Book Image

Autodesk AutoCAD 2013 Practical 3D Drafting and Design

By : JOAO ANTONIO C DOS SANTOS
Book Image

Autodesk AutoCAD 2013 Practical 3D Drafting and Design

By: JOAO ANTONIO C DOS SANTOS

Overview of this book

AutoCAD is a computer-aided design (CAD) and drafting software application. AutoCAD supports both 2D and 3D formats. AutoCAD is used in a range of industries and is utilized by architects, project managers, and engineers, among others."Autodesk AutoCAD 2013 Practical 3D Drafting and Design" will take you beyond the 2D frontier and help you create accurate 3D models that simulate reality. This book is crammed full of creative and practical tutorials which will help you master the third dimension. From exercises on coordinate systems to creating solids and surfaces from 2D, you will wonder how you ever designed without this resource by your side."Autodesk AutoCAD 2013 Practical 3D Drafting and Design" is full of hands-on studies and projects that will help develop your 3D skills. Starting from the assumption of only a very basic knowledge of AutoCAD, this book will help you master 3D visualization and coordinate systems, create 3D models from 2D drawings, and from basic shapes, measure volumes, and other information, obtain 2D construction drawings from 3D models as well as how to apply lights and materials to get photorealistic images.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Autodesk AutoCAD 2013 Practical 3D Drafting and Design
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Viewports


When starting AutoCAD, the drawing area is composed of a single viewport where we create, view, and modify the drawing or the 3D scene. As the project advances, it may be useful to divide the drawing area in more viewports so that we can simultaneously view different parts of the model (for instance, a bridge drawing, where we want to see both extremes) or view it from different angles. We can start a command in one viewport and end it in another. As against the layout viewports, viewports in model space never overlap and completely fill the drawing area. Any model modification will be reflected in all viewports but visualization tools are independent. We can have viewports with different zooms, pans, orbits, or orthographic views, with different visual styles, perspective, or parallel modes.

Viewport controls

The viewport controls, available in AutoCAD since Version 2012, are the three top-left menus for each viewport.

These viewport controls represent easy processes for controlling...