and hit Enter. The
Divide command divides up our entities
| | 02:30 | using point objects.
| | 02:32 | The next object snap we are going to
talk about is Node Object Snap. We use
| | 02:36 | Node to snap two point objects in our
drawing. Since I'm going to be selecting
| | 02:40 | several nodes, I'm going to set that
as a running object snap. So I'll come
| | 02:44 | down and right-click on my Object Snap
Mode and we'll select Node from the list.
| | 02:48 | Then I'm going to launch my Copy
command and I'll copy this line, right-click
| | 02:53 | from the endpoint here to the node
here to the node here. When I'm finished,
| | 02:57 | I'll hit Escape. We'll go right back
into the command and we'll copy the top
| | 03:01 | line, right-click from the endpoint
here to the node here to the node here.
| | 03:06 | When I'm finished, I'll hit Escape.
| | 03:08 | Now that my window is finished, I
don't need these point objects anymore.
| | 03:11 | So I'm going to make a window selection
that encompasses only the points. Let me
| | 03:15 | finish my window and then we'll click
the Erase icon to delete that geometry.
| | 03:20 | The next object snap we are going to
look at is called Nearest. We'll use
| | 03:24 | Nearest to find a point nearest to
our cursor, when we click on an entity.
| | 03:28 | The Nearest object snap works great when
we are creating Call-outs. Since I'm going
| | 03:32 | to create a Call-out, I'm going to
change my current layer. Let me click the
| | 03:35 | Layer control and we'll set this to the
notes layer. Then I'm going to click my
| | 03:39 | Multileader tool, and I would like to
create a Leader to my handrail. So I'm
| | 03:43 | going to hold my Shift key and
right-click and we'll select Nearest.
| | 03:47 | And notice wherever I place my cursor
on this line, AutoCAD is going to find a
| | 03:51 | point nearest to my cursor. Let's
click and I'll pull out my leader and click
| | 03:56 | and then I can type my call-out. Front
Porch, let me grab my slider and we'll
| | 04:02 | drag this over so we have Word Wrap,
Railing. When I'm finished, I'll click the
| | 04:07 | X to close my text editor.
| | 04:10 | Let's say I would like to change the
location of this call-out in my drawing.
| | 04:13 | If I click this and grab the grip, I
can move at any place I want. But watch
| | 04:17 | this. Let's say I would like to place
it over here. As soon as I click, it
| | 04:20 | snaps to the endpoint of the line. Let
me click the grip again, I'll come down,
| | 04:24 | I want to place it right here, snaps
to the endpoint of the line. My running
| | 04:28 | object snaps are getting in the way.
| | 04:31 | If you're someone who sets several
running object snaps, you may find that they
| | 04:34 | cause you problems, especially if
you're placing text. This brings me to my
| | 04:38 | next object snap. It's called None. If
I select this geometry, before I put it
| | 04:43 | down I'm going to Shift+Right-
click and select the None Object Snap.
| | 04:48 | None turns off the object snap feature
for a single pick, so I can place this
| | 04:52 | wherever I want and I don't have to
worry about my object snaps getting in the
| | 04:55 | way. When I'm finished, I'll hit
Escape to deselect my geometry.
| | 04:59 | Well, most drawings only require a
handful of object snaps. It's nice to know
| | 05:03 | that these additional choices
are available when we need them.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Finding parallels and extensions| 00:00 | Not only can we snap to specific
coordinates when we draft, we can also snap to
| | 00:04 | the directions defined by our existing
line work. In this lesson, we are going
| | 00:08 | to look at the parallel and extension
object snaps. If you take a look at my
| | 00:11 | screen, you can see I've got some
sketch geometry. We are going to use this
| | 00:14 | line work to explore how the Parallel
and Extension Object Snaps function.
| | 00:18 | I'm going to start by launching the
Line command. Let me come up and click the
| | 00:21 | tool. I'm going to start my line
segment right over here. Let's say I would
| | 00:25 | like to create my line such that it's
parallel to the screen line. To do that,
| | 00:29 | I'm going to Shift+Right-click and
select Parallel from the Object Snaps menu.
| | 00:34 | Then I'm going to place my cursor
over this line to acquire that angle.
| | 00:38 | I do not have to click. I can simply hover.
As I pull away, AutoCAD will leave a
| | 00:43 | marker to let me know that I've got
that angle locked. As I pull away, notice I
| | 00:47 | now have a snap to that angle.
| | 00:50 | At this point I can enter a distance or
I can free-pick a point on screen.
| | 00:53 | I'm going to create another line segment
because I want to show you that we can
| | 00:57 | acquire more than one parallel at a
time. Let's hold Shift, I'll select
| | 01:02 | Parallel from the menu and I'll hover
over this line, and this one, and this
| | 01:08 | one. As I pull back, notice I now
have a snap for each one of those angles.
| | 01:13 | Let's create a line that's 10 units
long. I'm going to type 10 and hit Enter.
| | 01:20 | When I'm finished, I'll hit the Escape
key to cancel the command. Let's erase
| | 01:23 | this geometry because I would like to
take a look at another object snap.
| | 01:26 | This one is called Extension.
| | 01:28 | Extension will allow us to snap to the
imaginary extension of a line or an arc.
| | 01:33 | Let's say I would like to create
circle 10 units from the end of this line
| | 01:36 | extended. To do that I'm going to
launch the Circle command and then I'll
| | 01:40 | Shift+Right-click and I'll select
Extension from the menu. Then I'll place my
| | 01:45 | cursor over the end of the line and
hover. AutoCAD finds the extension, as I
| | 01:50 | pull away I'm snapping to the
extension of this line. Let's type 10 for ten
| | 01:54 | units and I can finish my circle.
| | 01:57 | Now the Extension Object Snap also
works with arcs. Watch this. I'm going to
| | 02:01 | launch my Circle command again. I'm
going to Shift+Right-click and I'll select
| | 02:06 | Extension. I'll hover over the
Endpoint of this arc to acquire its Extension.
| | 02:11 | As I pull away, notice I'm now
snapping to the extension of the arc.
| | 02:15 | Before I click the location of the
circle, I want to show you that we can
| | 02:18 | acquire multiple extensions. I going
to place my cursor over the end of this
| | 02:22 | line and as I pull away, I can find
the extension. I'll place my cursor over
| | 02:26 | this line. Notice as I pull up,
AutoCAD will find the intersection of my
| | 02:31 | extensions. That means I can pull in
this direction along this line and I can
| | 02:35 | find the extension of this line and
the arc. Let's place our circle here and
| | 02:39 | I'll free-pick a point to set its radius.
| | 02:41 | Now that we understand the concept of
the Parallel and Extension Object Snaps,
| | 02:46 | let's look at what we might use this
tool in a practical example. I'm going to
| | 02:50 | back up and will pan over. On my screen,
I've got a Civil Engineering example.
| | 02:54 | This is a drawing of a small community
park. I would like to do some work on
| | 02:57 | this Basketball Court area.
| | 03:00 | Let's say I would like to create some
benches for the players to sit on.
| | 03:03 | The bench I going to create is going to
measure 10 feet long by a-foot-and-a-half
| | 03:07 | wide. I'm going to place my first
bench in this corner of the court and zoom
| | 03:11 | in. Now I'm practicing good form. If I
click the Layer control, I can see that
| | 03:16 | I have a layer called
Proposed Bench that's current.
| | 03:19 | I'm going to create this geometry
using the Polyline command. Let's start our
| | 03:23 | polyline right here and then I'm going
to Shift+Right-click and select Parallel
| | 03:28 | and I would like the first edge of
my bench to be parallel to this line.
| | 03:32 | So I'll hover to acquire that angle and
then I'll pull in this direction and type
| | 03:36 | 1.5 and hit Enter. I'll then hold my
Shift key and right-click, will select
| | 03:42 | Parallel again and I'll acquire this
angle. Then I'll move up until I snap and
| | 03:48 | I'll type 10 and hit Enter.
| | 03:51 | Now I could use Perpendicular at this
point, but since we are talking about
| | 03:54 | Parallel let's Shift+Right-click. We'll
select Parallel again and we'll acquire
| | 03:58 | this angle. Let's type 1.5 for
distance and we'll hit Enter and then finally,
| | 04:03 | I'm going to right-click and
select Close to finish my geometry.
| | 04:08 | As you can see, using the Parallel
Object Snap we were able to quickly create
| | 04:11 | this geometry by using the angles
defined by our existing basketball court.
| | 04:16 | Now I need to move this bench. It's a
little bit close. This is probably a safety
| | 04:20 | concern. Let's move it 6 feet
away from the edge of the court.
| | 04:23 | To do that I'm going to use the
Extension Object Snap. We'll launch the Move
| | 04:27 | command, select objects, I'll grab this
one and right-click. I'm going to zoom
| | 04:31 | in a little bit and I'm going to pick
it up from the endpoint here and I'm
| | 04:35 | going to place it, Shift+Right-click,
Extension, and I'll hover over the end of
| | 04:41 | this line. Then we'll pull in this
direction and I'll type 6 for six feet and hit Enter.
| | 04:47 | Let's create one more bench on the
other side of the court in a corresponding
| | 04:51 | location. To do that, I'm going to
use the Copy command. We'll launch Copy,
| | 04:56 | we'll select our bench and right-click.
I would like to pick this up from the
| | 05:00 | endpoint here and I would like to place
it to the Shift+Right-click, Extension.
| | 05:09 | I'll hover the endpoint of this line
and we'll pull this up and type 6 and hit
| | 05:13 | Enter. When I'm finished, I'll hit
Escape to get out of the command.
| | 05:20 | As you can see, the Parallel and
Extension Object Snaps allow us to use our
| | 05:23 | existing line work as a guide
to create or place new geometry.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Locating the midpoint between two points| 00:00 | Finding the midpoint of a line is easy,
but what do you do if the midpoint you
| | 00:04 | are looking for is between two
different entities? Fortunately, we have a
| | 00:07 | special Object Snap that's
perfect for this occasion.
| | 00:10 | In this lesson we are going to look at
AutoCAD's Midpoint Between Two Points
| | 00:13 | Object Snap. Since we are going to be
talking about a new Object Snap in this
| | 00:16 | session, let's take a look at
my current running Object Snaps.
| | 00:19 | I am going to come down and right-click
and as usual I have a running Object
| | 00:23 | Snap set for center as well as endpoint.
Let's hit Escape to clear the menu and
| | 00:28 | let's do a little drafting. Let's say
I would like to create a circle that's
| | 00:31 | centrally located inside this square.
| | 00:34 | Now I could use a sketch line but I
don't have to. There happens to be an
| | 00:37 | Object Snap that's perfect for this
occasion. Let's launch the Circle command
| | 00:41 | and for my center point, I'm going to
hold my Shift key and right-click and I'm
| | 00:44 | going to select Mid Between 2 Points.
| | 00:47 | Then I'll click this endpoint and this
one and AutoCAD creates this circle at
| | 00:52 | the midpoint between those two clicks.
Let's say I would like to create a
| | 00:56 | circle that is centrally
located inside this shape.
| | 01:00 | Now in this case I don't have nice
endpoints that I can click. But it doesn't
| | 01:03 | matter because Mid Between 2 Points
works with any two objects snaps in our
| | 01:07 | drawing. Let's launch the Circle command.
I'm going to hold my Shift key and a
| | 01:11 | right-click. Let's select Mid Between 2
Points and I want to find the midpoint
| | 01:16 | between the Shift+Right-click
intersection here and the Shift+Right-click
| | 01:22 | intersection here and I'll finish my circle.
| | 01:27 | Let's take a look at where we might
use this Object Snap in a real world
| | 01:30 | example. I'm going to back up. We'll
pan our drawing over. We'll center this on
| | 01:35 | screen. This happens to be an
architectural example. This drawing was created
| | 01:41 | using architectural measurement and
it's a concept drawing for a wooden
| | 01:45 | six-drawer file cabinet.
| | 01:46 | Now the drawing isn't finished. I'm at
the point now where I would like to add
| | 01:49 | some hardware to the drawers. Let's
see if we can place this knob such that
| | 01:53 | it's centrally located on a drawer.
To do that I'm going to use the Move
| | 01:56 | command, I'll come up and launch Move.
I'll select my hardware and right-click.
| | 02:01 | I would like to pick this up from the
center point and I would like to place it
| | 02:05 | to the Shift+Right-click Midpoint
Between 2 Points and I'll click the endpoint
| | 02:10 | here and the endpoint here.
| | 02:12 | Now placing this guy was pretty easy.
Let's dial it up and notch. I'm going to
| | 02:15 | turn on a layer. Let's click the
layer control and I'm going to turn on the
| | 02:19 | hardware alternate layer and we'll
click on screen to close the menu. Let's say
| | 02:23 | I would like to use this hardware on my
cabinet. Now in this case I don't have
| | 02:26 | a nice centrally point that I can
use to pick up this handle. It doesn't
| | 02:30 | matter, because we are going to pick
it up and place the geometry using the
| | 02:33 | Midpoint Between 2 Points Object Snap.
| | 02:35 | Once again I'll launch my Move command,
select objects, I'll make a window
| | 02:39 | around this geometry and right-click.
