From the course: Learning AutoCAD 360
Drawing tools
- One of the things I like about Auto CAD 360 is you are opening, editing and saving the full dwg file. Too often, I find apps and viewers will convert an original file to something new and you'll have to export or convert that file back to the original format when you're done. Using the native dwg file means we can use the tools that we're used to like line, circle and rectangle to create new geometry. I'm gonna select the line tool here and here, we can see, I have two options under the cursor, line and arc. Think of this as the command modifiers in the command line or the options from the demic input tool. I can use the up and down arrows to select which tool I want and for now, I'm going to stick with the line command. But, I want you to pay attention to the different options you get as you progress through the commands. I'm gonna select my first point here and simply start to drag over. As I hover around the geometry, I get my familiar object snap points as well as object snap tracking. These settings are controlled here for the object snap toolbar. Here I can choose the running object snaps that I prefer. Notice, as I draw my line, the length value is highlighted. This means I can type a specific value for the length of my line. I want to make sure that my line is at the proper angle before I press return 'cause when I press return, the line will be drawn at whatever angle is currently being displayed. If you want more control of the angle of the line, we have two options. One, if you come down here to the very bottom, and select alignment, we can control the angle down to 15 degree increments. Also, I can turn on ortho mode, which allows me to only draw horizontal and vertical lines, just like pressing F8 on my desktop version of Auto-CAD. Option two is when drawing a line, you can also hold down the shift key on your keyboard for a temporary ortho override, just like Auto CAD desktop. Circles and arcs are somewhat similar to the desktop counterparts, only I have very few options in creating these. For my circle, I can only choose a center point and then specify a radius. For an arc, I can only pick the end and starting points and then specify the height of the arc. Ellipse is much less precise, as I have no control over the geometry of the ellipse. I'm just choosing two points and drawing a shape as I would, almost on a tablet. The last draw tool I want to draw your attention to is the sketch line tool. This is found here and is similar to the sketch tool on Auto CAD. Once you click, I want you to imagine that you're putting a pen on the paper. As you move your cursor, it draws a continuous line until you click again and effectively, raise your pen, so to speak. Each time the sketch line tool is used, it creates a new single object. Many of the tools here are less precise than their desktop counterparts. They're still incredibly useful in creating new geometry, like circles and straight lines.
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