I hasten to announce that on September 8, 2015, Alexey Merkulova, a specialist in design, modeling and visualization in AutoCAD, 3Ds Max, Lumion and other programs with 11 years of experience, will hold a free online seminar “Educational program on working in AutoCAD” :

Alexey Merkulov's seminar is intended for both beginners and experienced designers. Alexey will break down the most pressing problems of novice AutoCAD users.

The number of places is limited - only 100 people will be able to take part online. There will most likely be no entries. Register for the event in advance and come. The date of the seminar “Educational program on working in AutoCAD” is September 8 at 20:00 Moscow time.

Topics that Alexey Merkulov will discuss online:

• Where should a beginner start working in AutoCAD;
• Which laptop or computer is suitable for work;
• Logic of classical design;
• Logic of end-to-end design;
• How to download the student version of AutoCAD for free from the official website of AutoDesk;
• Stumbling blocks for novice designers;
• Why do we need a “model”, and why do we need a “sheet”;
• Competent work with dimensions and text;
• Why is it that when the user tries to set the scale, all the size symbols on the sheet tab disappear?
• Why don't objects appear on the sheet?
• The ribbon (or sheet tab) is missing. What to do?
• The SPDS module for AutoCAD does not work;
• How and where to download SPDS?
• Line thickness is not displayed - what should I do?
• And much, much more in the free webinar by Alexey Merkulov “Educational program on working in AutoCAD”!

By the way, the author will give away new video courses online: “Using AutoCAD 100% (version 2.0)”, “Automation and acceleration of design in AutoCAD” and “Calculations and specifications in AutoCAD”. These courses will be published on September 15th, more details, but you can get them completely free at the seminar.

All details on the registration page via the link above!

P.S: A few words about who Alexey Merkulov is.

He is the author of training programs and video courses for AutoCAD, 3Ds Max, Lumion, etc., which have become real hits on the Internet and have sold thousands of copies. He is the creator of a website for planners, modelers, designers, builders - a certified specialist, has a certificate from the AutoDesk company itself.

Alexey himself has been designing and 3D modeling for more than 11 years of his life, he has eaten the dog in this topic and continues to improve. He has been teaching AutoCAD skills for more than 6 years. This teacher is worth going to for training!

You can see

Educational program on AutoCAD

Somewhat very simple tips, which I give to freshly baked AutoCAD readers, and in which, oddly enough, many cool specialists find something new

1.Try all AutoCAD commands. You have a powerful tool in front of you, but you don’t know even a hundredth of its capabilities. You need to know at least the capabilities of all the commands that are on the screen of an unconfigured AutoCAD. And know all their options. And be sure to try it. There is a lot of unnecessary stuff, but there are also a lot of useful accelerators. Using 5 primitive commands and not looking for ways to speed things up is sabotage! Especially if you pay hourly...

2.Use the most "difficult" commands. I mean those who do a lot of work at once. For example, don't use a line to draw a rectangle - there is a Rec command that reduces the number of clicks by almost 4 times.

3. Highlight with a frame. Don't click on every object. The frame from left to right (blue) will select only what is inside the frame. The right-to-left frame (green) will additionally select everything that is intersected by the frame. The command works great when you need to extend/cut a lot of lines. In this case, only the trimmed tails need to be crossed by the frame.

4.Change the properties of many objects at once. The properties panel (Ctrl+1) allows you to change the color/layer/style, etc. at many objects at once. For example, you can highlight a bunch of different objects on a sheet with a frame and select only MText objects in the properties panel in the header. The properties of all texts in the frame will be displayed. Now you can, for example, change the font height ( Text property height). If the value of some property is written *VARIES*, it means that the selection included objects with different values ​​of this property (different font heights for texts). No one is stopping you from making them the same.

5.Highlight with Quick Select. QSelect command or corresponding button

above the properties panel allows you to select only objects the right type or the desired color or from the desired layer. You can even select all circles of a given radius. For example, to remove interfering dimensions from contours, you need to do this:

It can also be convenient to select all objects similar to the sample (color, layer, size). To do this, you can use the command from the right-click menu SelectSimilar or the more powerful SelectSame from the " " plugin.

