- •About the Authors
- •Dedication
- •Authors’ Acknowledgments
- •Table of Contents
- •Introduction
- •What’s Not (And What Is) in This Book
- •Mac attack!
- •Who Do We Think You Are?
- •How This Book Is Organized
- •Part I: AutoCAD 101
- •Part II: Let There Be Lines
- •Part III: If Drawings Could Talk
- •Part IV: Advancing with AutoCAD
- •Part V: On a 3D Spree
- •Part VI: The Part of Tens
- •But wait . . . there’s more!
- •Icons Used in This Book
- •A Few Conventions — Just in Case
- •Commanding from the keyboard
- •Tying things up with the Ribbon
- •Where to Go from Here
- •Why AutoCAD?
- •The Importance of Being DWG
- •Seeing the LT
- •Checking System Requirements
- •Suddenly, It’s 2013!
- •AutoCAD Does Windows (And Office)
- •And They’re Off: AutoCAD’s Opening Screens
- •Running with Ribbons
- •Getting with the Program
- •Looking for Mr. Status Bar
- •Let your fingers do the talking: The command window
- •The key(board) to AutoCAD success
- •Keeping tabs on palettes
- •Down the main stretch: The drawing area
- •Fun with F1
- •A Simple Setup
- •Drawing a (Base) Plate
- •Drawing rectangles on the right layers
- •Circling your plate
- •Nuts to you
- •Getting a Closer Look with Zoom and Pan
- •Modifying to Make It Merrier
- •Hip-hip-array!
- •Stretching out
- •Crossing your hatches
- •Following the Plot
- •A Setup Roadmap
- •Choosing your units
- •Weighing up your scales
- •Thinking annotatively
- •Thinking about paper
- •Defending your border
- •A Template for Success
- •Making the Most of Model Space
- •Setting your units
- •Making the drawing area snap-py (and grid-dy)
- •Setting linetype and dimension scales
- •Entering drawing properties
- •Making Templates Your Own
- •Setting Up a Layout in Paper Space
- •Will that be tabs or buttons?
- •View layouts Quick(View)ly
- •Creating a layout
- •Copying and changing layouts
- •Lost in paper space
- •Spaced out
- •A view(port) for drawing in
- •About Paper Space Layouts and Plotting
- •Managing Your Properties
- •Layer one on me!
- •Accumulating properties
- •Creating new layers
- •Manipulating layers
- •Using Named Objects
- •Using AutoCAD DesignCenter
- •Copying layers between drawings
- •Controlling Your Precision
- •Keyboard capers: Coordinate input
- •Understanding AutoCAD’s coordinate systems
- •Grab an object and make it snappy
- •Other Practical Precision Procedures
- •Introducing the AutoCAD Drawing Commands
- •The Straight and Narrow: Lines, Polylines, and Polygons
- •Toeing the line
- •Connecting the lines with polyline
- •Squaring off with rectangles
- •Choosing your sides with polygon
- •(Throwing) Curves
- •Going full circle
- •Arc-y-ology
- •Solar ellipses
- •Splines: The sketchy, sinuous curves
- •Donuts: The circles with a difference
- •Revision clouds on the horizon
- •Scoring Points
- •Commanding and Selecting
- •Command-first editing
- •Selection-first editing
- •Direct object manipulation
- •Choosing an editing style
- •Grab It
- •One-by-one selection
- •Selection boxes left and right
- •Perfecting Selecting
- •AutoCAD Groupies
- •Object Selection: Now You See It . . .
- •Get a Grip
- •About grips
- •A gripping example
- •Move it!
- •Copy, or a kinder, gentler Move
- •A warm-up stretch
- •Your AutoCAD Toolkit
- •The Big Three: Move, Copy, and Stretch
- •Base points and displacements
- •Move
- •Copy
- •Copy between drawings
- •Stretch
- •More Manipulations
- •Mirror
- •Rotate
- •Scale
- •Array
- •Offset
- •Slicing, Dicing, and Splicing
- •Trim and Extend
- •Break
- •Fillet and Chamfer and Blend
- •Join
- •When Editing Goes Bad
- •Zoom and Pan with Glass and Hand
- •The wheel deal
- •Navigating your drawing
- •Controlling your cube
- •Time to zoom
- •A View by Any Other Name . . .
- •Looking Around in Layout Land
- •Degenerating and Regenerating
- •Getting Ready to Write
- •Simply stylish text
- •Taking your text to new heights
- •One line or two?