I would like to pick it up from the
| | 02:42 | Shift+Right-click Mid Between 2 Points
and I'm going to select the center point
| | 02:48 | of this end and the center of this end.
| | 02:51 | Then we'll back up and we'll pan over
a little bit and I would like to place
| | 02:55 | this to the Shift+Right-click, Mid
Between 2 Points and I would like to drop it
| | 03:00 | at the midpoint between this endpoint
and this one. We'll center this on screen.
| | 03:05 | Now between these two choices I prefer
the second one better. So let's erase
| | 03:09 | this one. I'll select it and click my
Erase icon and then we'll finish the
| | 03:13 | drawing using the Copy command.
We'll launch Copy, we'll make a selection
| | 03:17 | around this geometry and right-click
and we'll copy it from the endpoint here
| | 03:21 | to here to here and then we'll
create the handles on the other side.
| | 03:26 | When I'm finished I'll hit Escape to
exit command. Using the Midpoint Between 2
| | 03:30 | Points Object Snap eliminates the need
for us to create sketch geometry. Using
| | 03:35 | the Object Snap we can find the midpoint
between any two Object Snaps in our drawing.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding the object "snap from"| 00:00 | Finding a location in space can be
much easy enough if the directions are
| | 00:03 | given relative to something else. For
instance, if I was giving you directions
| | 00:07 | to my house, I could tell you my house
is 500 yards down the street or I could
| | 00:12 | tell you follow the street, my house
is right next door to the gas station.
| | 00:16 | The fact that I made my directions
relative to something else makes my house
| | 00:19 | much easier to find. In this session
we are going to look at the From Object Snap.
| | 00:23 | From allows us to find
points relative to other objects.
| | 00:27 | Now on my screen I have drawn a
series of squares. These guys were created
| | 00:30 | using architectural measurements.
Let's say I would like to stack these guys
| | 00:34 | such that there is 1-inch gap between
them. Well, I'm going to launch my Move
| | 00:38 | command. We'll select this square and
I'll right-click and will pick it up from
| | 00:43 | endpoint and take a look at the rubber
band effect. Look where I'm moving this guy from.
| | 00:48 | Now if I want to place him 1 inch above
the square, it's not very helpful based
| | 00:52 | on where he is currently coming form.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to hold
| | 00:56 | my Shift key and right-click and I'm
going to select the From Object Snap and
| | 01:02 | then I'll select the endpoint of
this square. Now notice where I'm rubber
| | 01:05 | banding from.
| | 01:06 | It's as though I'm moving the square
from this new endpoint. Now it's easy.
| | 01:11 | All I have to do is lock my Ortho. I can
pull straight up and I can type 1 inch and
| | 01:16 | hit Enter. Let's use the same command
to move it to this other square.
| | 01:20 | I'm going to right-click and repeat the
Move command. We'll select this square and
| | 01:24 | right-click. We'll pick it up from
the endpoint here. Now this point is not
| | 01:28 | very helpful to us. So I'm going to
Shift+Right-click and select From. I would
| | 01:34 | rather be moving in from this endpoint.
| | 01:36 | Now since my Ortho is locked, I can
pull straight up and type 1 inch, Enter.
| | 01:41 | Now that we understand the concept of
From, let's try and use this Object Snap
| | 01:45 | in a practical example.
| | 01:47 | I am going to back up. We'll pan over.
Now this is an architectural example.
| | 01:52 | This is a drawing of a master bathroom,
and I would like to make a change to my
| | 01:56 | countertop area. So we'll zoom in on
this geometry. Currently I have a long
| | 02:00 | countertop with a single centered basin.
| | 02:03 | Now let's say we are making a design
change. I would like to place two basins
| | 02:06 | in this countertop, since I have room.
And let's say I would like to place each
| | 02:10 | basin such that it's 2 inches away from
this wall and I would like it centrally
| | 02:14 | located between this edge and the
edge of my window. Now normally we might
| | 02:18 | create some offsets or some sketch
geometry to move this basin. Let's see if we
| | 02:22 | can do it using the From Object Snap.
I'm going to launch the Move command.
| | 02:26 | We'll select our basin. I'll right-
click and I would like to pick him up from
| | 02:31 | the Shift+Right-click insertion point.
| | 02:34 | This basin happens to be a block. So
I'll pick it up from the insertion and
| | 02:39 | where would I like to place this?
I'm going to hold my Shift key and
| | 02:42 | right-click and we'll select From.
I would like to place it from the
| | 02:48 | Shift+Right-click Midpoint Between 2
Points and we'll grab the endpoint of the
| | 02:53 | wall and the endpoint of the window and
then I can pull straight away and type
| | 02:57 | 2 inches, Enter.
| | 03:00 | Now to finish my countertop, I'm just
going to mirror this geometry to create
| | 03:04 | my second basin. Let's launch the
Mirror command. We'll grab our basin and
| | 03:08 | right-click. I would like to mirror it
from the Shift+Right-click the midpoint
| | 03:13 | of my countertop, because since my
Ortho was locked, I can pull this straight
| | 03:18 | out at 0 degree angle. Then I can click
to make my copy and now I'll hit Enter.
| | 03:27 | Using the From Object Snap and a
reference point we can quickly locate points
| | 03:31 | that would otherwise require
us to create temporary geometry.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Drawing ToolsCalculating areas| 00:00 | Finding areas in AutoCAD is pretty easy.
If you have a closed polyline, you can
| | 00:04 | select it and you can see its area in
the Properties changer. If the area you
| | 00:08 | design is hatched, you can select the
hatched object and you can see its area
| | 00:12 | in the Properties changer.
| | 00:13 | What do we do though if we want to find
the cumulative total of multiple areas
| | 00:17 | or to subtract one area from another?
In this lesson we are going to look at
| | 00:20 | how to do that using AutoCAD's Area command.
| | 00:23 | Now before we get started, I want to
address my Properties changer. It happens
| | 00:26 | to be taking up some screen real
estate. I want to move up and click the
| | 00:29 | Minimize icon such as this guy is
anchored on the left side of my screen.
| | 00:34 | Notice my Layer Properties Manager is
also anchored over here. I'm going to
| | 00:38 | move into this margin and I'm going to
right-click and select Icons only and
| | 00:43 | this will reduce both of my palettes
down to a single icon in my interface.
| | 00:46 | All right, let's start by looking at
this geometry on the right. I'm going to
| | 00:50 | zoom in. We'll center this guy on
the screen. Since we are going to be
| | 00:53 | calculating areas, let's start by
verifying that we are working with closed geometry.
| | 00:57 | I am going to start by making a window
around this line work and then I'm going
| | 01:01 | to move over my Properties changer to
open it up. I can see we have found six
| | 01:05 | objects, let's click the flyout.
We found five polylines and a circle.
| | 01:10 | I'm going to click the Polyline entry and
if I look right down here, I can see that
| | 01:14 | all of these guys are closed. Now we
don't have to worry about the circle.
| | 01:17 | The circles are already closed.
| | 01:18 | Let's move outside the palette and
I'm going to hit Escape to deselect.
| | 01:22 | Whenever we are finding areas, we want
to make sure that we are dealing with
| | 01:24 | closed geometry. Let's use the Area
command to find the area of this upper left
| | 01:29 | rectangle. Now the Area tool is
located on the Tools tab with my ribbon.
| | 01:33 | If I look in the Inquiry panel, the icon is
right here, let me click to launch the
| | 01:37 | tool. Now if we look at the command
line, we can see it has a couple of
| | 01:40 | sub-options. We are going
to look at Object first.
| | 01:43 | I am going to right-click and select
Object, I'll then select this object and I
| | 01:48 | can see its area right down here. The
Area command will always report your
| | 01:52 | areas to the command line.
| | 01:53 | Now if we need to find the area of a
single object, it's actually faster to use
| | 01:57 | the Properties changer. The value of
the Area command is that it allows us to
| | 02:01 | add to or subtract from our areas.
Let's say I would like to find the
| | 02:04 | cumulative area of these four outer
rectangles. Once again I'm going to launch
| | 02:08 | the Area command. Then I'm going to
right-click and I'm going to select Add.
| | 02:13 | This puts me in Add mode. Now I'll right
-click and select Object, and I want to
| | 02:18 | add the areas of this object and this
one and as I click on these, watch my
| | 02:23 | command line. Notice AutoCAD is
keeping a running total. Let's click the last
| | 02:27 | one and I can see the total areas of
these four rectangles as 81.87 square
| | 02:33 | units approximately.
| | 02:34 | I am going to hit the Escape to
cancel this command. Let's try doing a
| | 02:37 | subtraction. Let's assume this circle
represents a hole in this larger shape.
| | 02:42 | Let's see if we can find the area of
the shape minus the hole, to do that I'm
| | 02:45 | going to launch the Area command. Now
this may seem unusual because we are
| | 02:49 | going to be doing a subtraction but
I'm going to right-click and I'm going to
| | 02:52 | select Add. Think about it this way. My
current area is zero. I need to add to
| | 02:58 | that in order to subtract the hole.
| | 03:00 | So I'm going to right-click and select
Object and click this outer object.
| | 03:04 | This gives me my initial area and now I'll
right-click and then I'll right-click
| | 03:09 | again and select Subtract, right-click,
Object and we select the circle and I
| | 03:14 | can see the total area minus this
circle is 106 square units approximately.
| | 03:20 | Let's hit Escape to cancel out the
command and I would like to try and use this
| | 03:23 | tool in a practical example. I'm going
to back and we'll pan over. On my screen
| | 03:30 | I have got a civil engineering example.
This drawing was created such that each
| | 03:33 | unit equals one foot and this is a
drawing of a proposed store and parking lot.
| | 03:38 | Let's say the engineer just asked us to
find the square footage of the parking
| | 03:42 | lot such that they can calculate
quantities for asphalt. To do that we are
| | 03:46 | going to use the Area command but we
have to do little prep work first because
| | 03:50 | I don't have a closed shape
that represents this parking lot.
| | 03:53 | To create my closed shape, I'm going
to use the Boundary command but first I
| | 03:56 | need to turn off some geometry. So I'm
going to come over to Layer palette and
| | 04:00 | we are going to turn off the proposed
stripes layer and we'll also turn off the
| | 04:04 | existing curve and gutter layer.
| | 04:06 | Then I move outside the palette and
allow it to collapse, this gives me a nice
| | 04:10 | open clean area to create my boundary.
To launch the Boundary command, I'm
| | 04:13 | going to come up to Home tab and click.
We select the Draw flyout and we'll
| | 04:17 | grab the Boundary command. I'm going
to use the Pick Points option and I'm
| | 04:20 | going to pick right inside my parking lot.
| | 04:23 | If I zoom in, I can see that AutoCAD
has found a few extra islands that I don't
| | 04:26 | need. That's fine. Let's right-click
to finish the command and we can erase
| | 04:31 | these extra islands. I'm going to
back up and we'll center this geometry on
| | 04:36 | screen and let's isolate the
layer that contains my boundary.
| | 04:40 | To do that I'm going to go back to
the Layer palette, I'll then select the
| | 04:43 | current layer and then I'll right-click
and I'll choose Invert Selection.
| | 04:47 | That selects every layer except for the
highlighted one and we'll turn these off.
| | 04:53 | Now if I move outside the palette, I
can see that I'm looking at only the
| | 04:56 | geometry that I need to calculate my
area. Generally speaking, we are going to
| | 04:59 | take this large shape and subtract
these three inner ones. I'm going to
| | 05:05 | re-launch the Area command by coming
up to the Tools tab and clicking, we
| | 05:08 | select Area, I'm going to right-click
and select Add, let's right-click and
| | 05:14 | select Object and we'll grab the entire lot.
| | 05:17 | Now I'll right-click because I'm
finished adding and then I'll right-click and
| | 05:21 | we'll go into Subtract mode. Right-
click and select Object and I'll click this
| | 05:27 | one, this one, and this one and I
can see the total area of my lot is
| | 05:32 | approximately 360520 square feet. When
I'm finished, I'll hit Escape to cancel
| | 05:37 | the command and we can go back to
our Layer palette. The layers are still
| | 05:40 | selected, so I can turn them back on
and I can select my area layer and I can
| | 05:44 | turn it off.
| | 05:48 | The next time you have to pull some
quantities from your AutoCAD drawing, try
| | 05:51 | using the Area command. It can be much
faster and more accurate than using your
| | 05:55 | Desktop calculator.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Organizing geometry using groups| 00:00 | As the number of entities in our
drawing increases, our drawings can start to
| | 00:03 | become crowded. The more crowded our
drawings get, the harder it becomes to
| | 00:07 | make selections or to modify our
geometry. When this happens, we need a way to
| | 00:11 | organize our line work. In this lesson
we are going to look at the Group command.
| | 00:15 | On my screen I have got an
architectural example and in typically architectural
| | 00:19 | fashion, this drawing was created
such that each unit equals one inch.
| | 00:23 | I'm going to zoom in a little bit closer
and let's say we would like to move the
| | 00:27 | window and the accompanying geometry
three inches closer to the front door.
| | 00:31 | Now my selection is going to be
difficult because I have got a lot overlapping
| | 00:34 | line work. Since it is going to be a
difficult selection, I'm going to turn my
| | 00:38 | geometry into a group. This way if I
ever have to select that again, it will be
| | 00:42 | much easier. Think of a
group as a saved selection.
| | 00:45 | Now unfortunately, there is no icon for
the Groups feature. We can only access
| | 00:48 | it at the command line. So I'm going
to type group and hit Enter. Now on the
| | 00:55 | top of the dialog, I can see a list
of the currently defined groups in my
| | 00:58 | drawing. Right now I don't have any.
