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)

Managing object properties

In AutoCAD, you can change properties such as color, lineweight (to do with the thickness of a line), linetype, and transparency. These properties are required to properly display drawing types. As an example, obscured lines are generally shown by "hidden line" linetype and construction lines generally have transparency added to them so that they look less prominent than the actual drawing. In the sample drawing shown here, the hidden lines are shown by the dashed line type and the center line has transparency added to it:

Fig 5.1: Center and dashed lines with transparency

In this section, we will learn how to add these properties to different AutoCAD objects. The properties of an object can be changed from the Properties panel of the Home tab, as shown in the following figure:

Fig 5.2: The Properties panel of the Home tab

To begin, I will...