- •Your text will be justified
- •Using the Same Old Line
- •Turning On Your Annotative Objects
- •Saying More in Multiline Text
- •Making it with Mtext
- •It slices; it dices . . .
- •Doing a number on your Mtext lists
- •Line up in columns — now!
- •Modifying Mtext
- •Gather Round the Tables
- •Tables have style, too
- •Creating and editing tables
- •Take Me to Your Leader
- •Electing a leader
- •Multi options for multileaders
- •How Do You Measure Up?
- •A Field Guide to Dimensions
- •The lazy drafter jumps over to the quick dimension commands
- •Dimension associativity
- •Where, oh where, do my dimensions go?
- •The Latest Styles in Dimensioning
- •Creating and managing dimension styles
- •Let’s get stylish!
- •Adjusting style settings
- •Size Matters
- •Details at other scales
- •Editing Dimensions
- •Editing dimension geometry
- •Editing dimension text
- •Controlling and editing dimension associativity
- •Batten Down the Hatches!
- •Don’t Count Your Hatches. . .
- •Size Matters!
- •We can do this the hard way. . .
- •. . . or we can do this the easy way
- •Annotative versus non-annotative
- •Pushing the Boundary (Of) Hatch
- •Your hatching has no style!
- •Hatch from scratch
- •Editing Hatch Objects
- •You Say Printing, We Say Plotting
- •The Plot Quickens
- •Plotting success in 16 steps
- •Get with the system
- •Configure it out
- •Preview one, two
- •Instead of fit, scale it
- •Plotting the Layout of the Land
- •Plotting Lineweights and Colors
- •Plotting with style
- •Plotting through thick and thin
- •Plotting in color
- •It’s a (Page) Setup!
- •Continuing the Plot Dialog
- •The Plot Sickens
- •Rocking with Blocks
- •Creating Block Definitions
- •Inserting Blocks
- •Attributes: Fill-in-the-Blank Blocks
- •Creating attribute definitions
- •Defining blocks that contain attribute definitions
- •Inserting blocks that contain attribute definitions
- •Edit attribute values
- •Extracting data
- •Exploding Blocks
- •Purging Unused Block Definitions
- •Arraying Associatively
- •Comparing the old and new ARRAY commands
- •Hip, hip, array!
- •Associatively editing
- •Going External
- •Becoming attached to your xrefs
- •Layer-palooza
- •Creating and editing an external reference file
- •Forging an xref path
- •Managing xrefs
- •Blocks, Xrefs, and Drawing Organization
- •Mastering the Raster
- •Attaching a raster image
- •Maintaining your image
- •Theme and Variations: Dynamic Blocks
- •Lights! Parameters!! Actions!!!
- •Manipulating dynamic blocks
- •Maintaining Design Intent
- •Defining terms
- •Forget about drawing with precision!
- •Constrain yourself
- •Understanding Geometric Constraints
- •Applying a little more constraint
- •AutoConstrain yourself!
- •Understanding Dimensional Constraints
- •Practice a little constraint
- •Making your drawing even smarter
- •Using the Parameters Manager
- •Dimensions or constraints — have it both ways!
- •The Internet and AutoCAD: An Overview
- •You send me
- •Send it with eTransmit
- •Rapid eTransmit
- •Bad reception?
- •Help from the Reference Manager
- •Design Web Format — Not Just for the Web
- •All about DWF and DWFx
- •Autodesk Design Review 2013
- •The Drawing Protection Racket
- •Autodesk Weather Forecast: Increasing Cloud
- •Working Solidly in the Cloud
- •Free AutoCAD!
- •Going once, going twice, going 123D
- •Your head planted firmly in the cloud
- •The pros
- •The cons
- •Cloudy with a shower of DWGs
- •AutoCAD 2013 cloud connectivity
- •Tomorrow’s Forecast
- •Understanding 3D Digital Models
- •Tools of the Trade
- •Warp speed ahead
- •Entering the third dimension
- •Untying the Ribbon and opening some palettes
- •Modeling from Above
- •Using 3D coordinate input
- •Using point filters
- •Object snaps and object snap tracking
- •Changing Planes
- •Displaying the UCS icon
- •Adjusting the UCS
- •Navigating the 3D Waters
- •Orbit à go-go
- •Taking a spin around the cube
- •Grabbing the SteeringWheels
- •Visualizing 3D Objects
- •Getting Your 3D Bearings
- •Creating a better 3D template
- •Seeing the world from new viewpoints
- •From Drawing to Modeling in 3D
- •Drawing basic 3D objects
- •Gaining a solid foundation
- •Drawing solid primitives
- •Adding the Third Dimension to 2D Objects
- •Creating 3D objects from 2D drawings
- •Modifying 3D Objects
- •Selecting subobjects
- •Working with gizmos
- •More 3D variants of 2D commands
- •Editing solids
- •Get the 2D Out of Here!