I'm going to come down to Group Name and
| | 01:02 | I'm going to call my group window.
At this point I can also give it a description.
| | 01:07 | Then I'll select New and now I can
select the geometry that's going to be part
| | 01:12 | of my group. I'm going to click right
up here and make a crossing window around
| | 01:16 | here get as much of this as I can,
I'll grab this geometry and this geometry,
| | 01:23 | come over and grab this and I'll grab
these lines and when I'm finished,
| | 01:27 | I'll right-click.
| | 01:28 | Notice I have a group defined in my
drawing called window. Let's click OK.
| | 01:32 | I'm going to back up a little bit and let's
try and move this window. I'm going to
| | 01:39 | launch the Move command and notice
when I click this geometry it acts like a
| | 01:42 | single object. Now this is not the
equivalent of a block, it's merely a saved
| | 01:47 | selection. Let right-click, I'll
select my base point right here and then I'm
| | 01:51 | going to pull towards the door and
I'm going to type three inches, Enter.
| | 01:56 | As soon as I did that, I noticed that I
missed some geometry when I created my
| | 02:00 | group. No matter, let's click Undo and
I'll show you how we can add entities to
| | 02:04 | a group. To do that, I'm going to
bring back the group dialog box and we'll
| | 02:08 | right-click, we'll select Recent Input, Group.
| | 02:10 | Now the last time we were in this
dialog box, the majority of these buttons
| | 02:14 | were grayed out and they still are but
if I select my group from the list, I
| | 02:19 | have access to all of these options.
Notice there is one here for Add.
| | 02:23 | We select Add and AutoCAD will highlight
my group and at this point I can select
| | 02:28 | the two lines that I missed and a
right-click. Notice we can also remove
| | 02:33 | geometry at this time. When I'm finished,
I'm going to come down and click OK.
| | 02:37 | Now let's move our window. I'm going
to launch the Move command, we'll select
| | 02:40 | our geometry and right-click, I'll pick
it up from the endpoint here and we'll
| | 02:44 | drag it towards the door
and type three inches, Enter.
| | 02:48 | Since I have saved this geometry as a
group, if I ever have to move it again, I
| | 02:51 | can select it with a single click.
Let's bring back the Group dialog box
| | 02:55 | because I would like to look at
some of the other options. I'm going to
| | 02:57 | right-click. We'll go to Recent Input
and select Group. Let's select our group,
| | 03:02 | notice I can also rename it at this
time or I can click the Explode button to
| | 03:06 | explode my group.
| | 03:08 | This is the only way to get rid of our
group by using the Explode command.
| | 03:11 | You would think we can use explode up here
but that doesn't work. You can only use
| | 03:15 | the Explode command in this dialog box.
Watch this. If I click Explode, my
| | 03:20 | group goes away and if I click OK,
these lines are now individual entities again.
| | 03:25 | Now I would like to keep my group so
I'm going to hit Escape. I'm going to
| | 03:28 | click Undo. This restores my group.
Let's look at where groups may cause a
| | 03:32 | little bit of a problem. In this case,
I would like to move my shutters such
| | 03:36 | that they are one inch away from my
window. Now here is my problem, if I select
| | 03:40 | the shutter, I end up selecting all of
my geometry. That's because my group is
| | 03:44 | selectable. Let's adjust this.
| | 03:46 | I am going to hit Escape. We'll
bring back the Group dialog box by
| | 03:48 | right-clicking and selecting Recent
Input. We'll select Group. I'm going to
| | 03:52 | select my group name. Notice here that
the group is selectable. I'm going to
| | 03:56 | come down and click my Selectable button.
That property has now changed, let's
| | 04:00 | click OK and now this
geometry acts like individual lines.
| | 04:05 | At this point I can make my
modification. I'll launch the Move command.
| | 04:08 | I'm going to zoom in a little bit.
We'll make a window around this line work.
| | 04:13 | I'm going to make a crossing window around
this line work and we'll grab some of
| | 04:18 | these guys at the bottom and right-
click. We'll pick them from the in point
| | 04:22 | here. We'll move them one inch away.
| | 04:25 | Let's do the same thing with the other
side. I'll right-click and select Move.
| | 04:29 | We'll make a crossing window this time,
we'll select the remaining line work
| | 04:33 | and right-click. We'll pick it from the
in point here and then we'll drag it to
| | 04:37 | the right one inch.
| | 04:39 | Now we'll clean up the remaining line
work using Copy. I'll launch the command
| | 04:43 | and we'll select this line, right-
click and we'll copy it from the in point
| | 04:47 | here to here, to here and then I'll
hit Escape. Finally we'll zoom in on the
| | 04:53 | bottom and we'll clean up the corners
using the Fillet command. I'm going to
| | 04:57 | launch Fillet. My current Radius
is set to zero, which is perfect.
| | 05:01 | I will click this line and this one
and then we'll launch Fillet again and we
| | 05:05 | click this line and this one. Now that
I'm finished, let's turn on our Group
| | 05:10 | feature back on. I'm going to right-
click and go back to Recent Input.
| | 05:14 | We'll select Group. We'll select our
group name and we'll make it selectable.
| | 05:19 | I want to do one more thing, I want to
click my Add button because now we have
| | 05:22 | some new geometry that didn't exist
before, let's select this and make it part
| | 05:26 | of the group and then I'll
right-click and I'll select OK.
| | 05:30 | Now my geometry has been revised, and
it's still a group, so if I ever need to
| | 05:34 | move it again, I can select it with a
single click. By assigning our geometry
| | 05:38 | to groups, we can continue to work
efficiently no matter how large or
| | 05:42 | complicated our drawings may get.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Controlling visibility with Draw Order| 00:00 | Have you ever noticed that any new
geometry you create appears to be on top of
| | 00:03 | your existing geometry? This is because
AutoCAD bases display our line work
| | 00:08 | on the order in which it was created.
So the most recent thing you create will
| | 00:11 | always display in front of everything else.
| | 00:14 | In this lesson, we are going to learn
how to use the Draw Order command so that
| | 00:17 | we can change the display order of
our entities. I would like to start by
| | 00:20 | creating some really fat looking circles.
I want to accentuate the width so it's
| | 00:24 | easy to see the display order of our geometry.
| | 00:26 | I am going to start up by turning on my
Line Weight Mode and then I'm going to
| | 00:30 | go up to the Properties panel in my
ribbon. I'm going to click the Color flyout
| | 00:34 | and we'll set this to be red and then
I'm going to click the Line Weight flyout
| | 00:38 | and we'll bump this up as high as it will go.
| | 00:41 | Typically, we never want to force
properties on our objects, but right now it's
| | 00:44 | okay, we are just doing a
demonstration. Let's create our first circle.
| | 00:47 | I'm going to come up and launch the command.
I'll pick a point on the screen and
| | 00:50 | I'll drag out and click. Notice that
it's really easy to see the Line Weight on
| | 00:54 | this circle. I want to create a yellow
one. I'm going to come up and force my
| | 00:57 | property again. I'll change this to
yellow. We'll launch the Circle command.
| | 01:02 | I'll click right about
here and drag out and click.
| | 01:05 | Let's create one more. I'm going to
create a magenta circle this time, so I'll
| | 01:08 | force my Color property to Magenta.
We'll launch the Circle command.
| | 01:13 | I'll pick on screen and we'll
drag out and free pick to finish.
| | 01:16 | Now before I forget, let's change our
properties back to BYLAYER. I'll drag up
| | 01:24 | my Line Weight and click. Take a look
at these circles on screen. Notice the
| | 01:28 | circle we created last appears to be
in front of the others. Now this is fine
| | 01:32 | unless you wanted the red circle to
appear in front when you create your plot.
| | 01:36 | To change the display order of our
geometry, we'll use the Draw Order command.
| | 01:40 | Draw Order is located in the Modify
panel of our ribbon. The flyout is right here.
| | 01:44 | I can see the Draw Order has four
options. We are going to look at Bring
| | 01:48 | to Front first. Let's click. I'll
select my red circle and we'll bring him to
| | 01:53 | the front. Let's try the Send to Back
setting. I'm going to send my magenta
| | 01:58 | circle to the back. Once again, I'll
click the flyout. We'll select Send to Back.
| | 02:03 | I'll select the magenta
circle and I'll right-click.
| | 02:06 | Now bringing an object to the front or
sending it to the back is pretty easy.
| | 02:10 | What if I would like to slip an object
between two other objects? Now at this point,
| | 02:14 | my red circle appears to be in front.
Let's say I would like to place it
| | 02:17 | in between the magenta and the yellow
circle. To do that, I'm going to use the
| | 02:21 | Draw Order flyout. I'm going to select
Send Under Objects. Notice we can also
| | 02:26 | Bring Above an Object, just depends on
your point of reference. I'm going to
| | 02:29 | select Send Under. I'll click my red
circle and I'll right-click and I'll send
| | 02:34 | it beneath the yellow one right-click.
| | 02:36 | There is a couple things I want to
mention. If you do not see your Draw Order
| | 02:39 | properties change on screen, you
probably need to do a Regen and that could be
| | 02:43 | done by coming up to the menu browser
and clicking. We can come down and select
| | 02:47 | View and we can come over and select
Regen. You only have to do that if you are
| | 02:51 | not seeing the Draw Order change.
| | 02:53 | One other thing to note, the Draw Order
options are also incorporated into our
| | 02:57 | right-click menu. If I select this
geometry and right-click, I can move right
| | 03:01 | down here and I have the same four
Draw Order options. Let's bring this red
| | 03:05 | circle to the front.
| | 03:06 | Now the Draw Order command is
especially important with Hatch because you don't
| | 03:11 | want your hatch hiding the objects that
are behind it. Now I don't know if you
| | 03:14 | have noticed but if we launch the Hatch
command, we can see that the Draw Order
| | 03:19 | has been incorporated right into the tool.
| | 03:20 | I am going to create a hatch pattern.
I'm going to click the flyout and I'm
| | 03:23 | going to select Send to Back. I want
this hatch sent to the back of my drawing.
| | 03:27 | Then we'll come and select the
ellipses to choose the pattern. I'm going to
| | 03:31 | select Other Predefined and we'll do
a solid filled hatch. Let's click OK.
| | 03:36 | I'm going to select objects and I'll
select the yellow circle and right-click.
| | 03:41 | At this point, I'm going to click Preview.
Notice that my hatch pattern is behind
| | 03:45 | the yellow boundary. It's also
behind all of the other line work.
| | 03:48 | Let's right-click to accept the hatch.
| | 03:51 | Now that we understand the basic
concept of Draw Order, let's try and use it in
| | 03:54 | a practical example. I'm going to
zoom out. We'll pan over on our screen.
| | 03:59 | We'll line this up. What we see is an
example of a plative survey. This is a piece of
| | 04:06 | property. My cyan line represents my
property boundary. I can also see that I
| | 04:10 | have an existing road that is on the
east side of my site and I have several
| | 04:14 | lines running through my property.
If I zoom in, I can see these lines have
| | 04:18 | numbers. These lines represent contours.
| | 04:21 | Now contours show us the elevation of
our property. In this case, they are
| | 04:24 | giving me the elevations in even two-
foot increments. We use contours to
| | 04:28 | display where the high points and
low points of our property are located.
| | 04:31 | Now I already have a layout created for
this drawing. Let's take a look at it.
| | 04:36 | I'm going to come down and click my
Quick View Layouts tool and then I'll
| | 04:40 | select my Layout Preview and then
we'll click the X to close the tool.
| | 04:44 | I'm going to zoom in right down here and I
have got my contours set to plot using a
| | 04:50 | gray scale line and unfortunately,
they are in front of my other geometry.
| | 04:55 | So they're removing portions of my boundary,
they're removing portions of my trees.
| | 04:58 | It would look much better if I could
push these contours to the back of my drawing.
| | 05:02 | To do that, I'm going to return to
Model space. To get there, I'm going to
| | 05:05 | right-click on my Quick View Layouts
tool and select Activate Model tab.
| | 05:09 | Then I'll some over to my Layer Properties
Manager. I'll open this up and what I'm
| | 05:14 | going to do is isolate my contours on
screen. If I click and drag this column
| | 05:19 | a little bit wider, we can
see more of the layer names.
| | 05:21 | I am going to select this layer. I'll
hold my Shift key and select this layer
| | 05:26 | and then I'm going to right-click and
select Invert Selection. This selects
| | 05:30 | everything else. I'll then click the
light bulb to turn those layers off and
| | 05:34 | I do want to turn the current layer
off as well. Now I'm left with only my
| | 05:38 | contours on the screen. I'm going to
select all of this geometry and then I'm
| | 05:44 | going to right-click and select Draw
Order from the menu and I'm going to send
| | 05:48 | all this geometry to the back. When
I'm finished, I'll come up and click my
| | 05:51 | Layer Previous button to
restore my layer space.
| | 05:55 | Let's return to our layout. I'm going
to come down and I'll right-click on my
| | 05:58 | Quick View Layouts tool and select
Activate Previous Layout and notice that my
| | 06:02 | contour lines now fall beneath all of
my other geometry. Using Draw Order,
| | 06:07 | we can pull entities to the front, push
them to the back or place them above or
| | 06:11 | below any other entity in our drawing.
