AutoCAD 2000 Basics

Setting Up AutoCAD

01-Intro to AutoCAD
02-Setting Up the Display Properties
03-Confining AutoCAD's Colors
04-Auto Saves Etc....
05-Getting to Know AutoCAD
06-AutoCAD and its Areas

The Basics of AutoCAD

07-The Menus
08-The Toolbars
09-The Drawing Area
10-The Status Area
11-The Command Prompt
12-The Command Structure
13-The Smart Menu

The Basics of Setting up a Drawing

14-The New Command and the New Drawing Wizards
15-Setting Units
16-Setting Drawing Limits

The Basics of Drafting

Coordinate system and Absolute Coordinate System
Relative Coordinate System
Polar Coordinate System
Direction and Distances
Ortho Tracking and Polar Tracking with Direction and Distances
How to Select and Un-Select
Layers and How to Use Them
Getting Around in Your Drawing Using the Zoom and Pan Commands
Grips Selection

Basics Drawing

The Basic Line
Ray
Contraction Line
Poly Line
Polygon
Rectang
Arc
Circle
Spline
Ellipse
Insert Block
Make Block
Point and Its Sub Commands
Hatch
End of Drawing Tools

The Basic Modify Commands I.E.

Properties
Match Properties
Edit Hatch
Edit Poly Line
Edit Spline
Edit Text
Erase
Copy/Multi Copy
Mirror
Offset
Array
Move
Rotate
Scale
Stretch
Lengthen
Trim
Extend
Break
Chamfer
Fillet
Explode

Annotation

Intro to Annotation
Mtext
Using Single Line Text
Spelling Checker
Setting Up Text Style
Liner Dimension
Aligned Dimension
Ordinate Dimension
Radius Dimension
Diameter Dimensions
Angular Dimensions
Base line Dimensions
Continue Dimensions
Leader Dimensions
Tolerance Dimensions
Oblique Dimensions
Align Text
Dimension Styles
Setting Current Dimensions Style
QDim Dimensions
Tolerance Dimensions

The End Product

What is a Layout
How to Use a Layout
How to Set up a Layout / Viewports and Layouts
Making Single Viewport
Making Polygonal Viewport
Making Viewports Out of Closed Shapes
Clipping Viewports
Setting Up Viewport So They Don't Plot
Using Layers in Viewports
Setting Dimension Text to Self Scale to the Layout
Using Pen Settings and Making Pen Settings
Plotting and Printing
Last Word on Pen Tables and Plotting

The Menus

CAD Tutorials: AutoCAD 2000 Basics - Main Page

Pull-Down Menus:
Across the top of the screen, operate in the same way as all Windows menus.

The menu bar, just below the title bar, consists of 11 (12 if you have the Express tools installed) words and an icon.

Click any of these to display a drop-down menu. The icon on the left end and the File and Edit menus are included with all Windows-compatible applications, although they are somewhat customized to work with AutoCAD.

The menu associated with the icon contains commands to control the appearance and position of the drawing area.

Commands in the File menu are for opening and saving new and existing drawing files, printing, linking on the Internet, exporting files to another application, choosing basic utility options, and exiting the application. The Edit menu contains the Undo and Redo commands, the Cut and Paste tools, and options for creating links between AutoCAD files and other files. The Help menu works like all Windows Help menus and contains a couple of AutoCAD-specific entries as well, including some online resources and a context-sensitive help feature called the Info Palette.

The other eight or nine menus contain the most-often-used AutoCAD commands.

You will find that if you master the logic of how the commands are been organized by menu, you can quickly find the command you want. Here is a short description of each of the other AutoCAD drop-down menus:

View Contains tools for controlling the display of your drawing file.

Insert Contains commands for placing drawings and images or parts of them inside other drawings.

Format Contains commands for setting up the general parameters for a new drawing.

Tools Contains special tools for use while you’re working on the current drawing, such as those for finding the length of a line or for running a special macro.

Draw Contains commands for creating new objects (such as lines or circles) on the screen.

Dimension Contains commands for dimensioning a drawing.

Modify Contains commands for changing existing objects in the drawing.

Window Contains commands for displaying currently open windows and lists currently open drawing files.

Express An optional menu containing a library of productivity tools that cover a wide range of AutoCAD functions. It may or may not been installed on your computer.

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