- •A different point of view
- •But wait! There’s more!
- •But wait! There’s less!
- •Do You See What I See?
- •Visualizing the Digital World
- •Adding Lighting
- •Default lighting
- •User-defined lights
- •Sunlight
- •Creating and Applying Materials
- •Defining a Background
- •Rendering a 3D Model
- •Autodesk Feedback Community
- •Autodesk Discussion Groups
- •Autodesk’s Own Bloggers
- •Autodesk University
- •The Autodesk Channel on YouTube
- •The World Wide (CAD) Web
- •Your Local ATC
- •Your Local User Group
- •AUGI
- •Books
- •Price
- •3D Abilities
- •Customization Options
- •Network Licensing
- •Express Tools
- •Parametrics
- •Standards Checking
- •Data Extraction
- •MLINE versus DLINE
- •Profiles
- •Reference Manager
- •And The Good News Is . . .
- •APERTURE
- •DIMASSOC
- •MENUBAR
- •MIRRTEXT
- •OSNAPZ
- •PICKBOX
- •REMEMBERFOLDERS
- •ROLLOVERTIPS
- •TOOLTIPS
- •VISRETAIN
- •And the Bonus Round
- •Index
338 Part III: If Drawings Could Talk
Whatever the reason, you’ll want to print drawings at some point — probably sooner rather than later. Depending on where you are in a project, plotting is the pop quiz, midterm, or final exam of your drawing-making semester. This chapter helps you ace the test.
You Say Printing, We Say Plotting
Plotting originally meant creating hard-copy output on a device that was capable of printing on larger sheets, such as D size or E size (or A1 or A0 for the metrically inclined), that measure several feet (or a meter or more) on a side. (See Chapter 4 for information about drafting-paper sizes.) These plotters often used pens to draw, robot-fashion, on large sheets of vellum or drafting film. The sheets could then be run through diazo blueline machines — copying machines that create blueline prints — to create less-expensive copies. Printing meant creating hard-copy output on ordinary printers that used ordi- nary-sized paper, such as A size (letter size, 81⁄2 x 11 inches) or B size (tabloid or ledger size, 11 x 17 inches): A4 or A3 for you metric folk.
Nowadays, AutoCAD and most CAD users make no distinction between plotting and printing. AutoCAD veterans usually say “plotting,” so if you want to be cool, you can do so, too.
Whatever you call it, plotting an AutoCAD drawing is potentially more complicated than printing a word-processing document or a spreadsheet. CAD has a larger range of different plotters and printers, drawing types, paper sizes, and output procedures than other computer applications. AutoCAD tries to help you tame the vast jungle of plotting permutations, but you’ll probably find that you have to take some time to get the lay of the land and clear a path to your desired hard-copy output. As we indicate in the Introduction section to this book, after you find your sweet spot, plotting actually becomes quite routine.
The Plot Quickens
After reading the preceding paragraph, you probably realize that you’re not going to master AutoCAD plotting in five minutes. That doesn’t change the fact that your boss, employee, wife, husband, construction foreman, or 11-year-old daughter wants a quick check plot of your drawing.
Plotting success in 16 steps
Here’s the quick, cut-to-the-chase procedure for plotting a simple drawing — a mere 16 steps! This isn’t as bad as it sounds, however, because you can later see how to save the procedure specifications so they can be reused
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Chapter 16: The Plot Thickens 339
with considerably less effort. This procedure assumes that you plot in model space: that is, that clicking the Model button on the status bar shows you the drawing in a way that you want to plot. (We cover plotting paper space layout tabs in the upcoming section, “Plotting the Layout of the Land.”) This procedure doesn’t deal with controlling plotted lineweights; see the “Plotting Lineweights and Colors” section, later in this chapter, for those details. It should, however, result in a piece of paper that bears some resemblance to what AutoCAD displays on your computer monitor.
Follow these steps to make a simple, not-to-scale, monochrome (black-and- white) plot of a drawing:
1.Open the drawing in AutoCAD.
