AUTOCAD HISTORY
AutoCAD is currently one of the most well known and used systems aided design and it was developed by American company Autodesk. Born in 1982, AutoCAD was the first program of this type. It was presented for the first time in Las Vegas at Comdex (Computer Dealer's Exhibition).
In 1987, Autodesk quit numbering the versions, focusing on the release sites. Release 9 brings new improvements of the working environment, both at 2D, and 3D space. Another important release is number 11. Since 1990, Release 11 includes support for network. In 1999 has been released AutoCAD 2000 or release 15 and with it a series of new applications: Mechanical Desktop 5 integrated in AutoCAD 2000 and Inventor 4. 2007, March: AutoCAD 2008 was the release available for the x86-64 windows version of XP and Vista. Nowadays, last version of AutoCAD is 2011 or release 18.1. It has new tools like new parametric drawing tools, which let you to apply both geometric and dimensional constraints.
So, what AutoCAD bring in these 28 years? It was always at the ready to draw the simplest mechanical parts or the most complicated objects. It was learned by millions students and engineer. Nowadays, there are millions of licensed users on all continents, in large companies or industrial construction, in universities and design firms.
LINKs
AUTOCAD TUTORIAL
Searching the Internet you will find lots of AutoCAD tutorials. So, this tutorial will try not to explain in detail everything that AutoCAD means, but will focus on explaining certain sections of AutoCAD.
Obtain model projections
Orthogonal and isometric projections of the solid model can be arranged in different windows of the drawing. Use Vports command to achieve such porjections. Apply different visual style to every view you achieve.
Drawing points
PDMODE and PDSIZE variables
There are 2 variables that define a point: PDMODE and PDSIZE. PDMODE define how a point looks like (see the image below) and PDSIZE define the size of a point. They can have values from 0 to 4.
How to create polygonal mesh forms?
Create a revolved mesh
Before you begin you must understand that a mesh form is not a solid model even if is looks like one. There are several types of meshes, but today we will design only a revolved mesh. Let’s see how can we do this. The command is: revsurf, which will rotate the profile around of an axis.
Using revsurf, you will obtain the mesh below (2Dwireframe mode):
Workspace
There are three type of workspaces in AutoCAD 2010. These are:
- 2D Drafting & Annotation
- AutoCAD Classic
- 3D Modeling
- Autodesk products like: AutoCAD LT, Inventor Professional
- CATIA
- SolidWorks
- Solid Edge
- Pro/Engineering
- 1 (on) - CREATE NEW DRAWING and Startup windows are displayed.
- 0 (0FF) - the two windows are displayed.
- 1 (on) - dialog is displayed;
- 0 (off) - dialog is not displayed except the CUI command.
You may change the workspace using Switching Workspace icon from the right corner of AutoCAD 2010 interface.
A new type of workspace was introduced in AutoCAD 2011: 3D Basics. If you switch to 3D Basics, the ribon will looks like the image below:
What is CAD, CAM, CAE
CAD - computer aided design
CAM - computer aided manufacturing
CAE - computer aided engineering
Below there are a short list of CAD / CAM /CAE software:
How to modify dimension style (command are available even for previous versions of AutoCAD)
For example, if you have a drawing like the one below:
and you want to move the text alog the dimension line, first command will be: dimstyle. Next AutoCAD window will be just like fig.3. Press Modify button to modify dimension style.
and then choose the Text tab and Aligned with dimension line. Click OK! Now the text is aligned with dimension line.
New drawing
When you launch a new session, it automatically opens a new drawing name Drawing 1. This drawing has certain default settings. If you want to change these settings need to change variable values FILEDIA and STARTUP.
STARTUP variable has two values (the default is "0"):
FILEDIA variable (the default is "1"):
In the figures below, I set both variable FILEDIA and STARTUP equal to 1. The first window that opens is the "Startup", where you can choose the 3 options: "Start from scratch", "Use the template" and "Use the wizard.
All you have to do is to experience all these things alone.
