Page 8 - Engineering drawing from first principles using AutoCAD

Chapter!

First steps

By the end of this chapter, I hope you will be able to understand the following commands
and perform these activities:

• Open the drawing software program. Click and browse through each of the options on
the menu bar in turn and note that many sophisticated and advanced features are
available.
• Reposition the movable toolbox.
• Note standard drawing sizes.
• Appreciate Portrait and Landscape orientation of the drawing.
• Select and position an A4 size drawing sheet.
• Set Snap and Grid values.
• Draw lines between given coordinates.
• Operate the ZOOM command.
• Become familiar with the ORTHO button facility.
• Experiment with ERASE and BREAI( commands.
• Use the REDRAWcommand to clean up the screen.
• Draw circles and arcs.
• Use the RUNNING OBJECT SNAP OPTION to draw tangents and position tangency
points.
• Gain experience with the FILLET feature.
• Convert lines and arcs to polylines for finished outlines.
• Experiment with the TEXT command. Set text types and sizes.
• Note the minimum height of drawing characters and text abbreviations.
• Experiment with the MOVE, COpy and ROTATE commands and learn how to reposition
detail.
• Experiment with the ARRAY command.
• Choose screen preferences.
• Select coloured layers for different parts of a drawing.
• Note recommended thicknesses for various types of linework.
• Check available printers. Save your drawings with suitable file names and add drawing
numbers.
You will find that information retrieval is an important part of CAD work. Set up the
printer and follow the PRINT/PLOT procedure to make an A4 copy.

Note: In industrial drawing offices the drawings relating to particular contracts are often
numbered after an abbreviated contract name followed by the number. Assume that we
have a design contract where we would expect 50 or 60 drawings to be needed on a
contract from SMITH & CO. Typical drawings could be numbered SMTOOl, SMT002,
SMT003, etc. The sequence of drawings you copy from this book could therefore be
ACADOOl, ACAD002, etc.
It is also a regular practice to keep a Drawing Register of numbers, titles and completion
dates so that other members of staff in an organisation can check on contract progress and
the drawings available.
Students often find that starting to learn CAD can be rather slow and the following
exercises are therefore designed to introduce gradually interesting aspects of the software