2.Click Model (not the MODEL/PAPER button) on the status bar to ensure that you’re plotting the model space contents. If you have the Model and Layout tabs displayed, rather than the status bar buttons, click the Model tab.
We explain model space and paper space in Chapters 4 and 5, and how to plot paper space layouts in the section, “Plotting the Layout of the Land,” later in this chapter.
3.Zoom to the drawing’s current extents; click the Zoom Extents button
on the Navigation bar (if necessary, click the tiny down arrow below the Zoom button and choose Zoom Extents from the menu). Or type Z, press Enter, type E, and then press Enter again.
The extents of a drawing consist of a rectangular area just large enough to include all the objects in the drawing.
4.To display the Plot dialog box, click the Plot button on the Quick Access Toolbar.
The Plot dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 16-1.
AutoCAD automatically appends whatever you’re about to plot in the dialog box’s title bar. For example, in Figure 16-1, the dialog box title is Plot – Model. If you’re plotting a layout and haven’t changed the layout name, the title might be Plot – Layout1. If you have changed the layout name, the dialog box title will be Plot – First Floor Plan (or whatever you renamed it). In this book, we call it (simply) “the Plot dialog box.”
5.In the Printer/Plotter area, select a device from the Name drop-down list.
For your first quick-and-dirty plot, select Default Windows System Printer pc3, assuming that your computer has a generic printer attached to
it. If you don’t have a system printer connected, choose Microsoft XPS Document Writer. This will create a file that can be viewed with Internet Explorer.
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340 Part III: If Drawings Could Talk
More Options button
Figure 16-1: The Plot dialog box.
6.In the Paper Size area, select a paper size that’s loaded in your printer or plotter.
For most generic Windows desktop printers this will be Letter (8.5" x 11"), ANSI A-size (11" x 8.5"), or ISO A4 (210mm x 297mm)
7.In the Plot Area area (sponsored by the Department of Redundancy Department), select Extents from the What to Plot drop-down list.
This will plot all your drawing.
8.In the Plot Offset (Origin Set to Printable Area) area, select the Center the Plot check box.
Alternatively, you can specify offsets of 0 (zero) or other amounts in order to position the plot at a specific location on the paper.
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9.In the Plot Scale area, select the Fit to Paper check box.
For most real plotting, you’ll plot to a specific scale. Select the Fit to Paper check box for now to get our quick-and-dirty plot. We cover plotting to a specific scale in the “Instead of fit, scale it” section, later in this chapter for guidance.
10.Click the More Options button (at the bottom-right corner of the dialog box, next to the Help button).
The Plot dialog box reveals additional settings, as shown in Figure 16-2.
Figure 16-2: The expanded Plot dialog box.
11.In the Plot Style Table (Pen Assignments) area, choose monochrome. ctb or monochrome.stb from the drop-down list.
If AutoCAD asks whether you want to assign this plot style table to all layouts, answer No for the time being.
12.In the Plot Options area, make sure that the Plot with Plot Styles check box is selected and also that the Save Changes to Layout check box is deselected, as shown in Figure 16-2.
Leaving the Save Changes to Layout check box deselected tells AutoCAD to use any plot settings changes that you make only for this plot. AutoCAD will revert to the original plot settings the next time you plot the drawing.
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342 Part III: If Drawings Could Talk
After you become confident with plotting, you may want to select this check box so that AutoCAD does save your plotting settings changes as the default. Alternatively, click the Apply to Layout button to make the current plot settings the default for future plotting of this tab (that is, the Model tab) in this drawing.
13.In the Drawing Orientation area, choose Portrait or Landscape.
The icon (the letter A on a sheet) in the lower-right corner may help you decide on the right orientation. If not, the full preview in the next step will tell you for sure.
14.Click the Preview button and check to make sure that the drawing appears on the paper at the correct orientation and size, shown in Figure 16-3, and then right-click and choose Exit to return to the Plot dialog box.
Figure 16-3: A preview of coming plot-tractions.
15.If you find any problems in the preview, adjust the plot settings (for example, Plot Area, Plot Scale, or Drawing Orientation) and repeat the preview until the plot looks right.
16.Click OK to create the plot.
When AutoCAD finishes generating and sending the plot, it displays a Plot and Publish Job Complete balloon notification from the status bar. If you decide that you don’t want to see these notifications, right-click the Plot/Publish Details Report Available icon near the right end of the status bar and deselect Enable Balloon Notification.
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