- [Instructor] The whole point of drafting is to show someone how to build the object and build it repeatedly and consistently. To do this, the backbone of drafting is dimensioning. There are many rules for drafting dimensions, and while I won't get into proper dimensioning technique here, I will explain how to use the tools that AutoCAD for Mac provides so that we can detail all the pieces of our drawings. To start, we can look at the dimension tool set, found here, and see some of the tools that are available to us. AutoCAD uses what are called dimension styles to preset all of the variables available to a dimension, things like text size, arrowheads, offsets, and so on.
To create our own style, we can either click on dimension style here, or we can go up under the menu and click dimension style. Here, in the dimension style manager, we can create our own style. Annotative styles, seen here, allow you to change the dimension scaling for use in model space. But since we are going to concentrate on putting our annotations in paper space, we're going to use a standard style. We'll create our own style using the plus button here, which I'm simply going to call, LYNDA.
We have the option for starting with another previous style, and we're going to choose standard and click continue. Here, we can see all the tabs for the different components and variables for our dimension styles. We're not going to go through every single option, but I do want to highlight a few of them. Starting in the line tab, I typically change my color, line type, and line weights, so that they are controlled by the layers. We can also choose our baseline spacing, which we'll talk about a little bit later, and we can choose the extension beyond the dimension lines here for the extension lines, as well as the offset from the origin.
Remember that the extension lines are the lines that are perpendicular to the part being dimensioned, and the dimension lines are parallel to the part being dimensioned. Dimension lines typically are the ones that have the arrowheads and the actual dimension inside of them. Symbols and arrows allows us to choose the symbols that we want to use for our arrowheads. We have quite a few to choose from, including closed filled, architectural ticks, all the way down to creating our own user arrows. We can control the size of the arrows here, as well as the break size when we have overlapping dimensions.
Center marks refers to the center mark symbol, seen here, used in radial and diameter dimensions. We can see a preview of what each one of these looks like by cycling through the radio buttons here. Text allow us to choose a specific text style, as well as a text height. We can also choose the alignment of the text, here, either horizontal, or always read from the bottom of the page, aligned with each individual dimension line, or the ISO standard, which is a line, but the radial and diameter dimensions and any leaders are typically read horizontally.
Fit refers to which part of the dimension is placed outside of the extension lines if not everything will fit. In this case, we can see the arrowheads are actually placed outside the extension lines, because not everything will fit between them. We can also control the overall scale of the dimension here. Units are quite important, so make sure you choose the unit format that you want to use. We have decimal, architectural, and engineering to choose from. Please note that this is separate from the drawing units that we spoke to earlier.
We can also set the precision here, in our case, about two decimal places. Alternate units are quite helpful if you're using any kind of International Drawing Standards or you need to show Imperial and Metric alternates. Finally, tolerances allow us to add symmetrical, deviation, or limits to our dimensions. Once we're done, we're going to go ahead and click on okay. We'll make sure that we use the gear here to set our dimension style as the current style, so any new dimensions we create will be on our current style.
The gear is also used to modify and compare our dimension styles. Now that we've created our style, we can use it to apply dimensions to our drawing.
Author
Released
1/31/2019- Navigating the interface
- Accessing the palettes, tabs, and menus
- Managing files
- Configuring new drawings
- Zooming, panning, and working with views
- Working with geometry
- Modifying geometry
- Creating and managing layers
- Creating advanced objects, including dynamic blocks
- Creating layouts
- Adding annotations
- Plotting
- Working in 3D
Skill Level Beginner
Duration
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Introduction
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AutoCAD versions1m 56s
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1. The Interface
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Components of the interface3m 14s
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Accessing the palettes2m 54s
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Command-line overview2m 11s
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Drawing tabs1m 10s
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Layout tabs1m 1s
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Tool bar1m 28s
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Use the Help menu1m 21s
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Right-click menu2m 26s
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2. File Management
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File types basics2m 33s
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Opening files1m 26s
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Saving files2m 31s
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Configuring a new drawing1m 16s
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Templates2m 13s
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Drawing units3m 55s
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3. Navigation
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Zoom commands3m 22s
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Panning1m 43s
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Regenerating and redrawing1m 34s
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Views3m 24s
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4. Basic Geometry
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Geometry of your geometry2m 18s
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Absolute coordinate entry3m 33s
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Relative coordinate entry3m 15s
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Polar coordinate entry3m 22s
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Lines2m 48s
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Circles and arcs4m 1s
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Polylines2m 45s
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Polygons and rectangles3m 38s
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Ellipses2m 25s
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Splines2m 5s
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Points1m 20s
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5. Geometry Tools
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Grid and snap2m 49s
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Ortho and polar2m 5s
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Object snap4m 41s
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Object snap tracking1m 51s
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Measuring tools3m 14s
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Divide1m 42s
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6. Modifying Geometry
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Selection methods5m 10s
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Quick select2m 4s
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Move2m 43s
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Copy3m 41s
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Rotate2m 32s
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Scale2m 25s
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Stretch3m 34s
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Trim and extend2m 59s
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Offset3m 13s
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Mirror2m 10s
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Array4m 13s
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Polyline editing4m 25s
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Join and break3m 5s
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Fillet and chamfer3m 43s
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Properties palette2m 27s
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7. Layers
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Object properties2m 10s
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Layer basics2m 52s
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Creating layer5m 38s
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Layer tools2m 40s
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Advanced layer tools2m 15s
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Layer states3m 24s
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8. Advanced Objects
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Hatch basics3m 13s
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Using gradients1m 49s
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Groups1m 56s
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Blocks1m 35s
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Creating blocks2m 39s
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Updating blocks3m 37s
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Dynamic blocks2m 7s
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Dynamic blocks practice5m 40s
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External references4m 3s
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Binding external references2m 53s
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Underlaying images4m 16s
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Underlaying PDFs4m 17s
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9. Layouts
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Creating layouts1m 50s
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Viewport basics3m 49s
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Locking viewports1m 27s
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Viewport layers1m 55s
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10. Annotations
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Text styles1m 58s
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Single-line text2m 41s
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Multi-line text2m 33s
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Dimension styles4m 9s
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Linear dimensions3m 29s
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Aligned dimensions2m 27s
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Special dimensions1m 46s
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Dimension tool1m 48s
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Leaders2m 29s
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Dimension overrides3m 7s
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Annotation scaling2m 41s
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Page setups4m 1s
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Plot styles2m 6s
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Plot dialog1m 25s
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Batch publishing2m 4s
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Pack and go1m 47s
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Sheet sets overview4m 36s
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Creating tags1m 13s
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Plotting a project1m 29s
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13. 3D Basics
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Views in 3D2m 47s
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Visual styles2m 41s
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Solid primitives2m 1s
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2D to 3D tools4m 12s
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Modifying 3D objects7m 10s
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14. Advanced Tools
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Drawing recovery1m 42s
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Auditing a drawing1m 10s
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Purge1m 12s
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Conclusion
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Next steps36s
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Video: Dimension styles