Learn AutoCAD for free using this step-by-step AutoCAD tutorial series containing nearly 40 videos with lesson files https://thesourcecad.com/autocad-tutorials/
In this AutoCAD Tutorial for beginner video series you will learn about AutoCAD from scratch.
The video will start with the basics and gradually introduce you to the Draw, Modify tools, drawing management and Annotation tools, and finally a practice project and plotting the drawing.
The complete table of contents of this third part video is as follows
0:13 Adding Dimensions
2:28 Using Layers
3:54 Using Blocks
6:43 Printing/Plotting drawings
So now you know the basics of making drawing and all the basic draw and modify commands so let’s move on and understand some of the drawing management and annotation tools I let start with dimensioning because it’s very important in any kind of drawing so to dimension this drawing which we made
Earlier I’m gonna go to this annotation panel and right here we have the tools for dimension so you can use this dim tool or the dimension tool or you can use from any of these existing tools in this case I’ll use these tools and I will make the very first dimension using
Linear so I’ll go to linear and I’ll add a dimension here now to add the dimension all you need to do is select the first point second point and a point where you want to drop the dimension and you’ll have the dimension like this now this dimension is far from being perfect
It is very big even the arrow size and everything else is big if you want to modify it then you can do that using annotation panel so and expand the annotation panel and then click on this dimension style option which looks like a dimension line with a paintbrush above
It now I’ll go to modify and here I’ll go to fit tab and I’ll change the overall scale that’s the only parameter which I am going to change here in this case and it’s one so we need to decrease the size so maybe I’ll change the size
To 0.25 or maybe 0.2 and okay and close and now the size of dimension is 0.2 times of its original value and this looks pretty good now using this size I will make other dimensions in your case the scale of 0.2 may work or maybe in
Your case you need to change it to some other scale that depends on the drawing which you have selected now this is linear dimension if you want to add a radius or a diameter you can select the radius so go to radius click on the circle and again click you’ll have the
Radius for the diameter select diameter click on the circle and now you’ll have the diameter symbol so as you can see you don’t need to add the five symbol and our symbol for the radius and diameter AutoCAD will take care of this you in a similar way we have dimension
Like angular if you want to add angles so here I’ll select the first line second line and click again to add the angles so you can add these dimensions pretty easily like this now after adding dimensions let’s talk about layer so currently we are making our drawing on
Layer 0 which is the default layer and if you want to add more layers then you can go to layer properties and add the layers that you want so we are working with 0 layer as you can see we have checked mark right next to layer 0 that
Indicates our drawing is in zero layer I’ll click on this new layer and I’ll call it dim or short for dimension and now I’ll use this layer to put our dimension so now I’ll close this layer property manager I’ll select all the dimensions which I have made here and
I’ll go to this drop-down and I’ll select dim now all of the dimensions are on dim layer so what are the advantages well the first thing is you can change the properties like you can change the color from here so I’ll go to this white box I’ll change the color of damage into
Red click on OK and look at this all the dimensions will change the color to red also if you maybe let’s say want to hide the dimensions you can click on this light bulb icon and the dimensions will simply disappear and they are still here in the drawing but for now it’s hidden
To bring it back you can go to the drop down and activate it again so that’s the advantage of putting objects on their respective layers so that you can control its properties right using the layer property manager now let’s also talk about blocks so blocks are symbols
And you can use these symbols in your drawing and they have their own set of advantages so I’m gonna make a simple window here using the rectangle tool and also I’ll maybe use arc tool so first point and the second point third point then line and again alright so here we
Have a simple window kind of shape now in this case all these objects are separate there separately using different draw commands but you can convert this into a symbol and that symbol is called block now to convert it into a symbol I’ll go to create block on the block panel I’ll
Give it a name so let’s call it window now we need to specify some parameters like pick point select this and specify a point that will be the base point of the pick point of this symbol or the block now select objects click on this box and select all the objects and press
ENTER and I’ll simply click on ok.now and now if I hover my cursor it will show this as a single object if you select it it will only show the pick point or the base point which we specified and now this one will work like a single object now what’s the
Advantage of this well if you now go to insert you’ll notice that now we have this window added here and you can now insert as many copies of this window from here or you can also make copies of this block from here all right now all these blocks can be modified directly by
Modifying any one of these block references so maybe I’ll just select this block and then I’ll right-click and I’ll select block editor so this is the place where you can modify the blocks so look at this now this is the block editor as you can see we have a tab here
And here it will work again like separate objects here I’ll modify this so I’ll go to circle and I’ll add a circle maybe here then I’ll go to trim enter I’ll trim this line and this line and we have a different kind of window now I’ll go to close block editor save
The changes and look at this all the blocks not modified so that’s the advantage of using blocks over simple copy/paste of symbols it can modify references all the references actually just by modifying the actual block so we have a drawing and we are pretty much done with the basics of AutoCAD and now
I believe you are familiar with the tool sets required for making your own set of drawings finally after making any kind of drawing you would definitely want to plot that drawing and plotting is also pretty straightforward in AutoCAD so let’s finally learn about plotting or drawing now to plot our drawing
I’ll go to this plot option and here I’ll specify firstly the plotter so in this case I will select DWG to PDF I want to plot my drawing as PDF now the paper size you can select from any of these existing paper size in this case
Ie so a 4 is selected I’ll keep that one now for the plot area displays selected that means whatever is displayed will be plotted in this case I’ll change that a bit I’ll change it to window we want to plot everything inside of a selected window so now I’ll click here and I’ll
Click here and now all the objects inside that window will be plotted all right now look at this paper so this is how your plots gonna look like this is our paper and your plot will be somewhere over here so we have problems here this area is completely blank we
Just want it centered so to do that click Center the plot and now this will be centered like this again we have a problem this is in portrait orientation whereas we want it in landscape so go to drawing orientation and select landscape there we have it it’s now changed all
Right now click on OK specify the location and save it and here is the final output in PDF format it’s pretty easy and straightforward so I hope you have found this AutoCAD basics for beginners video series pretty helpful if you have any question related to this series let me know and for further
In-depth tutorials in AutoCAD you can check other videos on saw sketch channel and if you like this video series don’t forget to let me know in the comment below give it a thumbs up and I’ll see you soon with another video you
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