Generally speaking, Draw Order gives us
| | 06:15 | complete control over the
display of our geometry.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Finding precise locations with the Geometric Calculator| 00:00 | The Quick Calculator is a great tool
for doing mathematical calculations.
| | 00:04 | But most people don't realize is that it's
also a geometric calculator, capable of
| | 00:08 | using variables and object snaps in
its expressions. It can also be used to
| | 00:11 | find points in 2D and 3D space. In this
session, we are going to take a closer
| | 00:15 | look at the functionality of
AutoCAD's Quick Calculator.
| | 00:18 | Now on my screen, I have got a large
green rectangle and inside I have got some
| | 00:22 | simple line work. This geometry is
going to represent our geometric playground
| | 00:26 | as we explore more of the
functionality of AutoCAD's Quick Calculator.
| | 00:30 | Let's look at these yellow lines first.
Let's say we would like to offset this yellow
| | 00:33 | line such that it's the same distance
as the lines above. Now, I don't know how
| | 00:38 | far apart these lines are and it really
doesn't matter. I can find the distance
| | 00:41 | using my calculator.
| | 00:43 | Let's launch the Offset command and
when AutoCAD asks me to specify a distance,
| | 00:46 | I'm going to hit Ctrl+8 on my
keyboard. This brings up the Calculator on
| | 00:51 | screen. If I look right here, I can see
that any value that we come up with is
| | 00:54 | going to be applied to the Offset
command. Take a look at these icons at the
| | 00:58 | top, these guys represents
predefined variables that can be used with the
| | 01:01 | calculator. If I hover over these, I
can see what each of them does. I'm going
| | 01:05 | to use the Distance Between Two
Points button and then I'll select the end
| | 01:09 | point here and the end point here.
Notice AutoCAD has found that distance.
| | 01:14 | I'll click Apply and if we look at the
command line, we can see that AutoCAD is
| | 01:17 | applied this distance to the Offset
command. So I'll hit Enter to accept it and
| | 01:22 | now I'll offset my line to this side
and when I'm finished, I'll hit Escape.
| | 01:26 | Now let's say I would like to offset
this line half the distance that we see
| | 01:29 | above. Once again, this is no problem
if we use our Calculator, I'm going to
| | 01:33 | jump right back into the Offset
command by right-clicking, I'll select Repeat
| | 01:36 | OFFSET and when AutoCAD ask for the
distance I'm going to hit Ctrl+8.
| | 01:41 | Once again, I'll select the Distance
Between Two Points option, I'll grab the end
| | 01:44 | point here and the end point here and
since this is a Calculator, I can now
| | 01:48 | type divided by two and I'll click
Apply. AutoCAD applies the value to my
| | 01:52 | command line so I'll hit Enter and then
I'll offset this line to this side and
| | 01:57 | I'll hit Escape.
| | 01:59 | Let's try something else. Let's say I
would like to Fillet these two lines such
| | 02:03 | that they have the same radius as this
circle. I'm going to launch the Fillet
| | 02:06 | command and then I'm going to right-
click and select Radius. Now, what is my
| | 02:11 | radius? I'm not sure. I'm going to
use the Calculator to figure it out.
| | 02:14 | I'm going to hit Ctrl+8. Now it would
be nice if I had an icon up here that
| | 02:18 | represented radius. The fact is there
are many variables we can use with the
| | 02:22 | Calculator and we just don't have room
such that all of them can be an icon.
| | 02:25 | Instead, I'm going to expand the dialog
box by clicking this More Than symbol.
| | 02:30 | In fact, I'm going to make this guy
even a little bit taller by clicking right
| | 02:33 | down here and I'll hold and drag,
then I'm going to open up the Variables
| | 02:37 | heading by clicking this flyout. Think
of this area as icons that didn't make
| | 02:41 | it at the top of the list. I'm going
to select rad from my list of variables.
| | 02:45 | Now sometimes you may have to click in
this area twice just like this. I click
| | 02:49 | once and now I have to click again,
now that I have focused the cursor's
| | 02:52 | attention on this area.
| | 02:54 | Once my variable is selected, I'll
click the Calculator icon and this will
| | 02:57 | place the expression to my input box
and then I'll come down and click Apply.
| | 03:02 | At this point, I can select a circle
or arc to grab the radius and if we look
| | 03:07 | at the command line, I can see that
radius has been incorporated into my Fillet
| | 03:10 | command, so I'll hit Enter and then
I'll click this line and this line to
| | 03:14 | complete the command.
| | 03:15 | Let's undo. Let's try incorporating
that variable into a mathematical equation.
| | 03:20 | Let's say I would like to Fillet these
two lines with a radius that's two times
| | 03:24 | the size of this circle. Once again,
I'll launch the Fillet command, I'll
| | 03:27 | right-click and select Radius and
then I'll hit Ctrl+8 to bring up my
| | 03:31 | calculator. I'll select rad from the
Variable List. Once again, I have to
| | 03:36 | select twice. We'll click our
Calculator icon to put it into the input box and
| | 03:41 | then I'll finish my mathematical
equation by typing times two and I'm using the
| | 03:46 | Asterisk key to represent multiplication.
Let's click Apply. I can then select my Arc,
| | 03:51 | I'll hit Enter to accept the value
and then I'll click this line and this one.
| | 03:55 | Let's see if we can use the calculator
to find a point along a line. Let's say
| | 03:59 | I would like to create a circle whose
center point is five units away from this
| | 04:03 | end point. I'm going to launch my
Circle command. Now where is my center point?
| | 04:07 | I'm going to let my Calculator figure
it out. I'm going to hit Ctrl+8 and we
| | 04:10 | are going to look in the Variables area.
Now, the list of variables that we see
| | 04:14 | here is by no means a complete list. If
I hover over these guys we can see what
| | 04:18 | each of them will do.
| | 04:20 | Now I happened to know an expression
that we can use to find a point along a
| | 04:23 | line. So in this case, I'm going to
create a new variable. I can do that by
| | 04:27 | clicking the New icon. This variable
is going to be a Function and I can give
| | 04:32 | it a name. I'm going to call this
findpoint. Let's slide this over just a
| | 04:37 | little bit. Now Group with, AutoCAD
wants to know which folder I would like to
| | 04:42 | place my variable in. Currently,
I have got a Sample variables folder.
| | 04:46 | If I want I can click the flyout and I can
select New. I could make my own folder.
| | 04:50 | I'm going to call this jeff's
variables and I'll click OK. Notice that folder
| | 04:57 | pops up in my Calculator. Here is where
I can type my expression. I'm going to
| | 05:01 | type pld(end, end, 5).
| | 05:09 | Now, I didn't just make this up, this
is legitimate expression that we can use
| | 05:12 | with the Quick Calculator. I'll show
you where we can find a list of these
| | 05:15 | expressions in just a minute. This
expression stands for a point and a line
| | 05:19 | based on distance. I'm going to be
selecting two end points and I want find a
| | 05:23 | point five units away. Let's click OK.
Notice I have now created my own custom
| | 05:29 | variable, I'll select this from the
list and I'll click my Calculator to put
| | 05:33 | that expression in the Input Box. As
you can see there is no magic to these
| | 05:36 | variables, all they do is type the
expression for you. Let's click Apply and
| | 05:41 | then I'll click this end point and
I'll click this one and AutoCAD creates a
| | 05:45 | circle five units away from my first pick.
| | 05:48 | Using my New Variable, let's see if we
can create a line that starts out one
| | 05:52 | unit below this end point and goes to a
location one unit above this end point.
| | 05:57 | I'm going to launch my Line command.
Now where is my line going to start? I'm
| | 06:01 | going to hit Ctrl+8. I'll select my new
variable. In this case, I have to click
| | 06:07 | twice and I'll click my Calculator
and then I'll make a small edit to my
| | 06:11 | expression. I want to find a point
one unit away and I'll click Apply.
| | 06:15 | I'll then grab the end point here and the
end point here and that starts my line.
| | 06:20 | Now where do I want to go to? I'm going
to hit Ctrl+8 and then I'm going to go
| | 06:24 | up into the History area and double-
click, because this happens to be the exact
| | 06:28 | expression I want and I'll click Apply
and I'll grab the end point here and the
| | 06:32 | end point here and then I'll
hit Escape to finish my line.
| | 06:36 | Now if you are interested in
researching additional expressions that we can use
| | 06:39 | with the Calculator, let me show you
where we can go to find those. I'm going
| | 06:43 | to hit the F1 key on my keyboard;
this brings up the AutoCAD Help Feature.
| | 06:47 | I'm going to move up and click the Index
tab and then I'm going to type in the
| | 06:51 | keyword cal for Calculator and I'll
make sure Calculator command is highlighted
| | 06:56 | and I'll click Display and as I grab my
slider and pull this down each of these
| | 07:00 | hyperlinks will give us access to an
expression that we can use with the calculator.
| | 07:04 | For instance, if I select this one,
here is the expression that we just looked
| | 07:08 | at that finds the point along a line.
I'm going to hit my Back Arrow.
| | 07:12 | We'll come down and select Obtain
Intersection Point and once again, we can see some
| | 07:16 | more expressions. So if you do a
little exploration you will find there is a
| | 07:19 | lot of things in here you can use.
I'm going to move up and click the X to
| | 07:22 | close the dialog box.
| | 07:24 | As you can see the true power of the
Quick Calculator is still get to be
| | 07:27 | realized. I guarantee as you continue
to explore this feature it will quickly
| | 07:31 | become one of your favorite tools.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
6. Making Powerful SelectionsUsing the Crossing Polygon| 00:00 | Think about it. The majority of the
commands in AutoCAD require you to select
| | 00:03 | objects. Anything we can do to speed
up the selection process can make us a
| | 00:07 | more efficient drafter.
| | 00:09 | In this lesson, we are going to learn
how to select objects using the Crossing
| | 00:12 | Polygon. Now on my screen, I have got
some line work that represents a large
| | 00:15 | arrow. Now it's a poorly drawn arrow
because the head is way too big. I like to
| | 00:20 | correct this drawing using the Stretch command.
| | 00:23 | To do that I'm going to stretch this
line segment and this one forward to make
| | 00:26 | the head a little bit smaller. Since
we are going to be talking about a new
| | 00:29 | crossing selection, I thought I
would use the Stretch command because it
| | 00:32 | requires a crossing selection. I'm
going to launch the Stretch command by
| | 00:36 | coming up to the Modify panel in
my ribbon and clicking the icon.
| | 00:39 | And now when AutoCAD asks me to select
objects, watch this. If I try and do
| | 00:43 | a traditional crossing window, it's
hard for me to get the geometry that I like
| | 00:47 | to fit within a window. Inevitably,
I'm going to select more than I intended.
| | 00:52 | Instead, I'm going to hit Escape and
at the Select objects prompt, I'm going to
| | 00:55 | type cp. cp stands for
Crossing Polygon and I'll hit Enter.
| | 01:00 | Then I'll pick a point on screen
and I'll pick another and another and
| | 01:03 | another and take a look at the
selection I'm making. I'm making a crossing
| | 01:07 | selection but I'm not having to
conform to a perfect rectangle. When I'm
| | 01:11 | finished with my selection, I'll right
-click and select Enter and then I'll
| | 01:14 | right-click again to let AutoCAD
know I'm done selecting objects.
| | 01:18 | To stretch my geometry, I'm going to
pick it up from the end point here and
| | 01:21 | then I'm going to Shift+Right-click and
I'm going to select Extension and hover
| | 01:26 | over this corner, and we'll pull the
arrowhead up to about here and pick.
| | 01:31 | Let me show you where we might use a
Crossing Polygon in a practical example.
| | 01:35 | I'm going to zoom out. We'll pan over.
