What is AutoCAD?

AutoCAD is a software which is used to make various 2D and 3D designs or models. This software has made the designing part of any organization very easy. Designing is a very important part in building anything, like house, machines etc.. AutoCAD is such a software which helps us in creating a layout of the building, machines and many more things, and the best part of this is that we can even visualize the diagram or design from various angles within the software itself.

Basic System Requirement for using AutoCAD:
1. Operating System: Windows / Mac
2. Processor: 2.5 GHz or above
3. RAM: 8GB
4. Display Resolution: 1920 x 1080 (Full HD)
5. Graphics Card: 1 GB

Some of the basic tools of AutoCAD

1. Making a Straight Line

First of all, you have to select line option from the top of the AutoCAD software. Then remember that a line can be formed by a point, length, and angle from the x-axis. Select the line and click anywhere on the workspace(the area which have grids) and then specify the length of the line then press TAB to switch to set the angle of line at which you want to make a line from the x-axis. Once you are done with making the desired line press Esc button on keyboard.

You can select line option from the place shown in the given picture.


Now, this is how the line will look like, the length of the line is 50mm (remember that in a professional drawing we take units in mm). But how we will show that the actual length of this line is 200mm. Now, here comes the use of another tool, Dimension.


2. Measuring Dimension of a drawing

This tool is used to label the dimensions of any drawing which you have made. Remember that AutoCAD is used to make professional for buildings, machines etc., and hence dimension are the most important part of these drawing. For marking the dimension, just select the Dimension tool and click on the line which you have made and just drag it up to a distance at which you want the dimension to be displayed.

It will look as given in the picture.


3. Making Circle

In Geometry, circle can be made using various parameters such as center point and radius, center point and diameter, using tangents, etc. And all those functions are provided in AutoCAD. You can see all the available function in the given image.


Here I will showing how to make a circle using center point and radius. You can explore more option in the similar manner. You have to first select the circle option, and from the dropdown option select center, radius option. Then, in the workspace click at a point to specify the center point of the circle and give the radius of the circle through keyboard and press ENTER. After the circle is made it will look like this. You can also show dimensions using the Dimension tool. You can represent dimension of a circle in two different way, from outside and from inside of the circle. Here the symbol (phi) represents the radius of circle.


4. Making Ellipse

Ellipse can made by specifying the center point, radius of major axis and minor axis. In AutoCAD you can select the ellipse option from the dropdown menu as shown in the given picture.


You can make ellipse in three ways, horizontal ellipse, vertical ellipse and ellipse inclined at some angle from x-axis. To make horizontal or vertical ellipse click anywhere on workspace and that point will be marked as center of the ellipse. The major difference between horizontal and vertical ellipse is that, in horizontal ellipse, the radius along the x-axis is larger than y-axis and vice-versa for vertical ellipse. To make an ellipse inclined at certain angle you have to first specify the radius of the major axis and after that press TAB to specify the angle and press ENTER, then specify the radius of minor axis and again press ENTER. You will see all the three diagrams as shown below.


5. Making Polygon

You can use this tool to make a regular polygon of specific no of side, inscribed in a circle or circumscribed about a circle. You can select the polygon option from the dropdown option as shown in the given picture.


To make a polygon, first you need to specify the no of sides of the polygon you want to make. Then specify the center point by clicking in the workspace region. Then select an option from 'inscribed in a circle' or 'circumscribed about a circle', after that specify the radius of the circle in which you to inscribe or circumscribe. Then press ENTER, you will get the desired polygon. You can see the pentagon made which is inscribed in the circle below.


6. Offset

This tool is used to make parallel lines in AutoCAD. You can select this option from the Modify section of the AutoCAD, you can find this option at the place shown in this picture.


To use this tool, you have first create a line of some length and the select the Offset tool and the specify the distance at which you want the parallel line to be make after specifying that press ENTER. Then select the line you want to make parallel to and move to cursor anywhere and click. The side of the line which you will click the parallel line will be formed on that side of that. This tool is very useful in making building structures. The parallel lines made will look like this.


7. Trim

This tool is very handy tool when you will be using AutoCAD. This tool is used to trim, i.e., delete or remove certain part of the drawing (remember that the part which it will tri will be region between two points). You can fin this tool in the Modify section of AutoCAD, you can find this option at the place shown in this picture.


Suppose you you want to make 3/4th of a circle then you need to make a circle and then divide it perpendicularly by straight line like this,


After you have made this, now you can use the trim tool and just drag across the region you want to remove. After removing unwanted region, this final diagram will look as shown in the given picture.


These were some of the basic tools of AutoCAD, hope you all must have gain some knowledge by reading this and would be helpful for your future.