Introduction

The staying power of AutoCAD® is legendary in the ever-changing software industry, having been around for 32 years by 2014. You can rest assured that spending your time learning AutoCAD will be a wise investment, and the skills you obtain in this book will be useful for years to come.

I wish to welcome you in beginning the process of learning AutoCAD. It will give you great satisfaction to learn such a complex program and use it to design and document whatever you dream up. You’ll find step-by-step tutorials that reveal a wide variety of techniques built on many years of real-world experience.

The first 14 chapters apply to both AutoCAD® 2014 and AutoCAD LT® 2014. AutoCAD LT is Autodesk’s lower-cost version of AutoCAD, and it has reduced capabilities. Chapters 15 through 18 are for full AutoCAD users only as they cover advanced tools not available in AutoCAD LT, including attributes, 3D navigation, 3D modeling, and rendering.

Who Should Read This Book

This book is for students, hobbyists, professional architects, industrial designers, engineers, builders, landscape architects, or anyone who communicates through technical drawings as part of their work.

If you’re interested in certification for AutoCAD 2014, this book can be a great resource to help you prepare. See www.autodesk.com/certification for more certification information and resources. This book also features an appendix that can help you focus your studies on the skills you will need for the certification exams.

What You Will Learn

You’ll gain a solid understanding of the features of AutoCAD in this book. Each chapter features multiple exercises that take you step by step through the many complex procedures of AutoCAD. The goal of performing these steps on your own is to develop skills that you can apply to many different real-world situations.

Although each project presents different obstacles and opportunities, I urge you to focus on the concepts and techniques presented rather than memorizing the specific steps used to achieve the desired result. The actual steps performed may vary in each geometric situation.

The best way to build skills is to perform the steps on your computer exactly as they are presented in the book during your first reading. After you achieve the desired result, start over and experiment using the same techniques on your own project (whether invented or real). After you have practiced, think about how you have achieved the desired result and you will get the most out of this book.

Reader Requirements

You don’t need any previous experience with AutoCAD to use this book. However, you’ll need familiarity with either the Windows or Mac operating system and have the basic skills necessary to use a graphical user interface successfully and to operate a computer confidently.

AutoCAD 2014 or AutoCAD LT 2014 System Requirements

The book is written for both AutoCAD 2014 and AutoCAD LT 2014. The following are system requirements for running either version on the different operating systems in which they are offered. See www.autodesk.com for the most up-to-date requirements.

General Windows System Requirements

  • Microsoft Windows 8, Pro, or Enterprise
  • Microsoft Windows 7 (SP1 or later) Enterprise, Ultimate, Professional, or Home Premium
  • Microsoft Windows XP (SP2 or later) Home or Windows XP Professional
  • 2 GB of RAM
  • 2 GB of free space for installation
  • 1,280 × 1,024 true color video display adapter 128 MB or greater, Microsoft® Direct3D®-capable workstation-class graphics card; Pixel Shader 3.0 or greater required for 3D modeling
  • Internet Explorer 7.0 or later

32-Bit AutoCAD 2014 for Windows

  • Windows® 8 Standard, Enterprise, or Professional edition, Windows® 7 Enterprise, Ultimate, Professional, or Home Premium edition (compare Windows versions), or Windows XP® Professional or Home edition (SP3 or later) operating system
  • For Windows 8 and Windows 7: Intel® Pentium® 4 or AMD Athlon™ dual-core processor, 3.0 GHz or higher with SSE2 technology
  • For Windows XP: Pentium 4 or Athlon dual-core processor, 1.6 GHz or higher with SSE2 technology
  • 2 GB RAM (4 GB recommended)
  • 6 GB free disk space for installation
  • 1,024 × 768 display resolution with true color (1,600 × 1,050 recommended)
  • Microsoft® Internet Explorer® 7 or later web browser
  • Install from download or DVD

64-Bit AutoCAD 2014 for Windows

  • Windows 8 Standard, Enterprise, or Professional edition, Windows 7 Enterprise, Ultimate, Professional, or Home Premium edition (compare Windows versions), or Windows XP Professional (SP2 or later)
  • Athlon 64 with SSE2 technology, AMD Opteron™ processor with SSE2 technology, Intel® Xeon® processor with Intel EM64T support and SSE2 technology, or Pentium 4 with Intel EM64T support and SSE2 technology
  • 2 GB RAM (4 GB recommended)
  • 6 GB free space for installation
  • 1,024 × 768 display resolution with true color (1,600 × 1,050 recommended)
  • Internet Explorer 7 or later
  • Install from download or DVD