On my screen, I have got a mechanical
| | 01:39 | example. I have got an isometric
drawing with some dimensions and from this
| | 01:43 | drawing we have created a top, a front
and a right side view of the geometry.
| | 01:47 | And all of these were generated
through the use of Construction Lines.
| | 01:50 | Well now that I'm finished with the
drawing, I don't need these Construction
| | 01:53 | Lines anymore. Let's try and erase them
using a Crossing Polygon. I'm going to
| | 01:58 | launch the Erase command and then I'll
type cp and hit Enter. Now I'm going to
| | 02:02 | turn off my running objects snaps
momentarily so they don't get in the way and
| | 02:06 | I'm going to click here, here, I'll
come over in this direction, I'll come back
| | 02:11 | down and we'll pick a couple of
points and then I'll right-click and select
| | 02:15 | Enter. And we can hit Enter
again to finish the command.
| | 02:19 | And even though, I had a lot of line
work on my screen, it was fairly easy to
| | 02:22 | erase with a single selection. By
using a Crossing Polygon, we get the same
| | 02:25 | functionality of the Crossing Window
but we aren't locked into a rectangular shape.
| | 02:30 | Knowing how and when to use the selection
method can make you a more efficient drafter.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Fence| 00:00 | Sometimes the objects we want to
select aren't grouped in a nice area that we
| | 00:03 | can grab with a selection window.
Sometimes the objects we want to select are
| | 00:07 | arranged in a more linear fashion. To
select objects that fall outside the box,
| | 00:11 | we can use AutoCAD's Fence command.
| | 00:13 | If we look on screen, you can see that
I have several hatched shapes. We are
| | 00:17 | going to use these shapes to explore
the selection method in AutoCAD, known as
| | 00:21 | the Fence. Fence is a nice selection
choice if we can't grab our objects using
| | 00:25 | a window or a polygon.
| | 00:26 | For instance, let's say I would like
to move all of these magenta dots.
| | 00:31 | To do that I'm going to launch the Move
command and when AutoCAD asks me to select
| | 00:35 | objects, I'm going to type F on my
keyboard and hit Enter. F stands for Fence,
| | 00:40 | and just so my running object snaps
don't get in the way, I'm going to come
| | 00:42 | down and turn these off
momentarily and we'll create our Fence.
| | 00:45 | I am going to click, click, click.
Notice the type of selection I'm making.
| | 00:51 | I'm making a crossing type line but in this
case I'm not limited to a rectangle or
| | 00:56 | polygon, I can use a nice linear
selection. When I have pass through all of my
| | 01:00 | entities, I'm going to right-click and
select Enter and then I'll right-click
| | 01:04 | again to finish my selection and I'm
going to move them this point on screen
| | 01:09 | and we'll push them up to here.
| | 01:11 | We can use the Fence Selection anytime
AutoCAD asks us to select objects. Let's
| | 01:15 | try and erase these red dots using a
Fence. I'm going to launch the Erase
| | 01:20 | command then I'm going to hit F and
Enter on my keyboard and I'm going to start
| | 01:25 | my Fence here and I'll click and click,
and click. Now you don't have to be
| | 01:29 | precise with your selection as long
as the line passes though all of your
| | 01:33 | entities. When I'm done, I'll right-
click and select Enter to finish my Fence
| | 01:37 | and then I'll right-click
again to finish the command.
| | 01:39 | Let's look at where we might use a
Fence Selection in a real world example.
| | 01:43 | I'm going to backup. We'll pan our screen
over and we'll zoom in and what we see is
| | 01:48 | a civil engineering example. This is a
drawing of a proposed store and parking
| | 01:52 | lot. Since this is a civil example,
every unit in this drawing represents 1 foot.
| | 01:57 | I am going to zoom in on the front of
the building. As you can see I have gone
| | 02:00 | to a lot of trouble creating a score
lines in my sidewalk. Let's say after
| | 02:04 | completing this work, I got a call from
the architect saying that they want to
| | 02:07 | change the geometry of the walk. Now
currently my walk runs to the edge of the
| | 02:11 | building. Instead the architect would
like to maintain a four-foot sidewalk
| | 02:16 | along the front of the building.
| | 02:17 | Well this change is going to require
me to make an offset. Let me come up and
| | 02:20 | click the Offset command. My distance
is going to be 4 and I'll hit Enter.
| | 02:25 | I'll grab the edge of my sidewalk and we'll
offset it to this direction and I'll hit
| | 02:29 | Escape to get out of the command. Now
I'm going to zoom in on this end. I have
| | 02:32 | actually got some overlapping line
work here. I'm going to remove this end of
| | 02:36 | my line using the Trim command.
| | 02:38 | So let's hit Escape. I'll come up and
launch Trim. I'm going to use this line
| | 02:42 | as my cutting edge and right-click
and the object I would like to trim, I'm
| | 02:45 | going to make a crossing window right
here. If I can't hurt geometry on the
| | 02:49 | yellow layer, it stops at my cutting
edge anyway. So I was able to trim only
| | 02:53 | the magenta line. When I'm finished,
I'll right-click and I'll select Enter.
| | 02:58 | Now here is my problem, I went drew
all of these score lines and now that the
| | 03:02 | width of my walk is changed, I
have to trim off all of these ends.
| | 03:06 | No problem, we'll trim those using a
Fence. Once again I'll launch the Trim
| | 03:10 | command. I'm going to backup just a
little bit. We'll center this on screen.
| | 03:14 | I'm going to click the edge of my
sidewalk and then I'll right-click and the
| | 03:18 | objects I would like to trim, I'm
going to hit F for Fence and hit Enter.
| | 03:21 | Now I'm going to start my fence right here
and I'm going to come all the way down
| | 03:24 | to here and then I'll right-click,
select Enter and now I'll hit Escape to get
| | 03:29 | out of the command.
| | 03:33 | Using the Fence we can quickly select
entities in our drawing that would be
| | 03:36 | difficult to select in any other way.
The Fence acts just like a Crossing
| | 03:39 | Window except that it allows us to
select our entities using linear segments.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding and removing from selections| 00:00 | Occasionally when selecting objects,
we end up selecting a little too much.
| | 00:04 | When this happens, we generally
resort to holding down our Shift key on our
| | 00:07 | keyboard to deselect the entities. In
this lesson, we are going to learn how to
| | 00:10 | go beyond the Shift key and use the Add
and Remove modes to modify our selections.
| | 00:14 | On my screen, I have got a series of
dots. Let's say I would like to erase all
| | 00:18 | of the yellow ones. I'm going to come
up and launch my Erase command and I'm
| | 00:21 | going to make a window around these.
Now before I select anymore, take a look
| | 00:26 | at my command line. Notice AutoCAD is
telling me how many I have selected.
| | 00:29 | I am going to move up here and make a
window and select these. Once again,
| | 00:33 | AutoCAD is telling me how many it found.
It is also keeping a running total.
| | 00:36 | Finally, I'll come down and select the
last yellow dots. I'm going to do that
| | 00:40 | by creating a window and oops!
I selected too many. That is all right.
| | 00:43 | I am going to hit the letter R on my
keyboard. R stands for Remove, and I'll
| | 00:48 | hit Enter. Notice now my cursor says
Remove Objects. Anything I select at this
| | 00:53 | point will be removed from my current
selection. So I'm going to come down and
| | 00:56 | I'll make a window around
these dots to remove them.
| | 00:59 | Take a look at my command line.
AutoCAD is still keeping a running total and
| | 01:02 | then finally, I'll remove the last two
red dots. Oops! Once again, I removed
| | 01:08 | too much. That is all right. I'm
going to hit the A key on my keyboard.
| | 01:12 | A stands for Add and if I hit Enter,
AutoCAD puts me right back into the Select Objects prompt.
| | 01:18 | So I'll make my final window selection,
grab these two dots and I can see right
| | 01:22 | down here, my selection contains 23
objects. So we'll right-click to finish the
| | 01:27 | command. So when we select objects,
we can remove from our selection by using
| | 01:31 | the R key on our keyboard and we can
add to our selection by using the A key.
| | 01:35 | Knowing that, I'm going to pan over.
Let's say I would like to erase all of the
| | 01:40 | red dots in this pattern. I'm going to
launch the Erase command, and then I'm
| | 01:45 | going to make a window around
everything, then I'll hit the R key on my
| | 01:48 | keyboard and hit Enter, and I'll make
a window and remove these entities.
| | 01:54 | Then I'll hit the A key on my keyboard to
go back into Add mode, right-click, and
| | 01:58 | I'll select these entities and before
I finish the command, I can see AutoCAD
| | 02:04 | found 41 objects. Let's right
-click to finish the erase.
| | 02:07 | I would like to try and use Add and
Remove in a practical example. I'm going to
| | 02:12 | back up. We'll pan our drawing over.
We'll center this on screen. What we see
| | 02:17 | in this case is a civil engineering example.
This is a drawing of a heavily wooded lot.
| | 02:22 | My Cyan line represents my property
boundary line. These green symbols
| | 02:26 | represent trees. Now, the owner of
this property would like to build a
| | 02:29 | sub-division on this lot. So a
surveyor was sent out to shoot the location of
| | 02:33 | every tree with a trunk
diameter greater than 12 inches.
| | 02:36 | If we zoom in a little bit, we can see
some trees have a red X and some trees
| | 02:41 | have a blue X. Trees with the red X
are going to be removed for construction.
| | 02:45 | Trees with the blue X have a potential
of being removed. We would like to keep
| | 02:48 | them if we can because they're a high
quality tree, but there is a chance due to
| | 02:52 | construction and staging that we may
end up having to take these trees down.
| | 02:56 | I would like to find the quantity of
trees that are going to be removed and the
| | 02:59 | quantity of trees that have a
potential of being removed. If I hover over one
| | 03:04 | of these Xs, I can see it's sitting on
a layer called Removal, both the red and
| | 03:08 | the blue Xs are on that layer.
| | 03:09 | I would like to isolate that layer on
screen. I'm going to do that by going to
| | 03:13 | my Layer Properties palette. Now, mine
happens to be anchored on the side of my
| | 03:16 | interface. If yours is not, you can
always come up and click this icon right
| | 03:19 | here to launch the palette.
| | 03:22 | To isolate my layer, I'm going to come
down and select it in the list, and then
| | 03:26 | I'm going to right-click, and I'm
going to select Invert Selection, and then
| | 03:30 | I'll click the Light Ball to turn all
of my other layers off, and we'll include
| | 03:34 | the current layer.
| | 03:36 | Let's back up. I'm going to get my
quantities using the Add and Remove
| | 03:41 | Selection tool. So first of all, I'm
going to launch any command that asks me
| | 03:45 | to select objects. I'm going to select
Erase here. Let's find out how many red
| | 03:49 | Xs we have. I'm going to click right
here and make a window around everything,
| | 03:53 | and then I'm going to hit R for Remove
and I'll remove these blue ones, I'll
| | 03:58 | remove these, I'll remove these, and
then I'll hit A for Add and I'll add these back.
| | 04:08 | Now that only my red Xs are selected,
I can see that I have 55 trees that are
| | 04:12 | going to be removed. When I'm finished,
I'm going to hit my Escape key. Let's
| | 04:15 | find out how many trees have
a potential of being removed.
| | 04:18 | Once again, I can use any command that
asks me to select objects. I'm going to
| | 04:21 | launch the Move command. We'll make a
window around this geometry and this
| | 04:26 | geometry and this. Now, I have selected
a little bit too much, zoom in a little
| | 04:31 | bit closer. Now, we'll hit R for Remove,
and we'll remove this one and we'll
| | 04:36 | remove these. If I look at my command
line, I can see I have 25 trees that have
| | 04:41 | a potential of being removed from my site.
| | 04:43 | When I'm finished, I'm going to hit
the Escape key to cancel out of the
| | 04:45 | command and then I'm going to click my
Layer Previous button a couple of times
| | 04:48 | to put my geometry back the way it was.
| | 04:51 | Using the Add and Remove modes is
another way we can make modifications to our
| | 04:55 | selections. Keep in mind that whenever
you make a selection, AutoCAD will keep
| | 04:58 | a running total of your selected
objects. Combining this feature with Add and
| | 05:02 | Remove can be very
practical when finding quantities.
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| Selecting the last entity created| 00:00 | Another method we can use when
selecting objects is the Last method.
| | 00:03 | Last allows us to select the last
entity that we created in our drawing.
| | 00:06 | Now, on my screen I have got a single
green circle. I'm going to back up just a
| | 00:10 | little bit and I'm going to create
some copies of this geometry. I'm going to
| | 00:14 | come up and click my Copy command.
I'll select my circle and I'll right-click
| | 00:19 | and I'm going to create a copy right
here and then I'm going to create another
| | 00:24 | one over here and when I'm finished,
I'll right-click and select Enter.
| | 00:27 | Now, watch this. I'm going to launch
the Move command and at the Select Objects
| | 00:32 | prompt, I'm going to type L for Last,
and hit Enter. Take a look at which
| | 00:37 | entity was selected. The last entity
that was created. I'm going to right-click
| | 00:41 | to finish my selection and then I'm
going to turn on my Running Object Snaps,
| | 00:45 | and we'll pick this guy up from the
center and we'll place him right about here.
| | 00:50 | Let's say I would like to find the
area of this inner shape. To do that, I'm
| | 00:53 | going to come up to the Draw panel
flyout, and I'm going to select the Boundary
| | 00:57 | tool, and I'll click Pick Points. Then
I'll click inside this shape and I'll
| | 01:01 | right-click to create my boundary.
| | 01:04 | To find the area, I can select this
edge and I can go to my Property Changer,
| | 01:08 | and I can see the area right down here.
