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FBE AutoCAD Page
Stephen Peter, S.Peter@unsw.edu.au

This tutorial has been prepared for students at the Faculty of the Built Environment studying AutoCAD in Communications Seminar 3. It has been placed on the Web to facilitate access by those students and because I believe others may find the material of use!

While the tutorial is aimed at people using the Windows version of R13, I have (where possible) given the commands to be typed in addition to the toolbar icon.

Note that throughout this document I am using the character "" to symbolise the [Enter] and [spacebar] keys and the Right mouse button.

Stephen Peter, 31 July 95.

Introduction
In this first tutorial you will learn how to start AutoCAD, save a drawing, and a range of common drawing commands.
Starting AutoCAD
If you're using Windows 3, open 'Program Manager' and double-click on the 'AutoCAD R13' icon in one of the Appications groups (there'll probably be an AutoCAD group). Start AutoCAD by clicking on Start (in the bottom left corner of the screen), then move the mouse to Programs then CAD Applications then AutoCAD R13. These instructions are for the labs at UNSW - if you're elsewhere it'll probably be different. AutoCAD will take a few moments to load, so be patient.

Once AutoCAD has loaded, move the mouse around until you see a crosshair cursor. The AutoCAD window has a number of important features:

  1. The standard windows drop-down menus.
  2. The standard windows toolbar below the menus, it includes: File- New, File-Open, File-Save, Print and Spell Check(!!).
  3. In addition to the standard toolbar there are a three AutoCAD specific toolbars: Object Properties, Draw and Modify.
  4. The graphics area - that's the area where you draw - note the scroll bars and the axis label.
  5. The command area - this small window (by default) has space for three lines of text - this is where you type commands.
  6. The status area, at the bottom of the AutoCAD window, this includes the current cursor position, and the time!

Command Entry
Typically there are three ways of giving a command!
Not all commands are on the Menus
and not all commands are on toolbars!
  1. Type the command using the keyboard - the command is displayed in the command area.
  2. Select the command from a menu.
  3. Select the command's icon from a toolbar.
When I want you to type a command in the command area the AutoCAD command will be written like:
        type: QSAVE
When I want you to select a command from a menu, it will look like:
        select File - Save
When I want you to pick a command from a toolbar, I'll write:
        select save
Here I'm trying to cover all the bases by giving you the command to type, the menu options and showing you what the toolbar icon looks like! Despite all of the above, I'll probably use a combination of the above like:
        select File - Save (or type QSAVE )
Draw a Rectangle
This will draw a 10x7 rectangle, which should fit comfortably in the AutoCAD graphics area. Select (or type RECTANG ), if you can't see the rectangle icon on the Draw toolbar, its probably hiding under this icon - move the cursor over the icon and hold the left mouse button down, AutoCAD will display a "flyout" that should inclde the rectangle icon. After you've issued the command, type:
The text typed is displayed in the command area at the bottom of AutoCAD's window.         1,1
      11,8         these are absolute cartesian coordinates
Saving a Drawing
The END command is also useful, it saves your drawing and then exits AutoCAD. To save a drawing, you can type QSAVE , select File - Save from the menu, or select the Save icon.
Note that if you type SAVE, you actually get "Save As"!! Select the Save icon from the standard toolbar. The drawing has not been saved before, so AutoCAD will display a SAVE AS dialog box, select the appropriate Drive and Directory (for example: S:\arch\u1234567), type the drawing name (for example TUT1), and then select "OK".
Draw Some Lines
You can also press the spacebar instead of the Enter key ().

You can also type: L instead of LINE, this is an "alias" - which is a short-cut.

We will now draw some more graphics and then save and exit AutoCAD.

Type LINE (or select ).

Move the crosshair to near the bottom-left of the rectangle and click the left mouse button, then move the crosshair to the top-right of the rectangle and again click the left mouse button.

Press to terminate the command, and then press again to re-start the command!