64-Bit AutoCAD 2014 for Mac

  • Apple® Mac OS® X v10.8.0 or later (Mountain Lion),
  • OS X v10.7.2 or later (Lion), or OS X v10.6.8 or later (Snow Leopard) with 64-bit Intel processor
  • Apple® Mac® Pro 4.1 or later; MacBook® Pro 5.1 or later (MacBook Pro 6.1 or later recommended); iMac® 8.1 or later (iMac 11.1 or later recommended); Mac® mini 3.1 or later (Mac mini 4.1 or later recommended); MacBook Air® 2.1 or later; MacBook® 5.1 or later (MacBook 7.1 or later recommended)
  • 3 GB of RAM (4 GB recommended)
  • 2.5 GB free disk space for download and installation (3 GB recommended)
  • All graphics cards on supported hardware
  • 1,280 × 800 display with true color (1,600 × 1,200 recommended)
  • All Mac OS X supported language operating systems
  • Apple® Mouse, Apple Magic Mouse, Magic Trackpad, MacBook® Pro trackpad, or Microsoft-compliant mouse.
  • Mac OS X-compliant printer

Additional Requirements for Large Datasets, Point Clouds, and 3D Modeling (all Windows configurations)

  • Pentium 4 or Athlon processor, 3 GHz or greater, or Intel or AMD dual-core processor, 2 GHz or greater
  • 4 GB RAM or more
  • 6 GB hard disk space available in addition to free space required for installation
  • 1,280 × 1,024 true color video display adapter 128 MB or greater, Pixel Shader 3.0 or greater, Microsoft® Direct3D®-capable workstation-class graphics card
Free Autodesk Software for Students and Educators
The Autodesk Education Community is an online resource with more than five million members that enables educators and students to download—for free (see website for terms and conditions)—the same software used by professionals worldwide. You can also access additional tools and materials to help you design, visualize, and simulate ideas. Connect with other learners to stay current with the latest industry trends and get the most out of your designs. Get started today at www.autodesk.com/joinedu.

What Is Covered in This Book

AutoCAD 2014 and AutoCAD LT 2014 Essentials is organized to provide you with the knowledge needed to master the basics of computer-aided design. The book’s web page is located at www.sybex.com/go/autocad2014essentials, where you can download the sample files used in each chapter.

