AutoCAD Drawing Tools

Name: AutoCAD Drawing Tools
Author: Patrick Porter

Begin your design and drafting creation journey with this beginner course

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Course: On-Demand

Welcome. In this chapter, we're going to cover AutoCAD's drawing tools. And in this particular lesson, let's talk about AutoCAD's panning and zooming. Let's get started by creating a brand new drawing. So we're going to create a new drawing by hitting the plus here next to the start tab, and let's begin by drawing something on our screen. So in our ribbon bar across the top, let's make sure we are in the home tab and let's click on the circle button. Let's come down to our drawing area, let's click once, somewhere in the middle with the left mouse button and let's move our mouse in any direction and click again with the left mouse button. Let's do this again by repeating the command, let's hit the enter key on the keyboard. That's going to repeat the last command that we were in. Let's move over a little bit, click once again with the left mouse button and let's drag and make this circle slightly smaller and click again with the left mouse button. Now to pan in AutoCAD, if you have a three button mouse, you would simply press on the middle mouse button on your keyboard and drag in any direction, that is panning. Panning is not moving your objects, it is pretty much just moving your view of your piece of paper. Think of your drawing area as your piece of paper. And it's a large piece of paper. Panning is just moving your view. So let's do this again. Let's press on the middle mouse button and hold, and let's move around. When you're done, let go, and you've just completed panning. Continuing on with the middle mouse button for a three button mouse, if I wanted to zoom in, get a closer view of what I have drawn in my drawing area, I can scroll with my middle mouse button. So using the middle mouse button, I'm going to roll the mouse button up and that zooms in, and to zoom out, I can scroll the mouse button back. One thing to note when you are zooming, AutoCAD is going to zoom in on the area where your cursor is. So this is our cursor. I'm going to move my cursor all the way over here and I'm going to roll up with my middle mouse button and you see that the circles are out of view. I'm going to roll back with the middle mouse button and they're back in view. Soon, you will learn to master that middle mouse button. So now I'm going to bring this in closer. I'm going to press in on the middle mouse button to pan, and then I'm going to roll up with the middle mouse button to zoom in. So those are quick ways to pan and zoom by using your middle mouse button. Another way to zoom or to pan is at the command line. So I'm going to type in the words pan, P A N, and press enter, and I've just thought at the same pan command that I was in, and I will stay in this command until I exit the command by hitting escape key on the keyboard. Same thing with zoom. Zoom has a keyboard shortcut where I can just type in Z and press enter, and I just started the zoom command. But notice down here at the command line, that there are several options for using zoom. I can also right click on my mouse and see some more options. The most common zooms that you would do will be the zoom extents, which will basically zoom to your drawing extents of everything that you have drawn, it will bring it all into view. Another option. Let's redo that zoom command by pressing the up arrow on the keyboard and pressing enter let's right click, and then I can do previous to take me back to the zoom destination that I was at before. That covers what I wanted to talk to you about with panning and zooming. Thanks for watching.

Beginner Provider : Patrick Porter 8 Lessons · 45m in Arabic, German, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Urdu, Chinese

Course Description

This chapter will introduce AutoCAD basic drawing tools, giving you all the essentials you need to start drawing. It’ll also explain coordinate entry with absolute, relative, and polar coordinates. You’ll learn how to accurately snap to angles and objects in AutoCAD as well as how to draw some of AutoCAD’s most basic objects.

What You'll Learn

Pan and zoom to navigate AutoCAD drawings
Enter coordinates using absolute, relative, and polar coordinate systems
Draw with Dynamic Input and snap accurately to angles and objects using OSNAP, OTRACK, POLAR, and ORTHO
Create lines and rectangles
Create polylines, polygons, and splines
Create circles and arcs

Key Takeaways

The chapter introduces AutoCAD's basic drawing tools, covering the essentials needed to start drawing.
Coordinate entry is explained using absolute, relative, and polar coordinates.
Learners practice accurately snapping to angles and objects in AutoCAD.
The course covers drawing AutoCAD's most basic objects, including lines, rectangles, polylines, polygons, splines, circles, and arcs.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does this AutoCAD Drawing Tools chapter cover?

It introduces AutoCAD's basic drawing tools and the essentials needed to start drawing, including coordinate entry with absolute, relative, and polar coordinates, snapping to angles and objects, and drawing basic objects such as lines, rectangles, polylines, polygons, splines, circles, and arcs.

What drawing objects will I learn to create?

You will learn to create lines and rectangles; polylines, polygons, and splines; and circles and arcs.

What snapping and tracking tools are taught?

The course covers OSNAP (object snap) and OTRACK (object snap tracking), as well as POLAR (polar tracking) and ORTHO (orthogonal mode), so you can accurately snap to angles and objects.

What skills does this course relate to?

It relates to Architectural Drawing, AutoCAD, AutoCAD Civil 3D, AutoCAD Architecture, AutoCAD Plant 3D, and Technical Drawing.