6.Use the keyboard. There are 101 buttons in front of you, and you keep tormenting the mouse.

• Space - in AutoCAD, it completely repeats the Enter function, but is located directly under the left thumb. It's much more convenient
• Space - causes the last command used to be repeated. And it also completes any input. It turns out that most of the work of the left hand is to continuously hammer on the space. Practice!
• Enter – when AutoCAD asks for a point, you can simply press Enter and the last coordinates of the last drawn figure will be inserted.
• @ - lazy modern engineers have already forgotten that you can type all the commands into the command line. But sometimes you need to specify absolute coordinates. The most convenient way to do this is to enter them into the command line. And the coordinates relative to the previous point are entered into the command line with @. When you enter coordinates through the Dynamic Input windows, AutoCAD inserts @ itself into the command line.
• , - a comma allows you to move between coordinate windows (Dynamic Input) just like Tab, but you cannot enter the third Z coordinate for flat figures with a tab, but a comma can. (In fairness, we can mention that the window for Z coordinates can be turned on once and for all, there is such a setting)
• Tab – among other things, when extruding lines and other modifications, allows you to switch between Dynamic Input windows and choose a convenient way to set a new size.
• Shift+Middle Button (aka wheel) – rotation of the model. Unlike the Orbit command, you can rotate the model with this combination while executing the command. Selected objects are not reset. During rotation, only selected objects are displayed - convenient for checking that everything you need is selected and nothing unnecessary. In a large drawing, be sure to select only the required part before rotating, otherwise expect freezing.
• Shift+RightButton – select binding (see below)
• Ctrl+LeftButton – selecting part of an object. For example, for a polyline, only the “clicked” segment will be selected, for a solid, only one face or one edge (depending on where you click). This is exactly how editing solid bodies happens - select a part using Ctrl and move it where necessary.
• Ctrl+F2 – opens a message window from command line
• F3 – turns on and off all bindings at once. Convenient for placing texts and drawing splines.
• F8 - enables orthogonal movements. Especially useful in 2D wireframe mode when Gizmos don't work. But it is more convenient to turn it on only at the moment of orthogonal movements and turn it off immediately.
• Ctrl+2 – opens the Design Center. With its help it is convenient to drag blocks, sheets, layers from other files
• Ctrl+8 – calculator. More convenient than external calculators because... you can insert the measured size directly into the calculator, and the calculation result directly into the AutoCAD command line
• Ctrl+0 – real pro mode! No panels. A clean screen for modeling and a command line for entering all commands from the keyboard.
• Ctrl+Shift+C – copying to the clipboard indicating the base point, so that you can then paste exactly where you need it.
• Ctrl+Shift+V – paste from the clipboard creating an unnamed block. I do not recommend using it because... Not only will the block have a confusing name and a terrible anchor point, but many teams will refuse to work with it. It’s better to spend a little more time, but make a block with a clear name.
• Ctrl+S – save
• Ctrl+P – print
• Ctrl+N – open a new blank file
• Ctrl+Tab – switch to the next open drawing. And Shift+ Ctrl+Tab is the previous one.
• Ctrl+Enter – line feed in multi-line fields or exit from text editing.

At the same time standard Windows buttons(works in any Windows, starting from Win7):

• Ctrl+Shift+Esc – program manager. Call to close frozen AutoCAD 
• Win+L – lock the computer so you can go pee and drink some tea. All programs continue to work, but no dwarf will ruin anything on the computer. For those in the tank, the Win button is the same button with the Windows logo between Ctrl and Alt that you have never used before. Some people prefer to press Alt+Ctrl+Del and then Enter.
• Win+D – show Desktop - desktop with all your favorite shortcuts
• Win+Break – a window with the name and configuration of the computer. Press when you ask for help from a remote system administrator, and he asks what the name of your computer is. Break is the last button in top row after functional ones. Aka Pause
• Win+Left Arrow – Fill current program left half of the current monitor. Same with the right arrow. That. We easily place windows to work with two programs at once.
• Win+up arrow – expand the window to full screen. And down - roll.
• Win+1 – go to the first program from among those that are visible on the taskbar. If there is a pinned shortcut to not running program– it will start. Similar to Win+2, etc.

