Book Image

Practical Autodesk AutoCAD 2021 and AutoCAD LT 2021

By : Yasser Shoukry, Jaiprakash Pandey
Book Image

Practical Autodesk AutoCAD 2021 and AutoCAD LT 2021

By: Yasser Shoukry, Jaiprakash Pandey

Overview of this book

AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT are one of the most versatile software applications for architectural and engineering designs and the most popular computer-aided design (CAD) platform for 2D drafting and 3D modeling. This hands-on guide will take you through everything you need to know to make the most out of this powerful tool, starting from a simple tour of the user interface through to using advanced tools. Starting with basic drawing shapes and functions, you'll get to grips with the fundamentals of CAD designs. You’ll then learn about effective drawing management using layers, dynamic blocks, and groups and discover how to add annotations and plot like professionals. The book delves into 3D modeling and helps you convert your 2D drawings into 3D models and shapes. As you progress, you’ll cover advanced tools and features such as isometric drawings, drawing utilities for managing and recovering complex files, quantity surveying, and multidisciplinary drawing files using xRefs, and you'll learn how to implement them with the help of practical exercises at the end of each chapter. Finally, you’ll get to grips with rendering and visualizing your designs in AutoCAD. By the end of the book, you’ll have developed a solid understanding of CAD principles and be able to work with AutoCAD software confidently to build impressive 2D and 3D drawings.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)

Summary

This chapter began with the grid and snap status bar features, which allow you to visualize the drawing area and use the background grid as a reference for the drawing. We also learned about using the selection cycling toggle, which is great for making selections of overlapping objects. However, the main highlights of this chapter were the Array and block tools.

With Array, we learned how to create patterns along a rectangle, circle, and any other path. We learned how to create reusable content, called blocks, and also how to create blocks with attributes and a simple version of blocks, called groups.

In the next chapter, we will continue to learn the named objects and we will move one step further towards learning about drawing management tools, such as layers. We will also learn how to check the properties of objects and modify them for a drawing.

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