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

Layouts


A layout is the simulation of a paper sheet where we place viewports (windows to the model), blocks, text, frames, legends, and all useful elements to document the project.

We may have up to 255 layouts. By default, they are represented with a white background, the coordinate system icon is blue with a triangular shape. Also, the paper sheet and margins (dashed line) are displayed, and viewports may overlap or not fill the paper. Each viewport can have its own view, visual style, scale, and layer properties.

Following are the main steps to create a layout, configure it, place viewports and other elements, and control the layer properties.

Creating and configuring layouts

We will demonstrate the process from scratch, that is, creating a new layout and then configuring it. All drawings must have at least one layout. By default, two layouts are available; which are Layout1 and Layout2.

The first time we access a layout, a viewport is automatically created. Unless we maintain the default...