Bill Fane - AutoCAD For Dummies

AutoCAD For Dummies, 17th Edition

Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com

Copyright 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2016937235

ISBN 978-1-119-25579-6 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-25581-9 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-25580-2 (ebk)

1. Table of Contents

Welcome to the wonderful world of AutoCAD and to the fame and fortune that awaits you as an AutoCAD user. (Would I lie to you?)

Believe it or not, AutoCAD is 34 years old, having been born in December 1982, when most people thought that personal computers werent capable of industrial-strength tasks like CAD. The acronym stands for Computer-Aided Drafting, Computer-Aided Design, or both, depending on whom you talk to. Whats equally scary is that many of todays hotshot AutoCAD users, and most of the readers of this book, werent even born when the program first hit the street and the grizzled old-timer writing these words began using it.

AutoCAD remains the king of the PC computer CAD hill by a tall margin, making it one of the longest-lived computer programs ever. Its conceivable that the long-term future of CAD may belong to special-purpose, 3D-based software such as the Autodesk Inventor and Revit programs, or to specialized market-specific variations built on top of AutoCAD. At any rate, AutoCADs DWG file format is the de facto standard, so AutoCAD will be where the CAD action is for the foreseeable future.

You may have heard that AutoCAD is complex and difficult to learn and use. Yes, the menu system includes about 1,300 icons. Well, it has been my observation that the easier any software is to learn and use, the sooner you bump up against its limitations. A car with no accelerator, one forward gear, no steering, and no brakes would be easy to use until you reached a hill, a curve, or a stop sign or you needed to back out of a parking space.

Yes, AutoCAD is complex, but thats the secret to its success. Some claim that few people use more than 10 percent of AutoCADs capabilities. Closer analysis reveals that most people use the same basic 5 percent and everyone else uses a different 5 percent after that. The trick is to find your 5 percent, the sweet spot that suits your particular industry. If you follow my advice, I think you will find that using AutoCAD is as simple and intuitive as driving a car.

It should also be perfectly clear that if your career path has put you in a position where you need to know how to use AutoCAD, youre no dummy!

Unlike many other For Dummies books, this one often tells you to consult the official software documentation. AutoCAD is just too big and powerful for a single book to attempt to describe it completely. The book that ultimately covers every AutoCAD topic would need a forklift to move it. Literally. They stopped shipping paper instruction manuals with the software somewhere around 1995, when the full documentation package grew to about a dozen volumes and more than 30 pounds.

In AutoCAD For Dummies, I occasionally mention differences from previous releases so that everyone gains some context and so that upgraders can more readily understand the differences; plus, youre bound to encounter a few of the billions and billions of drawings that were created using older methods. I also mention the important differences between AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT. In particular, AutoCAD LT has no programming language and has extremely limited support for parametrics ().

This book is not Mechanical Drafting For Dummies, or Architectural Drafting For Dummies, or even Crash Testing For Dummies It doesnt cover drafting principles and procedures, but it does cover the AutoCAD commands necessary to create drawings. Remember, though, that knowing AutoCADs drawing commands wont make you a great designer, just as knowing how to touch-type and run a word processor wont make you a great author. The job title CAD operator doesnt exist, but almost all drafters and designers use CAD.

In addition, the book does not cover the discipline-specific features in AutoCAD-based vertical market products, such as AutoCAD Electrical or AutoCAD Mechanical, although most of the information in this book applies to the general-purpose features of those programs as well.