Book Image

Practical Autodesk AutoCAD 2023 and AutoCAD LT 2023 - Second Edition

By : Jaiprakash Pandey, Yasser Shoukry
Book Image

Practical Autodesk AutoCAD 2023 and AutoCAD LT 2023 - Second Edition

By: Jaiprakash Pandey, Yasser Shoukry

Overview of this book

AutoCAD is 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 2nd edition guide will take you through everything you need to know to make the most out of this powerful tool, from a simple tour of the user interface 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 plots like a professional. As you progress, the book will show you how to convert your 2D drawings into 3D models and shapes. You’ll also discover advanced features, such as isometric drawings, drawing utilities for managing and recovering complex files, quantity surveying, and multidisciplinary drawing files using xRefs. Finally, you’ll focus on rendering and visualizing your designs in AutoCAD. By the end of this 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 creations.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
1
Part 1: Introduction and 2D Drafting
6
Part 2: Customization, Collaboration, and Using Reusable Content
12
Part 3: 3D Modeling

Summary

This chapter was mostly about customizing the user interface and AutoCAD tools. We learned how to customize the user interface of AutoCAD and how to create custom objects. The customization tools that we discussed help personalize the user interface and make us more efficient in our drawing workflow. The custom linetype and Hatches are other great features available in AutoCAD, and they are especially useful when you need a project-specific linetype or Hatches pattern. Design Center, tool palettes, and external sources of blocks reduce our dependency on making blocks every time we need them and make the process of making drawing much easier and faster. Finally, we discussed the polyline and spline tools in detail.

In the next chapter, we will discuss external references and dynamic blocks, both of which are interesting topics. We saw dynamic blocks in action in the Using tool palettes section, and in the next chapter, we will learn how to make our very own dynamic block...