Chapter 1: Getting Started You’ll take a tour of the user interface and learn to identify each of its parts by name. Chapter 1 is essential reading as you’ll need to know the difference between workspaces, ribbon tabs, toolbars, panels, palettes, status toggles, and so on to understand the terminology used by your colleagues and in the rest of this book. In addition, you’ll learn about how to match your industry’s standard units to the drawings you’ll be creating.
Chapter 2: Basic Drawing Skills Learn how to navigate a 2D drawing with Zoom and Pan so that you can zero in on areas of interest. You’ll learn how to draw lines, rectangles, circles, arcs, and polygons; how to cancel, erase, and undo; and how to fillet and chamfer lines. In addition, you’ll use two coordinate systems to specify the exact sizes of objects you are drawing.
Chapter 3: Using Drawing Aids Drawing aids are something you’ll want to learn how to use to create measured drawings with ease. The drawing aids covered with step-by-step exercises in this chapter include grid and snap, ortho and polar tracking, PolarSnap, running object snaps, the From snap, and object snap tracking.
Chapter 4: Editing Entities This chapter teaches what you’ll probably be doing most of the time in AutoCAD: editing the basic entities that you’ve drawn to make them conform with your design intent. Editing commands covered include Move, Copy, Rotate, Scale, Array, Trim, Extend, Lengthen, Stretch, Offset, and Mirror. In addition to these commands, you’ll learn an alternative method for editing entities called grip editing.
Chapter 5: Shaping Curves The landscape exercise in this chapter teaches you how to create complex curves with NURBS-based splines, curved polylines, and ellipses. By the end, you’ll be able to shape curves to create almost any curvilinear form imaginable.
Chapter 6: Controlling Object Visibility and Appearance You’ll learn how to hide and reveal objects with properties and layers. Layers are essential to managing the complexity of design, and you’ll use many different layer tools in this chapter’s step-by-step exercises.
Chapter 7: Organizing Objects By combining entities such as lines, polylines, circles, arcs, and text into blocks and/or groups, you can more efficiently manipulate more complex objects such as chairs, mechanical assemblies, trees, or any other organizational designation appropriate to your industry. You’ll learn how to create and work with blocks and groups in this chapter.
Chapter 8: Hatching and Gradients In this chapter, you’ll flood bounded areas with solid fill, hatch patterns, and/or gradients to indicate transitions between materials and to improve the readability of drawings in general.
Chapter 9: Working with Blocks and Xrefs You’ll learn how to access content from other files in the current drawing in this chapter. You’ll also understand the important distinction between inserting and externally referencing content. In addition, you’ll store saved content on tool palettes for simplified reuse.
Chapter 10: Creating and Editing Text The written word is undeniably a part of every drawing. This chapter teaches you how to create both single- and multiline text, how to edit any text, and how to control its appearance through text styles and object properties.
Chapter 11: Dimensioning You’ll learn how to annotate drawings with specific measurements known as dimensions in this chapter. In addition to learning how to control measurements’ appearance with dimension styles, you’ll create linear, aligned, angular, and radius dimension objects.
Chapter 12: Keeping In Control with Constraints This chapter teaches you how to add geometric and dimensional constraints to objects so that their ultimate form is controlled by mathematical formulas. The formulas in the examples are as simple as adding two dimensions or calculating the diameter of a circle from its radius.
Chapter 13: Working with Layouts and Annotative Objects AutoCAD has two environments, which you’ll learn about in this chapter on layouts: modelspace and paperspace. You’ll create floating viewports to display the contents of modelspace in the paperspace of a layout. In addition, you’ll create annotative styles and objects that always display the proper height no matter which viewport or annotation scale is selected.
Chapter 14: Printing and Plotting From plotter drivers to plot style tables and page setups, you’ll learn the intricacies of creating printed output to scale in AutoCAD. You’ll plot in both modelspace and paperspace, and you will even create electronic output that can be shared on the Internet.
Chapter 15: Working with Data Attributes, fields, and tables are the subjects of this chapter on managing data. You’ll learn how to embed nongraphical data in blocks, how to link to that data dynamically in text fields, and finally how to display and format this same data in an organized fashion in spreadsheet-like tables.
Chapter 16: Navigating 3D Models In this chapter, you’ll learn how to change your point of view while working on 3D models using the ViewCube®, the Orbit tool, and SteeringWheel® technology. In addition, you’ll compose and save perspective views with cameras to help you visualize 3D models with added realism.
Chapter 17: Modeling in 3D You’ll learn the basics of surface, solid, and mesh modeling in this chapter by building the 3D geometry you navigated in the previous chapter. Each 3D toolset has its strengths and limitations, and you’ll learn to use tools in each category to get the job done.
Chapter 18: Presenting and Documenting 3D Design By assigning realistic materials, inserting artificial and natural light sources, and rendering the scene, you’ll create realistic computer-generated imagery in this chapter. By approaching the final render in a series of ever more realistic test renders, you’ll hone in on photorealistic output in stages. You’ll also learn how to project 2D plans, sections, and detail drawings from a model so that you can dimension and document 3D designs.
Appendix: Autodesk AutoCAD 2014 Certification The appendix contains information about how to prepare for Autodesk certification exams using this book. The tables point you to the chapters where you’ll find specific examples giving you practical experience with the topics covered in the exams.

The Essentials Series

The Essentials series from Sybex provides outstanding instruction for readers who are just beginning to develop their professional skills. Every Essentials book includes these features:

  • Skill-based instruction with chapters organized around projects rather than abstract concepts or subjects.
  • Suggestions for additional exercises at the end of each chapter, where you can practice and extend your skills.
  • Digital files (via download) so that you can work through the project tutorials yourself. Please check the book’s web page at www.sybex.com/go/autocad2014essentials for these companion downloads.
certobjective.eps

The certification margin icon will alert you to passages that are especially relevant to AutoCAD 2014 certification. See the certification appendix and www.autodesk.com/certification for more information and resources.

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