When I'm finished, I'll move outside
| | 01:11 | the palette, and I'll hit the Escape
key to deselect my geometry. Now that I
| | 01:15 | have found my area, let's say I
would like to erase this line work.
| | 01:19 | Well selecting, it is not a problem. I
can come up and launch my Erase command,
| | 01:22 | and at the Select Objects prompt, I'll
hit L for Last and hit Enter. That is
| | 01:26 | the last entity that I created. Let me
hit Enter again to remove that geometry.
| | 01:30 | Now that we have seen how to use the
Last Selection method, let me show you
| | 01:34 | where we might use it in a practical
example. I'm going to pan over to give
| | 01:37 | myself a little bit of room and I'll
back up a little bit. Let's say my client
| | 01:40 | emailed me their company logo, and the
logo file they sent me was a WMF file.
| | 01:46 | WMF stands for Windows Metafile.
| | 01:48 | A WMF file is Windows clipart. It is
the same file format. Believe it or not,
| | 01:53 | we can use AutoCAD to open the Clipart
file. We can do this by typing wmfin,
| | 01:57 | and I would like to look inside the
Exercise Files directory. We'll take a look
| | 02:04 | in the Chapter 06 folder, and we'll
select this file called Company Logo and
| | 02:09 | I'll click Open.
| | 02:11 | Now, when we insert a Windows Clip-art
file, it goes in just like a block.
| | 02:15 | Let me click to set its point on screen
and then I'll hit my Enter key to accept
| | 02:19 | the X scale, the Y scale, and the
Rotation Angle. Let's zoom in on the
| | 02:24 | geometry. Now, if I place my cursor
over this geometry and hover, I can see the
| | 02:29 | line work actually is a block. Let's
say I would like to use this geometry in
| | 02:33 | my Title block, and maybe I would
like to hatch this chair shape, in which
| | 02:37 | case, I'm going to have to explode this block.
| | 02:39 | Let's click the Explode command.
We'll select our geometry, and we'll
| | 02:42 | right-click. Now, here is my problem.
When I exploded my block, my chair
| | 02:46 | geometry turned into a bunch of
very small parts and I don't want to be
| | 02:51 | carrying around all this baggage. I
would rather have my chair defined by a
| | 02:54 | single polyline.
| | 02:55 | So what I'm going to do is hit Escape.
We are going to launch the Boundary
| | 02:58 | command. I'm going to Select Pick
Points and I'm going to pick inside this
| | 03:04 | chair. When I do, AutoCAD finds the
edges. Let me right-click to finish my
| | 03:08 | boundary. Well, here is my new problem.
Now, my new boundary and all those
| | 03:12 | small line segments are on the exact same layer.
| | 03:15 | Let me show you how we can clean this
up in a single step. I'm going to launch
| | 03:18 | my Erase tool. I'm going to make a
window around all of my chair geometry.
| | 03:23 | This selects everything. I'll then hit R
to Remove, Enter, and I'll hit L for Last,
| | 03:30 | Enter. That removes my
boundary from the selection.
| | 03:33 | When I'm finished, I'll hit Enter and
I'm left with only my polyline. At this
| | 03:38 | point, I can easily hatch this shape
by coming up and launching my Hatch
| | 03:40 | command. Let's click the Ellipses, and
we'll go to the other predefined tab and
| | 03:44 | we'll hatch this with a nice solid fill.
Let's click Select Objects and I'll
| | 03:49 | select my chair and right-click. I'll
select Preview. That is exactly what I
| | 03:54 | want. I'll right-click again to accept my Hatch.
| | 03:57 | Last is one of those selection
methods that you may not use everyday. It is
| | 04:01 | like the tool that you keep at
the bottom of your toolbox. When the
| | 04:04 | circumstances are right, it's nice to
know that it's there, because it can save
| | 04:07 | you a lot of time.
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| Cycling to select from stacked entities| 00:00 | Most of the time we can select an
entity by simply clicking on it. What do we
| | 00:03 | do though if we had had several
entities sitting on top of each other? In this
| | 00:06 | lesson we are going to look at a
selection method called Cycling. Cycling
| | 00:10 | allows us to select objects that
may be hidden beneath other objects.
| | 00:13 | On my screen I have got a series of
squares; each one is a different color.
| | 00:17 | The first thing I'm going to do is take
these squares and stack them on top of each
| | 00:20 | other. Let's launch the Move
command and I'll grab this square and
| | 00:24 | right-click. I'll pick it up from the
endpoint and place it here. I'm going to
| | 00:28 | right back in to the Move command by
right-clicking and selecting Repeat Move.
| | 00:31 | I'll grab this square and right-click.
I'll pick it up from the endpoint and
| | 00:36 | place it at the endpoint here.
| | 00:37 | Now, an even faster way to launch your
previous command- just hit your Spacebar.
| | 00:41 | That takes me right back into the
Move. I'll select this square and
| | 00:45 | right-click, we'll pick it up from
here and place it here. Finally, I'll hit
| | 00:48 | Spacebar. I'm going to grab this
square and right-click. I'll pick it up
| | 00:52 | I'll pick it up from the
endpoint here and place it here.
| | 00:54 | Now that these guys are stacked up
I'm going to zoom in a little bit.
| | 00:57 | What I'd like to do first is move the
Red Square out of the pile. Now that is
| | 01:02 | going to require me to select it. Here
is my problem. Since these entities are
| | 01:05 | all on top of each other, each time I
click I guarantee I'm not going to grab
| | 01:09 | the red square.
| | 01:11 | Let's hit Escape and let me show you
how I can select the square by using a
| | 01:15 | method called Cycling. I'm going to
launch the Move command and I'm going to
| | 01:19 | pick to select my square just like
I always do, but I'm going to do one
| | 01:22 | additional thing. I'm going to hold
down my Shift key and my Spacebar on my
| | 01:26 | keyboard and then I'm going to click.
And then I'll take my hand of the keyboard.
| | 01:31 | Take a look at the command line,
AutoCAD says Cycle On, I have just turned on
| | 01:35 | cycling. That means every time I left-
click my mouse AutoCAD will cycle through
| | 01:41 | each of the entities that
was beneath my pick box.
| | 01:44 | So I can left-click until I see the Red
Square. Once it's highlighted I can hit
| | 01:48 | the Enter key on my Keyboard to accept
it and then I'll right-click to finish
| | 01:52 | my selection and we'll pick them up
from the endpoint here, we'll pan over,
| | 01:56 | we'll place them over here.
| | 01:58 | Let's back up a little bit. Let's try
and rotate the White Square. I'm going to
| | 02:03 | launch the rotate command. At the
Select Objects prompt I'm going to hold down
| | 02:07 | Shift and the Spacebar, now if you have
got a timing problem like me, make sure
| | 02:11 | you hold the Shift key first before you
hit the Spacebar or you will get dumped
| | 02:15 | out of the command. Both of those keys
are pressed down, I'll click my square
| | 02:18 | and then I'll release the keys.
| | 02:20 | Now fortunately I was lucky it went
right to the White Square, but just so we
| | 02:23 | have a little repetition let me left-
click a few times. We'll cycle through
| | 02:27 | until we find it again. I'll Enter to
accept it. I'll right-click to finish my
| | 02:31 | selection, and we'll rotate them from
them from the endpoint here and we'll
| | 02:35 | bring them up here.
| | 02:37 | We can use the cycling method with any
AutoCAD command that asks us to select
| | 02:40 | objects. Let me show you where we
might use this in a real world example.
| | 02:44 | I'm going to back up, and we'll pan over.
Put the center of this geometry on
| | 02:48 | screen. Let's make the assumption
I'm using AutoCAD to do some mapping.
| | 02:52 | Now this is a general map but it still
suits our purpose nicely. Basically I
| | 02:56 | have got a large shape that is divided
into smaller shapes. Now I would like to
| | 03:00 | find the area of each of these smaller
shapes and the ones on the outside are
| | 03:04 | easy because I can select them just
by grabbing this outer line. Let me hit
| | 03:09 | Escape. Unfortunately, the guys on
the inside are a little more difficult.
| | 03:13 | It seems no matter how many times I click
I just can't select Nevada. I'm going to
| | 03:18 | hit Escape. Let's select that shape
using cycling. Now I'm at the command
| | 03:23 | prompt, I'm going to hold down Shift
and Spacebar and I'll click this edge and
| | 03:28 | then I'll Left-click.
| | 03:30 | AutoCAD cycles through all of the
entities that fell beneath my Pick Box.
| | 03:34 | This happens to be the one I want, so I'll
right-click to accept it. Then we'll go
| | 03:38 | over to our Property Changer, and if I
come right down here I can see the areas
| | 03:42 | approximately 108,000 square miles. Now
you may be asking how do you know those
| | 03:47 | units represent miles? I know this
because I set up by drawing I went to the
| | 03:51 | Tools tab and I selected my Units icon
and I set this drawing such that each
| | 03:55 | unit equals 1 mile.
| | 03:59 | Using the cycling selection method we
can easily select our entities even if
| | 04:03 | they're buried beneath a
stack of other line work.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making selections based on criteria| 00:00 | Think about it. Most times when we
select objects it's based on where they're
| | 00:03 | located on screen. What if I wanted to
select objects based on color or size or
| | 00:08 | layer? In this lesson, we are gong to
learn how to select our objects based on
| | 00:12 | what they are rather than where they are.
| | 00:15 | On my screen I have got a series of
shapes and some text. We are going to use
| | 00:18 | this geometry to explore how to
use AutoCAD's Quick Select command.
| | 00:22 | Quick Select allows us to select our
entities based on criteria. For instance let's
| | 00:27 | say I would like to select all
of the circles in this drawing.
| | 00:30 | To do that I'm going to come to the
Utilities panel in my ribbon and I'm going
| | 00:33 | to click the Quick Select icon. And
when the tool comes up on screen we are
| | 00:38 | going to work it from the top to
the bottom. Let's look at Apply To.
| | 00:43 | This is where I'm searching for my
geometry. I can search the entire drawing or
| | 00:47 | if I click this icon I can select a
specific area in my drawing. If we come
| | 00:51 | down to Object Type,
this is what I'm looking for.
| | 00:54 | I am going to select this flyout and
the entities that we see in this list are
| | 00:57 | the entities that exist in this
specific drawing. I'm going to select Circle.
| | 01:02 | In the properties area I can see a
listing of all of these circle properties
| | 01:05 | that I can search for.
| | 01:07 | Now in this case I want all circles so
I'm gong to come down to the Operator
| | 01:11 | area and click the flyout and I'm going
to click Select All. This grays out my
| | 01:16 | properties because I selecting all the
circles. When I click Ok I can see all
| | 01:20 | of those circles that have
been selected on my screen.
| | 01:23 | At this point, I could change their
properties using the Property Change or I
| | 01:26 | could move them, rotate, copy, erase
or any other AutoCAD command. Let's hit
| | 01:30 | Escape. Let's be a little bit more
specific this time. Most of these circles
| | 01:34 | have a radius of 3.
| | 01:36 | Some of these circles have a radius
that's slightly less than 3. Let's see if
| | 01:40 | we can find those. Once again I'm gong
to launch the Quick Select command.
| | 01:44 | I'm going to apply my search to the entire
drawing. The Object Type I'm looking for
| | 01:48 | is circles. Now what property am I looking for?
| | 01:52 | Let me pull this down and we'll select
radius. What do I know about the radius?
| | 01:56 | I'll go to the Operator and I'll set
that to Less Than (<) and it is less than
| | 02:01 | 3. So reading this from the top-down,
we are looking at the entire drawing for
| | 02:05 | circles whose radius is less than 3.
And I'll click OK and we have found two circles.
| | 02:11 | Let's set their radius to 3. I'm going
to do that by coming over to my Property
| | 02:14 | Change. I'll come right down here and
click in this field and we'll type 3 and
| | 02:18 | hit Enter. When I'm finished I'll hit
Escape to deselect. Now if we look at the
| | 02:24 | Layer control we can see the
current layer happens to be DET3.
| | 02:28 | Let's try and use Quick Select to
select all of the geometry on this layer.
| | 02:32 | Once again I'll launch the tool, I'm
going to apply to the entire drawing.
| | 02:36 | Object Type, this time I'm going to
leave it set to multiple. I do not care
| | 02:39 | what the object is as long as its layer
equals I'll click the value flyout and
| | 02:45 | select DET3 and we'll click OK.
| | 02:47 | Now that these guys are selected I'm
going to hit my erase icon to erase them.
| | 02:52 | Here is a shortcut, if you're
intending on using the Quick Select tool with
| | 02:56 | your Property Changer there is actually
an icon on the Property Changer itself.
| | 03:00 | If I open this up, this icon right
here is another Quick Select icon. Let me
| | 03:04 | select this to bring up the tool.
| | 03:06 | Now I do not know if you have noticed,
but at the bottom of the dialog there is
| | 03:08 | an option that says Exclude From new
Selection Set. We would use this option
| | 03:13 | when we want to select everything
except what we have set here. The Exclude
| | 03:17 | method can be handy if you're trying
to find deviations from your office standard.
| | 03:20 | For instance, let's find any object in
this drawing whose color property is not
| | 03:25 | set to By Layer. So we are going to
look at the entire drawing from multiple
| | 03:29 | objects whose color equals By Layer.