Draw a line from the top-left to the bottom-right of the rectangle, and then press to end the command.

This will save the drawing and exit AutoCAD - don't PANIC! Now type:
        END
Starting AutoCAD with an Existing Drawing
To load a drawing, click on "Explorer" - it should be listed on the taskbar on the bottom of the screen, select the appropriate Drive and Directory and then double-click on your drawing.
If you use AutoCAD's File - Open command to open a drawing, make sure that the "Read Only" setting is OFF (not checked). Early releases of R13 had this setting ON by default, which means that you get a "Write Protected" error when you try to save the drawing. If you can't find your drawing then press F5 (function key 5) this tells Explorer to update the directory display; if you still can't find your drawing then perhaps you saved the drawing in some other directory, in which case you can load AutoCAD (via the Program Manager) and then select the File menu, at the bottom of the File menu is a list of recently opened drawings, select your drawing from the list.
Coordinate Systems
AutoCAD is a three dimensional CAD system, so you can enter XYZ values instead of the XY values shown here. When specifying positions you can use Cartesian or Polar Coordinates. Cartesian coordinates are simply a X value, a comma, and a Y value, for example: 11,11. Polar coordinates are a Distance followed by a 10<25. Angles are measured in degrees, with 0 = East and 90 = North. Any of these numbers can have decimal values.
Consider relative coordinates simply as distances! The positions specified above are "absolute coordinates", because they specify a particular position. AutoCAD can also use "relative coordinates" to specify a position relative to the current position, for example: @5.6,-3.4 and @16.32<62.
Draw a "Diamond"
This should draw a "diamond (a rotated rectangle) shape.

If you make a mistake, you can undo the last line segment by typing: u .

"c" means "close" the shape.

Select (or type: pline ) and then type:
        6,1               absolute cartesian coordinate
        @5<45           relative polar coordinate
        @5<135
        @5<225
        c
Snap Modes
It is often useful to be able to draw something from (for example) the end of another shape. AutoCAD has a large selection of "snap modes" for this purpose. The most commonly used snap modes are "Endpoint" (which snaps to the end of the selected graphics entity) and "Intersection" (which snaps to the intersection of two graphics entities).
The object snap modes can either be typed or they can be selected from the standard toolbar or from the snap toolbar:
To get AutoCAD to display the Object Snap Modes toolbar, select "Toolbars" from the "Tools" menu and then select "Object Snap".
Draw an Arc
Select (or type ARC ), then select the midpoint snap mode (or type: MID ) and select the left side of the bottom of the polyline you drew before. Then use the midpoint snap to enter points on the right side at the bottom and then the top of the polyline (see figure 2).

Figure 2         Arc construction.
Finally...
Draw the rectangle by selecting from the draw toolbar (or type RECTANG ). Lastly, I want you to draw a rectangle in the diamond shape, another diamond inside that rectangle, a circle inside that diamond and a horizontal and vertical line also inside the last diamond (see figure 3)! Each shape should touch the Midpoints of the previous shape...
To draw the circle, move the mouse over the circle icon , then hold the mouse button down, AutoCAD will display additional icons(!), choose the circle with three points . To draw the horizontal and vertical lines use the ENDpoint snap mode.
If you use the MIDpoint Snap Model for each point(!), you should be able to draw the shapes without much trouble.

If you make a mistake, press "Esc" (the "escape" key, located at the top-left of the keyboard). Then type U (the undo comand).

If the screen gets messy, then type R (the redraw command - why AutoCAD uses a pencil as the icon for redraw is totally beyond my understanding, but it does).


Figure 3         Finished Tutorial 1 drawing.
Finishing Up
That's all for tutorial one! Save your drawing and then exit AutoCAD (or type: end to save and exit).

Remember to log off before leaving.


FBE AutoCAD Page 2D-R13 Tutorial 2
Last Update : 8 April 2000
Major Revision : 29 October 1997
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Email : s.peter@unsw.edu.au