7. Remember short commands.Pressing M is faster than searching for Move in the context menu and panels.

• M – Move
• RO – rotation (Rotate)
• CO – Copy
• A – arc (Arc)
• C – circle
• L – Line
• O - Offset
• X – explosion (eXplode)
• T – text (MText)
• SL – knife (Slice)
• REC - rectangle
• BOX – solid box
• MLD - MultiLeader - leader

Unfortunately short commands only work in English version AutoCAD. That's why the pros don't like Russification.

8.Look at the command line.AutoCAD/BrixCAD professional programs and are completely controlled from the command line (console). Actually, you don't need buttons. All messages about the work of commands are also displayed there. You can close the console, but this will ruin the whole idea and equate AutoCAD with children's programs like Inventor. In the command line, you can click on command options, you can enter absolute coordinates. Ctrl+F2 will open separate window to view messages and command line commands.

9. Set up system variables.It is not necessary to look for settings in the _Options dialog. All these and many, many other settings can be made on the command line through system variables. It is enough to enter the beginning of the searched word and AutoCAD will tell you which variables and commands contain this word. If you are looking for help on the forums, no one will tell you in which dialog to look for settings - only through system variables. In BrixCAD, the settings dialog immediately shows which variable is responsible for the setting and where it is stored.

10.Is your left hand resting on your knee? It’s immediately obvious that he’s a sucker at the computer! Program all frequently called commands for your left hand. All interface configuration is done through the CUI command. Buttons for quick access are added to the Keyboard Shortcuts section. You can save\load settings to a file there on the Transfer tab.

11.Enable all bindings except “to nearest”(Nearest), but turn them off when you arrange the lyrics. The “to the nearest” binding – a source of errors – is used only consciously, by calling it from the bindings menu.

12.Select the desired binding using Shift+RightButton. And take out the two main ones (end point and center) at least for a quick launch, or better yet, make a quick left-hand button for the ENDP and CEN commands. Why choose if all bindings are already enabled? And then, in a complex drawing, any bindings are triggered except the required one. Especially in 3D. A huge number of modeling errors are due precisely to the fact that the wrong binding worked.

13.Snap to center CEN is triggered when hovering over an arc, even if the center is far behind the screen. Don't be alarmed that the link icon is not visible - the link will still work.

14.Model from a rigid body. Except in rare cases when a flat layout is really needed, always draw a box or cylinder straight away.

15.If you still need to draw out flat contours, use not only the good old extrude, but also the smart presspull, which does not require closing contours and uses any intersections, including intersections of three-dimensional bodies, as contours! Sometimes this intelligence gets in the way - only in this case does it make sense to use extrude. Presspull even understands that a circle on the surface of a solid is a hole blank! That is, to model holes you can do without subtracting solids.

16.Model like a sculptor(Peter Gee method):

• The general idea is to draw a box and cut off all the excess, like a sculptor cuts off pieces of stone to get a sculpture.
• The advantage is that all internal details will be drawn by themselves, no dimensions need to be calculated. Throw your calculator into the abyss.
• Sequencing:

1. Draw a box in the dimensions of the product
2. Use a knife (slice) to cut off the outer parts. The slice has options for cutting parallel to the main projection planes; you just need to specify the point through which the cutting plane will pass. And to set this point, use the from snap (offset), select the corner of the part and set the direction and amount of offset (thickness of the material to be cut off). Always save both parts of the cut body (both option)
3. When we cut off all the external parts, the structure is almost ready. External parts can be hidden (hideobject) and continue cutting the remaining body if some more internal parts are needed. That. Products made from flat sheets can be modeled in seconds without calculating any dimensions.
4. It is more difficult with curved surfaces. The surface shift command _solidedit f o helps here
5. To speed up peeling from any surface, use the Peeling (ASL) command from the plugin instead of slice

17.Use Gizmo. These are the same colored arrows that appear on any object if the rendering mode with shading is turned on (for example, realistic).

