Written by Christopher Jason

Today, I want to mention Relative Coordinate System.

Figure.1 We'll practise this shape to understand relative coordinate input ‘@’ character is used for relative coordinate input. Putting it at the beginning of an entry, the place you are on is considered as the origin and the desired coordinate relative to this origin is entered. Briefly, ‘@’ character means ‘with respect to’.

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Written by Christopher Jason

As you know, no scale is used in AutoCAD drawings. Drawing models are prepared with real dimensions and scale is given during the print-out. In order to do this, print Plot… command is used from File menu. Plot dialog box will appear (Fig.1). You can take print-outs according to the scale you want by setting correct values in mm ve units boxes inside Plot scale part, which is in Plot Settings tab.

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Written by Christopher Jason

Sometimes we just have to select some objects that are overlapping. I used to delete the ones on top to reach those at the bottom. However, sometimes your project necessitates overlapping objects and you may have to select one of them. Luckily, AutoCAD 2011 has some new features to make the process a lot simpler.

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Written by Christopher Jason

We continue discussing the new features in AutoCAD 2011. There are some new features making selections a breeze in the new version. SELECTSIMILAR is one of them. The way the command works is really simple, select an object, right click and select "Select Similar" from the right-click menu. (Fig.1)

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Written by Christopher Jason

In my previous article, I have explained about “model space” and “drawing unit” concepts. Please read this article once more, even if you have read it, because these concepts are very important when starting an AutoCAD drawing.

In this article, I will talk about drawing units, even though I have mentioned about the concept of units in some of my previous articles, I believe that it is very important to talk about it separately in one article. When drawing in AutoCAD modelspace, scale is not our first concern as it is when we are drawing on paperspace. As I have mentioned several times before, drawing (modeling) is not made with scale in AutoCAD. You draw everything one to one. Scale only matters about how detailed you will show the drawing.

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Written by Christopher Jason

When AutoCAD is opened, first thing that appears on the screen in a part where "Command:" is written and some tabs as seen in Fig. 1. These tabs follow as Model/Layout 1/Layout 2. Unless you do something controversially, “Model” tab is active. Among the drawing areas that I mentioned above, first and the main one is this “ModelSpace”. Other area where you can make drawing is “Layout”, in other words what we call paper itself. Maybe just because some users can’t give up their traditional drawing with pencil and paper, they want to do the same with AutoCAD. However, first thing that you should learn is that you should prepare your drawings in ModelSpace. If we accept ModelSpace as our drawing environment in AutoCAD, then we can define our drawing as "model".

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Written by Christopher Jason

One of the most frequently asked questions in user comments section of our blog, as I see, is that new users are very confused of units. We have explained units and some other concepts which have to be known before starting to draw in Autocad in our previous articles. Firstly, I strongly recommend you to read the articles listed below.

Let us proceed with the unit acceptance. When you are starting to draw, you have to assume a 1 drawing unit in the model space (DWG Unit) as 1 measure unit. This depends on your type of drawing. For instance, you can assume 1 unit as 1 centimeter in architectural drawings on the other hand, you can assume 1 unit as 1 milimeter in mechanical drawings. You can SCALE all objects in the drawing if you change the unit acceptance later.

Written by Christopher Jason

I wanted to write this article, which will help you to understand the AutoCAD's working logic and learn some concepts like scale and unit, if you have just started using AutoCAD or if you are learning it by yourself.

First of all, I would like make clear that, whichever drawing you are making, area that you are substantiating this drawing is called modelspace. If you are using AutoCAD 2000 or higher versions, you have noticed phrases like “Model / Layout1 /Layout2” over the small tabs under the area which you are making the drawing. Do not forget that you make your drawing in Modelspace.

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Written by Christopher Jason

Those who have just started working with AutoCAD should first learn about the coordinate system of AutoCAD. When you first open AutoCAD, you see Model Space on your screen and you make your drawing in this space. You can think of the model space as a 3 dimensional paper space. Indeed, if you are going to draw something 2 dimensional and you are looking at the model from top view, then you can think of it as paper directly. Only difference between paper is that model space has no boundaries. If we remember the old days, we used to make a preliminary preparation to align the drawing in the middle of the paper by adjusting the scale also. In AutoCAD, you don’t have to worry about scaling or aligning the drawing in the middle of the paper. You can read my article "Understanding scale concept and units in Autocad" where I have explained these concepts in detail.When you first start drawing in model space in AutoCAD, probably you will mostly encounter with the problem of entering points. AutoCAD will prompt you to enter a point a strating point of a line, corner of a rectangle etc. In this article, I will explain “how to enter a point” as well as the coordinate system.

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Written by Christopher Jason

Everyone has used the famous F8 button ( ORTHO ON/OFF ) of AutoCAD. Whenever we need 4 main angle directions we press F8 or we used to press. I haven’t been using F8 button since AutoCAD 2002®. Because I prefer using F10 ( POLAR TRACKING ON/OFF ) button, which is more useful than that. In this article, I would like to explain this to you.

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