The Hitchhikers Guide to AutoCAD

If you are new to AutoCAD, need a quick refresher or want to find out what it is all about, then the article below from Autodesk may be of use.

Welcome to The Hitchhikers Guide to AutoCAD - your guide to the basic 42 commands you need to create 2D drawings using modern AutoCAD or AutoCAD LT.

This guide is a great place to get started if you just completed your initial training, or to refresh your memory if you only use AutoCAD occasionally. As you can see from the illustration, the 42 commands are grouped together according to types of activity. In addition, these groups are arranged sequentially to follow a typical workflow.

 

After you finish this guide, you can access the linked Help commands in each topic for more information, or you can return to the guide later to review specific topics. Also, try to find someone who will be able to answer your occasional questions. The product discussion groups (http://forums.autodesk.com/) and Autodesk blogs are good resources.

• Basics - Review the basic ways to control AutoCAD.
• Viewing - Pan and zoom in a drawing, and control the order of overlapping objects.
• Geometry - Create basic geometric objects such as lines, circles, and solid-filled areas.
• Precision - AutoCAD provides several features to ensure the precision required for your models.
• Layers and Properties  - Organise your drawing by assigning objects to layers, and by assigning properties such as colour and linetype to objects.
• Modifying - Perform editing operations such as erase, move, and trim on the objects in a drawing.
• Blocks - Insert symbols and details into your drawings from commercial online sources or from your own designs.
• Layouts - Display one or more scaled views of your design on a standard-size drawing sheet called a layout.
• Notes and Labels - Create notes, labels, bubbles, and callouts. Save and restore style settings by name.
• Dimensions - Create several types of dimensions and save dimension settings by name
• Printing - Save and restore the printer settings for each layout. Output a drawing layout to a printer, a plotter, or a file.