They allow you to start moving objects along axes without calling the Move command and without catching snaps to the axes. At the same time, in three dimensions you can be sure that the object will not spontaneously jump off somewhere in the third dimension. You can click on any anchor anywhere in the drawing - the movement will still occur only along one axis. A small nuance: when you try to specify a snap point away from the selected axis, AutoCAD fools you and shows all snaps except the one you need. It can be easily treated: select one desired binding from the Shift+RightButton menu. Typically, a binding to the ENDP endpoint. It should also be noted that Gizmo perfectly drags not only entire objects, but also their parts (we manage solid surfaces by pressing Ctrl). This makes it easy to compress and stretch many solids at once. It turns out that Gizmo replaces the Move command by 50%. The exception is those cases when it is necessary to specify a specific base point, i.e. it must be moved not “by a few millimeters,” but to a specific point in the drawing. But even in this case, if you wish, you can adapt to using Gizmo, because you can easily drag the point from where the Gizmo arrows are drawn. By default, the Gizmo works in the world coordinate system. There is a switch to the current and object coordinate systems in the context menu (click on the right button). There is also a switch for rotation mode. Unfortunately, Gizmo is disabled in 2D wireframe mode and in the block editor.

18.Isolate objects. The IsolateObjects command allows you to conveniently work with individual parts of a complex assembly. There is no point in switching to a 2D frame - the insulation is more convenient and clearer. Hiding unnecessary objects leads to a radical acceleration of drawing in any “beautiful” mode, reduces the number of fatal AutoCAD crashes, and removes annoying bindings to now unnecessary parts of the drawing. Three related commands, IsolateObjects, HideObjects, and UnIsolateObjects, are always available in the light bulb menu in the lower right corner of the screen. And also in the context menu of the right mouse button. But no one bothers you to drag them out to the QuickLunch panel.

19.Freeze layers. Freezing layers is better than turning them off because... freezing turns off the visibility of blocks, regardless of which layers the insides of the block are on. Frozen objects are not selected using the Ctrl+A button (select all), and are not taken into account by the Zoom Extents command (zooming to show all objects, short command Z, E). For those in the tank: turning off layers is a light bulb in front of the layer name, and freezing is a sun/snowflake. And of course, everyone knows that if you want, you can freeze layers only for the current viewport, and disabling them works everywhere at once.

20.Work with a small drawing. When there is a long modification of an assembly in a large, heavy drawing, it is more convenient not to simply isolate the assembly, but to transfer it to an empty new file. Copy via Ctrl+Shift+C indicating a convenient base point, create a new drawing Ctrl+Alt+N, paste Ctrl+V into the 0 coordinate system, edit and copy back. Saving random access memory and a small drawing file dramatically increase the stability of AutoCAD and consequently save the company money and your nerves.

21.Close unnecessary files and programs. Are you waiting for AutoCAD to learn how to work stably with seven giant files at once? You're waiting in vain. He will never learn. And don’t complain to the system administrator that something is buggy and AutoCAD crashes - you opened a bunch of windows yourself, and complain to yourself. Heap open source software also do not add stability Windows work. Get into the habit of closing all programs as soon as they are no longer needed.

22.Modify solid bodies by selecting their parts using CTRL. For example, when it is necessary to increase the length of a product (even if an additive has already been made), you can use the method of moving the solid faces.

• Select all solids of the assembly and disable their history in the properties. When history is enabled, most commands for modifying solid bodies do not work.
• Expand the assembly so that you can see it all and drag it parallel to the view (along the screen)
• Turn on 2D wireframe mode. It is important.
• Frame the parts that will simply need to be moved, but not lengthened. A frame from top to left to bottom to right will help you select all the parts that fit into the entire frame at once
• Move entire parts to a new location
• you can enable orthogonality F8
• press M (move command)
• click on empty space
• move the mouse in the desired direction
• entering travel distance
• space
• entire parts have been moved, we deal with the pulled ones separately
• Again, select the extruded part of the assembly with the same frame. But now hold down Ctrl. It is not the solids that will be selected, but their parts - surfaces, edges, vertices. It is also important to capture the required filler holes with the frame. If you do not turn on the 2D wireframe mode, then it is not the edges that are highlighted, but the edges and external holes.
• Call Move again and move the edges and the additive to a new position. Everything is exactly the same as for whole solids. All solids will lengthen, the additive will move to a new place. The assembly has lengthened. Essentially one Move team did the job of modifying dozens of rigid bodies. It is important that at the time of movement the entire assembly is on the screen. Otherwise, glitches are possible
• Twist the assembly. Check that there are no distortions. AutoCAD sometimes disfigures parts of solids that are not included in the selection.
• Did not work out? Happens. Roll back the changes and start over. It's still faster than editing each detail separately.