And then I'm going to come down and select
| | 03:33 | Exclude from New Selection Set. That
means I'm looking for everything that
| | 03:37 | doesn't match this criteria. And I'll
click OK and I have found those entities
| | 03:41 | that are forced to be a color. At
this point, I can go back to my Property
| | 03:45 | Changer and I can set their color to By Layer.
| | 03:48 | Another way to understand how the Quick
Select tool works, let's try and use it
| | 03:54 | in a real-world example. I'm going to
open a drawing. We'll click the Open
| | 03:58 | icon. We are going to look inside the
Chapter 6 folder and I would like you to
| | 04:02 | come down and open the
Number Six detail drawing.
| | 04:06 | This drawing represents a silk fence
detail and in our office we have a very
| | 04:10 | strict standard concerning text types.
We cannot have any text whose height of
| | 04:15 | less than .1 inches tall. Let's use
Quick Select to check this drawing against
| | 04:19 | our office standard. I'm going to come
over to the Property Changer and I'll
| | 04:22 | select the Quick Select icon.
| | 04:24 | And I'm going to apply to the
entire drawing I'm searching for text or
| | 04:30 | multiline text, the same thing and
then I'll grab my slider and pull down.
| | 04:34 | We are looking for text height and then
I'll set my operator to Less Than and
| | 04:39 | my value is .1.
| | 04:41 | Search the entire drawing for text
whose height is less than .1, and then I a
| | 04:46 | going to make sure and set this back
to Include. Notice how Quick Select
| | 04:49 | remembers your previous setting. When
I click OK I can see that I have two
| | 04:53 | offending text objects in this drawing.
Let's fix these by going the Property
| | 04:57 | Changer. I'll come down to the height
area, I'll click and I'll set this to .1.
| | 05:02 | Let's hit Enter and then I'll move
outside the palette and we'll hit Escape to
| | 05:05 | deselect our entities.
| | 05:07 | Using the Quick Select tool you can
select objects that would be impossible to
| | 05:10 | select by other means. Quick Select
allows you to select entities based on
| | 05:14 | their color, size, layer, or
any other AutoCAD property.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
7. LayersMaking an object's layer current| 00:00 | If you have a lot of layers in your
drawing, you probably spend a good deal of
| | 00:03 | time scrolling up and down through
your layer list to set a layer current.
| | 00:07 | In this lesson I'm going to show you how
to set virtually any layer to be current
| | 00:11 | even if you don't know the layers name.
| | 00:13 | On my screen, I have got a mechanical
example. This happens to be a drawing of
| | 00:16 | a flexible LED penlight. Let's say
that I would like to do some drafting on
| | 00:20 | this green layer. I need to make some
changes to this geometry. Well, at this point,
| | 00:25 | I guess I would have to know the
layer's name in order to set it current.
| | 00:28 | Now if I hover over this geometry,
I can see it's on layer chrome, then I guess
| | 00:32 | I would have to come up to my Layer
control and click the flyout and I can
| | 00:35 | select that layer and make it current
and then I could continue with my work.
| | 00:39 | But you know what? None of those steps
are necessary. I can set any layer in my
| | 00:43 | drawing current by simply clicking this button.
| | 00:46 | This is the Make Object's Layer Current
button. For instance, let's say I would
| | 00:50 | like to do some drafting on this blue
layer. I don't even know what the layer's
| | 00:54 | name is. Doesn't matter. I can come up
and click this icon, select a line on
| | 00:58 | that layer, that layer becomes current,
and anything I draft is now on that layer.
| | 01:04 | Let's hit Escape. Let's say I would
like to create some more dimensions.
| | 01:08 | Once again I'll click my Make Object's
Layer Current icon. We'll select the
| | 01:12 | dimension and make that layer
current and then I can come up and click a
| | 01:16 | Dimension tool and we could pull out
another dimension. If I wanted to draft
| | 01:21 | on the body of the part, once again
we'll come up and simply click the tool,
| | 01:25 | select the line, and that layer is now current.
| | 01:28 | From now on, we don't have to search
through a layer list to choose our current
| | 01:31 | layer. By using the Set Object's Layer
Current button, we can set any layer on
| | 01:36 | our drawing to be current by
simply selecting an existing entity.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Freezing layers| 00:00 | To say that I'm going to freeze a layer,
that doesn't really tell us anything.
| | 00:04 | In fact the word freeze is so non-
descriptive that a lot of AutoCAD users don't
| | 00:08 | fully understand what happens
to a layer when it's frozen.
| | 00:11 | In this lesson, we are going to get to
the bottom of what it really means to
| | 00:13 | freeze a layer. On my screen, I have
got a drawing of a tree survey that was
| | 00:17 | done on a vacant lot. The Cyan Line
represents my property boundary;
| | 00:21 | the symbols represent trees.
| | 00:23 | This drawing also contains several of
these purple lines. Let me zoom in a
| | 00:26 | little bit. These lines represent
contours and contours show us the
| | 00:30 | three-dimensional elevation of our
property. In this case, they are displaying
| | 00:34 | my elevations in even 2-foot increments.
| | 00:36 | I am going to back up a little bit and
let's freeze a layer. One way we can do
| | 00:41 | that is by using the Layer palette.
Let me open this up on the screen.
| | 00:45 | I'm going to freeze my contours. So let's
come down and select the Contours layer
| | 00:49 | and then I'm going to click the second
icon over from the left. When I do the
| | 00:53 | sun turns into a snowflake. That shows
me the layer is now frozen and then I'm
| | 00:57 | going to move outside the
palette and we'll let it collapse.
| | 01:00 | Now, it kind of appears that when we
freeze a layer, we are turning that layer off.
| | 01:03 | Actually, we are doing quite a bit
more. You see when we freeze a layer we
| | 01:08 | are hiding that geometry from AutoCAD.
AutoCAD no longer knows these purple lines exist.
| | 01:12 | Now, you are probably wondering why
would we want to hide our geometry from
| | 01:16 | AutoCAD? Well, that's a good question.
You see when we are working AutoCAD is
| | 01:20 | constantly maintaining all of the line
work in our drawing. Not just the stuff
| | 01:24 | we see on screen. It's also maintaining
everything outside our screen boundary
| | 01:28 | as well as anything that's on
the layer that's turned off.
| | 01:31 | So AutoCAD is doing a lot of stuff in
the background as we work, and if we have
| | 01:35 | a really large drawing, it can slow
down the performance of our computer.
| | 01:38 | By freezing or hiding our geometry, we
reduce the amount of work AutoCAD has to do
| | 01:43 | and this allows our computer to run faster.
| | 01:46 | To illustrate this hiding concept, we
are going to do a little test. I'm going
| | 01:49 | to turn off all of my layers. Let's go
to the Layer palette and to select all
| | 01:53 | of my layers, I'm going to click and
hold right down here with my mouse, and
| | 01:56 | I'll drag up. This creates a crossing
window. I release when all of my layers
| | 02:01 | are selected, and then I'll click the
light bulb to turn them all off, and I
| | 02:06 | would like to include the current layer.
Now, just to recap, my contour layer
| | 02:10 | is frozen and all of layers are
turned off. Let's launch the Erase command.
| | 02:15 | At the Select Objects prompt, I'm
going to type All and hit Enter. Notice at
| | 02:21 | the command line, AutoCAD found several
entities. Let's hit Enter to finish the
| | 02:25 | command and then we'll turn our
layers back on. Let me go back to the Layer
| | 02:29 | palette. All of my layers are still
selected. I'm going to click the light bulb
| | 02:32 | to turn them all on, and then I'll
follow my contours, and then we'll move
| | 02:37 | outside the palette and let it collapse.
| | 02:39 | Notice the only thing that remains
are the contours. By doing an Erase All,
| | 02:44 | AutoCAD erased everything in my drawing
even the stuff on the layers that were
| | 02:48 | turned off, because AutoCAD
still knows that stuff exists.
| | 02:51 | Since my contours were frozen,
AutoCAD didn't know they were there, so it
| | 02:55 | couldn't erase those entities. I'm
going to bring back my geometry by clicking
| | 02:58 | Undo. So bottom line, if we freeze a
layer, AutoCAD no longer knows that
| | 03:05 | geometry exists.
| | 03:06 | Now, we can also freeze our layers
through the Layer control. If I come right
| | 03:10 | up here to the Layers panel in my ribbon,
I have got an icon right here that I
| | 03:13 | can select. This guy allows me to
freeze a layer. I don't even have to know
| | 03:16 | what the name is. I can simply click
an entity and AutoCAD will freeze the
| | 03:20 | layer. This is probably the fastest
way to freeze layers in your drawing, and
| | 03:24 | you are right, if you look right next
to this icon, we have got another one
| | 03:27 | that allows us to turn the layers off.
| | 03:29 | I am going to hit Escape to cancel the
command and then I'm going to hit Layer
| | 03:31 | Previous to thaw my contours. Freezing
layers can be a great way to speed up
| | 03:36 | the performance of a slow computer,
especially if you have a large drawing.
| | 03:40 | By freezing any unnecessary layers,
AutoCAD will only be processing the geometry
| | 03:44 | you need to do your work.
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| Locking layers| 00:00 | You may be wondering if it's possible
to prevent accidental changes from being
| | 00:03 | made to your drawing. In fact, AutoCAD
does have a tool to help us with this.
| | 00:08 | In this lesson, we are going to learn
how to protect our geometry using the
| | 00:10 | layer lock and unlock tools.
| | 00:12 | On my screen, I have got a mechanical
example. Now this drawing isn't finished,
| | 00:16 | but I would like to use this drawing
to illustrate how we can use AutoCAD to
| | 00:19 | protect our line work.
| | 00:21 | Let's take a look at the top view.
As you can see most of the part is
| | 00:24 | completed. At this point I would like
to lock my part geometry to prevent it
| | 00:28 | from accidental changes. I'm
going to do that by locking the layer.
| | 00:31 | First, we'll find out the layer name.
I'm going to hover over this line work.
| | 00:35 | I can see it's on layer part and then
to lock my layer I'm going to come up to
| | 00:39 | the layer control and click the flyout.
We'll come down and click the padlocks,
| | 00:43 | and then I'll click on
screen to dismiss the menu.
| | 00:45 | Notice how AutoCAD fades back my line
work. This is a visual cue to remind me
| | 00:50 | that the layer is locked. Now there
is no magic that happens when we lock a
| | 00:53 | layer. Essentially all we are doing
is making the entities on that layer
| | 00:57 | non-selectable. Let's try and make a change.
| | 00:59 | I am going to launch my Erase command,
and then I'll select one of these
| | 01:03 | entities, and notice as I place my
cursor over the line, AutoCAD is showing me
| | 01:07 | a padlocks symbol as a further cue to
let me know that that geometry is locked.
| | 01:11 | In fact, if I click to try and select
this, and we look at the command line,
| | 01:15 | AutoCAD says it found an entity,
but it was on a locked layer.
| | 01:18 | Now I'm still on the Erase command.
Let's see what happens if I make a window
| | 01:22 | around all of this geometry and right-
click to finish the command. Notice that
| | 01:26 | everything was erased except for the
geometry that was on the locked layer.
| | 01:30 | I'm going to click Undo to bring back my
line work, because I want to show you that
| | 01:34 | we can also lock our layers using the
Layers Properties palette. Let me open up
| | 01:38 | the palette. I'll move over to the
part layer and notice we can see the same
| | 01:42 | padlocks here.
| | 01:43 | As long as we are here, I'm going to
lock my Dimensions layer as well.
| | 01:47 | And notice as I move outside the palette,
my dimensions layer is now faded back to
| | 01:51 | show that it's locked. Remember
that locked means unselectable.
| | 01:55 | Watch this. My part layer is current
and it happens to be locked. I'm going to
| | 01:58 | launch my Line command and I'm going
to start drafting. Notice that we can
| | 02:03 | draft on a locked layer. Let me hit
Escape. Be careful of this, because once
| | 02:08 | you start drafting on a locked layer
you may forget and then you'll wonder why
| | 02:12 | you can't make changes to your geometry.
| | 02:14 | To unlock my layers, I'm going to go
back to my Layer control, and we click our
| | 02:18 | padlocks, and then we'll click again on
model space. Let me show you a shortcut
| | 02:23 | we can use to lock and unlock our
layers. If I click the flyout in the Layers
| | 02:27 | panel of my ribbon, notice I have got
icons right here. These allow me to lock
| | 02:32 | or unlock my layers by simply selecting
entities on my screen. For instance, if
| | 02:37 | I click Lock, I can come down and
select my dimensions and that layer is now locked.
| | 02:41 | We can also use the Layers panel to
adjust the fading of our locked layers.
| | 02:46 | If I click-and-drag in this box, I can
change the intensity of the locked layers.
| | 02:52 | And if I decide I don't want to use
layer fading, I can come over and click
| | 02:55 | this icon to disable the feature. I'm
going to turn this back on, I'll drag
| | 02:59 | this down to about 40 or so. And then
I'm going to come up and click my Unlock
| | 03:05 | icon and we'll unlock our dimensions layer.
| | 03:08 | Locking your layers is a great way to
protect yourself from accidental changes,
| | 03:12 | and by using the shortcut icons in the
Layer palette we can lock or unlock any
| | 03:17 | layer with a single click.
