Wiley 978-0-470-10993-9 Datasheet

AutoCAD ProductivityConsideringthe complexity of AutoCAD, it’s not surprising that many peoplewho use it miss something important along the way. Many

Don’t Use the Name StandardThe name Standard is used as a default name for the text style, dimension style, table style,and probably a few other thing

Control Imperial vs. Metric SettingsStarting from scratch with either an imperial (acad.dwt) or metric (acadiso.dwt) templatecontrols the files used f

3. I used QSELECT to select all text containing a front slash (all the dates) and put themon their own layer. This required using the * wildcard match

Drawing EfficiencyAt the heart of a CAD system is the ability to create accurate geometry. Speed is alwayssecondary to accuracy, but it’s possible for

Rectangular ArraysWhen you’re creating a rectangular array, it’s easier than you think to confuse columnsand rows when you’re asked to specify their d

DISPLAY PRECISIONDon’t be fooled by the integer of 27 shown for the angle in Figure 1.6. The actual angle maybe different. Why? Because the default pr

Polar ArraysGeometry with a repeated angular pattern is often found in mechanical applications andsometimes in architectural and civil applications. T

REDUCE CONSTRUCTION LINESTry to use as few construction lines as possible when creating geometry. The more lines youuse to locate points or edges, the

ALTERNATIVE TO PEDITYou can create regions with the BOUNDARY command or with the REGION command.Either way, you can also use regions to create complex

In Figure 1.11, supplemental angles are determined from the interior angles and usedto calculate the resulting relative angle of the next line segment

Design StandardsCAD software is used in so many fields of design that it would be impossible to developextensive standards that apply to all of them.

Use From, Auto Tracking, or @ to Begin DrawingIf you know that you need to start drawing an object a specific distance from an existingobject, use the

One overlooked feature of the FILLET command is its ability to quickly close two par-allel lines with a tangent arc. Select both lines, and AutoCAD wi

PEDITYou can use the PEDIT command to create a closed pline from several line and arc seg-ments. To do so, issue the command, pick one of the lines, a

In Figure 1.15, it took 25 seconds to get the total area of the object with all internalshapes removed. Here are the steps:1. Create regions from the

TIMETIME gives you the total time during which a drawing has been open for editing. You canalso use it as a running timer by selecting the Reset optio

G↵ at any selection prompt followed by the name of the group you created (make thenames short and memorable). However, the group must be selectable. Y

changes. You can change any of the properties of the entire group. You could do the samefor all the circles in a drawing or within a selection set, an

EXPLODEYou can use EXPLODE with the following entities: blocks, hatches, mlines, plines, solidobjects, and blocks of text created with the MTEXT comma

ROTATEThe remarkably useful and often overlooked option of ROTATE is Reference. You can use the Reference option by entering any angle at the keyboard

UNDOThe UNDO command displays the following options at the command prompt: Auto/Control/BEgin/End/Mark/Back<Number>:Auto Auto requires an addit

belongs). They could drag the value right or left so it could be seen in one of the viewports.(See Figure 1.1.) The entire part is shown at the bottom

LENGTHENThis interesting command can be used to change the length of a line, polyline, or an arc. It’sthe only way to quickly create an arc with a spe

ORDINATEOrdinate dimensions are used to set dimensions as coordinates in the X and Y axes. Ordi-nate dimensioning is used most often in mechanical dra

DIMASSOC has three settings:• 0—Dimensions are exploded as they’re placed, which is a bad idea unless you have avery good reason.• 1—Dimensions have t

Not everyone can touch-type; however, I appreciate being able to. (This may be a goodtime to thank my mother for insisting that I take high school typ

If some of your entities have linetypes that aren’t scaled to your liking, instead ofchanging that with LTSCALE, use PROPERTIES to make changes to eac

• Lineweight should be set to BYLAYER. A default value of .20mm and an object-linevalue of .40mm usually give a good lineweight distinction.• A button

VTENABLE (View Transition Enable)AutoCAD 2006 added a view transition feature that smoothly changes magnification orlocation when zooming or panning.

quickly change all names created when binding external references (if you used the Bindoption for binding, which I recommend you do, and not the Inser

CHSPACEThis command is indispensable, and it has finally evolved from an Express Tool into anative command in AutoCAD 2007. It lets you change objects

You can also change the overwritten dimensions automatically, which may cause evenmore problems if you don’t notice what got updated. The problem is t

tolerance—at least, they’re supposed to. The question is, where in that range should youcreate your accurate-to-15-decimal-places geometry when using

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METRIC IS EVERYWHEREI’ve been predicting since 1976 that the U.S. was about to go fully metric. I keep making thatprediction, and I’m getting less and

Use the Help SystemThe AutoCAD Help system has become one of the best Help systems available in any soft-ware. If I had to identify one AutoCAD featur

HELP SYSTEMI’m not exaggerating when I say I answer many questions from confused users by bringingup the AutoCAD Help system—often while I’m on the ph

LAYER MANIPULATIONConsider the following example from a residential floor plan. Layer names all begin with afield that designates the floor of the res

Plot from Layouts in Paper SpaceRead Chapter 6, “Plotting,” for the full story; but for now, follow these steps in sequencewhen you create a new drawi