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| Isolating layers| 00:00 | The more complicated your drawings
become, the more tools you will need to
| | 00:03 | help simplify your work. One such
tool is the Isolate Layer command.
| | 00:08 | With Isolate Layer, you can select the
layers by picking entities on your screen,
| | 00:12 | and AutoCAD will hide or
lock all of the other layers.
| | 00:15 | On my screen I have got a civil
engineering example. This happens to be a
| | 00:18 | drawing of a Tree survey, and we are
going to use this geometry to explore the
| | 00:21 | Layer Isolate command.
| | 00:23 | Now we can find the tool in the Layers
panel of our ribbon. The Isolate icon is
| | 00:27 | right here, let me click to select
that, and now AutoCAD is asking for the
| | 00:31 | layers to isolate. Let's say I'm
currently working with my Property boundary.
| | 00:35 | That's this cyan line. I'm going to
isolate this layer by selecting it, and
| | 00:40 | then I'll right-click and select Enter,
and when I do, AutoCAD fades and locks
| | 00:44 | every other layer in my drawing,
thus isolating my boundary.
| | 00:48 | Now to be honest, I don't care for
the way AutoCAD displays the un-isolated
| | 00:52 | geometry, because this could be
extremely confusing. If you forget that you are
| | 00:55 | working with isolated layers, you can
continue to draft, and then wonder why
| | 00:59 | you can't make any edits to your line-
work. So what I'm going to do is show you
| | 01:02 | how to make some changes to the
Isolate Layer settings, to make it a little
| | 01:06 | easier to understand on screen.
| | 01:08 | Let's un-isolate our geometry. I can
do that by clicking this icon. Now that
| | 01:13 | everything is back to normal, I'm
going to go to my Layer Properties palette,
| | 01:15 | then we'll come all the way down to
the end, and we are going to click this
| | 01:18 | wrench. This represents our layer
settings. Right in the middle of this dialog
| | 01:23 | box are the controls that we use for
the Isolate Layer tool. Right now we can
| | 01:28 | see that it's set to Lock and Fade
the un-isolated layers, instead, I would
| | 01:33 | rather turn those guys Off.
| | 01:35 | Now that I have made my change, let's
come down and click OK. Let's try and
| | 01:38 | launch the command again. I'm going
to come up and click the Layer Isolate
| | 01:41 | tool. Let me select my Property
boundary, and I'll right-click and select
| | 01:45 | Enter, and notice that this is the
only geometry that I now see on screen.
| | 01:50 | At this point I can make any changes I
have to, and when I'm done, I can simply
| | 01:54 | click my un-isolate button to put the
layers right back the way they were.
| | 01:57 | Using the Isolate Layer tool is a
great way to simplify your geometry on
| | 02:01 | screen, and make it easier to work on
larger drawings. It won't be long before
| | 02:05 | the Layer Isolate command
becomes one of your favorite tools.
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| Preventing layers from plotting| 00:00 | Just because a layer is visible in
your drawing doesn't mean it has to plot.
| | 00:03 | Using a non-plotable layer allows you
to insert additional documentation or
| | 00:07 | directions in your drawings, and opens
up new possibilities to collaborate with
| | 00:11 | others. In this lesson we are going to
look at how we can set our layers to no plot.
| | 00:15 | On my screen I have got a mechanical
example. This is a metric drawing, and it
| | 00:19 | was created such that each unit
equals one millimeter. Now we are currently
| | 00:22 | looking at the layout that was
created for this drawing, and if we look a
| | 00:25 | little bit closer we can see that this
drawing contains some notes. Let's pan
| | 00:29 | over to this note on the left side
first. This note is specific to this
| | 00:34 | callout. This tells me that the
spacing of my holes is tentative. I have to
| | 00:38 | wait for client verification before I
can finalize the design. If I back up and
| | 00:42 | pan over, I have got another note
right up here. This note is in relation to
| | 00:46 | this hole. It says the hole was 30
millimeters diameter, but it was changed per
| | 00:51 | an internal review. And it
gives the date of that decision.
| | 00:55 | So the purpose of this note is a means
of documenting the revisions to my part.
| | 00:59 | If I pan up, I can see another note.
This one is to the engineer, and it
| | 01:04 | references this diameter. It says hey,
will this diameter work because the plot
| | 01:08 | diameter is 122 millimeters, these
numbers obviously don't match? I'm going to
| | 01:13 | double click my wheel to do a Zoom
Extents. Now each of these notes is
| | 01:17 | important. But there are here for
internal use only. I don't want these showing
| | 01:21 | up on my printed sheet. Let's jump in
the model space. To do that I'm going to
| | 01:24 | come down and right-click on my Quick
Wheel Layout tool and I'm going to select
| | 01:28 | Activate Model tab. Now the notes that
I have created are on their own layer.
| | 01:33 | If I hover over this geometry, I can
see a layer called Internal Documentation.
| | 01:37 | And we can turn this layer off and it
would obviously not plot, but the problem
| | 01:41 | is if we turn it off, people aren't
going to see it. So what we are going to do
| | 01:44 | is set this layer to be a no plot layer.
To do that I'm going to go to my Layer
| | 01:48 | Properties palette. Then I'm going to
come down and click this slider bar.
| | 01:51 | I'm going to drag my settings to the right
until I see this column that looks like printers.
| | 01:57 | This column represents whether the
layer is plotable. I'm going to come down to
| | 02:01 | the internal documentation layer, and
I'm going to click the icon and it will
| | 02:04 | put a red slash through it, meaning
that anything on this layer, although it
| | 02:07 | shows up on screen, will not show up
on then paper. Notice that any layer in
| | 02:11 | your drawing can be a no plot layer.
Let's test it. I'm going to move outside
| | 02:15 | my palette, and let it close. Let's
jump back to our layout. I can do that by
| | 02:19 | right-clicking on the Quick Wheel
Layout tool and selecting activate previous
| | 02:23 | layout. Let's do a plot preview. I'm
going to come up to the output tab on my
| | 02:27 | ribbon, and I'll come all the way
down to the plot panel, and I'll select
| | 02:31 | preview. And as you can see none of
the notations show up on my final plot.
| | 02:37 | At this point I'll come up and click the
X to close my preview. As you can see,
| | 02:41 | sometimes you may want to add
information to your drawing that isn't intended
| | 02:44 | to be printed. By creating no plot
layers, you can add data and descriptions to
| | 02:48 | your drawing, and never have to worry
about it showing up on the printed page.
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| Filtering layers| 00:00 | It's not uncommon for a large AutoCAD
drawing to have more than 100 layers.
| | 00:04 | As your list of layers grows, your layer
management skills become very important.
| | 00:09 | In this lesson we are going to look at
how we can manage our layers using layer filters.
| | 00:13 | On my screen I have got a civil engineering
example. Now this drawing is quite busy.
| | 00:16 | It has a lot of line work going on.
Generally speaking we have four
| | 00:20 | existing streets that combine to create
a large lot. And inside the lot I have
| | 00:25 | a got a proposed subdivision. I'm going
to zoom in a little bit and we can see
| | 00:28 | that I have a proposed cul-de-sac and
sidewalk. These red rectangular shapes
| | 00:33 | represent my lots. The yellow
rectangles represent my proposed house locations.
| | 00:39 | I also have labels that show me the
proposed elevations of my site. And I have
| | 00:44 | got some flow arrows that show me
direction of the storm water will flow.
| | 00:47 | I have also get line work that
represents utilities. Right here I have got some
| | 00:51 | storm sewer. I have got water main and
over here I have got some sanitary. Now,
| | 00:55 | don't worry. You don't have to know
what each of these lines means. Just know
| | 00:58 | there is a lot of work in this drawing.
I'm going to do a Zoom Extents.
| | 01:02 | Let's visit our Layer Properties Manager.
I'm going to come over and hover over the
| | 01:06 | icon. If we come down to the bottom
of the palette, we can see that this
| | 01:09 | drawing has 67 layers.
| | 01:11 | I am going to move up and click and
hold on this slider. As I pull this down,
| | 01:15 | I want you to look at the layer names.
Notice I'm using a standard layer naming
| | 01:19 | convention. I'm using standard
characters as prefixes, suffixes, and I'm using
| | 01:24 | standard groupings of characters
within my layer names. The only way to
| | 01:27 | efficiently deal with a large number
of layers is by using a standard layer
| | 01:32 | naming convention. Here is how mine
works. All layers that start with X-
| | 01:36 | represent existing conditions. All
layers that start with P- represents
| | 01:41 | proposed conditions. Let's say I would
like to turn off all the proposed line work
| | 01:46 | in my drawing. That means I would
need to turn off all layers that start
| | 01:49 | with P-. To do that I'm going to create
a filter. Now we can create filters in
| | 01:54 | the upper right hand corner of our
palette. Let me click inside this field.
| | 01:57 | When I do, AutoCAD gives me an asterisk.
Now asterisk is a wild card. It means
| | 02:02 | everything. And to filter my layers I'm
going to type P-. It says show me every
| | 02:07 | layer name that starts with P-,
regardless of what it ends with.
| | 02:11 | And if I grab my slider now and pull
down, you can see those are the only
| | 02:14 | layers that show up in the list. To
turn these off I'm going to select all of
| | 02:18 | them. I'm going to right-click on a
layer name, and I'm going to come down and
| | 02:22 | click Select All. Then I'll click one
of the light bulbs to turn them off.
| | 02:26 | And if I move outside the palette, we can
see that none of my proposed conditions
| | 02:30 | show up on screen. Now this was very
easy to do with a layer filter and some
| | 02:34 | standardized layer names. I'm going to
click Layer Previous to bring back my
| | 02:37 | geometry. We'll zoom in a little bit.
Notice that I have a lot of text in this
| | 02:41 | drawing. Let's say I'd like to turn off
all of my text objects. To do that
| | 02:46 | I'm going to go to my Layer Properties
palette. I'm going to move over and click
| | 02:49 | the X to clear the previous filter.
And I'm going to create a new filter.
| | 02:53 | I'm going to type *txt* because all of
the text in my drawing is sitting on a
| | 03:00 | layer that contains txt somewhere in
the layer name. Now that I have filtered
| | 03:04 | these layers, I'm going to select them.
I'll do that by clicking right here,
| | 03:07 | and I'm going to hold, we'll make a
crossing window across the names, and then
| | 03:11 | I'll click a light bulb to turn them off.
| | 03:13 | Once again we'll move outside the
palette and you can see that my text no
| | 03:17 | longer shows up on screen. Now I have
other characters that I use in my layers.
| | 03:21 | Let me go back to the palette and as
an example, I'm going to create another
| | 03:25 | filter. All of my water main
utilities are in a layer name that contains wm
| | 03:31 | somewhere. Let me backspace this out.
All of my storm sewer sits on a layer
| | 03:36 | name that contains stm. All of my
layers that contain symbology for a 50 scale
| | 03:41 | plot end in the number of 50. So this
filter is showing me all layer names,
| | 03:46 | no matter what they start with, that end
with the number 50. Probably one of the
| | 03:50 | best things about layer filters is tat
we can save them. Now I can't save them here.
| | 03:54 | I'm going to click the X to
clear my filter. This is kind off a quick
| | 03:58 | filter area. If I would like to save
one of these, I'm going to come down and
| | 04:02 | click this icon.
| | 04:04 | Let's say I like to create a
filter for my text layers. For the filter name,
| | 04:07 | I'm going to type all text. And
then in filter definition I'm going to
| | 04:12 | click in the name field and I'll
type my filter, *txt*, and we can see the
| | 04:19 | results of the filter right down here.
Notice we can also create saved filters
| | 04:23 | based on On and Off properties, frozen,
locked, color, just about any other
| | 04:28 | layer property. Let's click OK and if
I go back to my Layer Properties palette
| | 04:33 | and we look on the left hand side,
we can see I now have a filter called All Text.
| | 04:37 | So at any point I can click All
to see all of my layers. If I would like
| | 04:41 | to restrict my list to only text,
I can select my new filter. By default
| | 04:46 | AutoCAD creates a filter called All
Used layers that we can select as well.
| | 04:50 | Since I have created my new filter, I'm
going to select All Text and we'll turn
| | 04:54 | all of it back on. Let me click and
hold. We'll drag across these names.
| | 04:58 | I'll click the light bulb, and we'll turn
these guys back on, and then we'll let the
| | 05:02 | palette collapse. Using layer filters
and logical naming standards, we can work
| | 05:07 | efficiently no matter how many
layers we may have in our drawing.
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ConclusionGoodbye| 00:00 | Well, we have reached the end of the
title. I want to say it's been a pleasure
| | 00:03 | working with you these past few hours,
and even though our time has come to a close,
| | 00:07 | this is just a beginning for you.
It's time to take your new skills and
| | 00:11 | make your mark in the world of
production drafting. Good luck!
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