23.To speed up the extrusion of holes use the Drill commands(DRI) and Gap (GAP) from the Drilling () plugin.

24.Check the intersection of solids– Interfere team. It is very convenient to look for errors in the model - after all, real parts cannot fit inside each other. You just need to explode all the blocks before calling and ignore the request for the second array of solids.

25.Calculate weight - the MassProp command shows the volume of all selected solids, taking into account all their geometry. The volume is displayed in mm cubic. To convert to meters, you need to remove 9 digits (divide by a billion). Then we simply multiply by the average density of the materials. For all pieces of wood (pine, chipboard, MDF, plywood), the density can be roughly assumed to be 800 (kg per cubic meter). BrixCAD shows this data in properties, but do not forget to collapse the mass section, because their calculation is very slow. You can use a plugin - it also shows the mass after.

26. Rename everything - the Rename command is hidden from users for some reason, but it can be useful for renaming blocks and all other named AutoCAD objects. The plugin contains the A>V>C> panel in which you can easily rename blocks.

27.Optimize contours– in contours for CNC and for extrusion, it is necessary to avoid breaks, overlapping lines, and unnecessary segments. All this optimization is done by the regular OverKill team (Russian version - Clean up). And the Boundary command will help you make a closed contour from scattered, intersecting lines. The (OSL) command from the plugin will do the job even better.

28.Paste from Excel. AutoCAD ignores inserting tables and their pieces from text programs and Excel. The simple usual Ctrl+V does not work. However, there is still a way: use the PasteSpec command and in its options - AutoCAD entries. This command will create new table AutoCAD. From it you can already copy cells in batches to other AutoCAD tables. There is also a plugin (Paste To Table), which allows you to avoid unnecessary movements and also allows you to split tables into several sheets (layout)

29.Any of the above commands also work in the Russian version of AutoCAD. Except short commands. And if they don’t work, start the command with an underscore _ You can also write command options in English with an underscore.

Hello, dear visitor!

I offer you the opportunity to learn AutoCAD from scratch by going through a sequential series of lessons.

This course is intended for people new to the program. Therefore, I will give the material in great detail.

Basically everything latest versions AutoCAD is not very fundamentally different from each other. Therefore, if you learn to work in any version of AutoCADa, you can easily master the next one.

COMPUTER REQUIREMENTS.

Before installing AutoCAD, make sure that operating system Your computer is suitable for installing the version of AutoCAD you have (the computer requirements can be read at installation disk before downloading the program).

PROGRAM INTERFACE.

It is advisable that the program you will install on your computer be in Russian. This will make it easier for you to master it.
After you have installed the program, launch it. The program is launched by double-clicking the left mouse button on its cryptogram (this is the name for the icon of any program - not just AutoCAD).

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The icon may be on the desktop of your computer. If it is not on the desktop, then click on the “Start” button (it is located in the lower left corner of the screen), then click on the inscription “All programs”, find the word “Autodesk” among the programs, then follow the AutoCAD arrow..., again follow the arrow to the right AutoCAD..., click on the word “AutoCAD” with the left mouse button and the program starts.

To get a better look at the picture, click on it with the left mouse button.

In order for the icon to appear on the desktop, we will proceed as follows: in the same way as we launched AutoCAD - click on the “Start” button, then “All Programs”, select “Autodesk”, then AutoCAD and here we right-click the word AutoCAD - a menu appears in which we select “Send” and the next step is to left-click on the inscription: “To the desktop (create shortcut).”

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Immediately after starting the program, a window appears graphic editor, which looks like this:

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After launching the program, we will configure the appearance of the working window. I'll set the workspace to Classic AutoCAD.

You can do this like this: click on the small triangle in the lower right corner of the screen with the left mouse button.

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We have a menu:

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Select “Classic AutoCAD” and left-click on it.

There is another way to select “Classic AutoCAD”:

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You need to sequentially go through the chain: the letter “A” in the upper left corner of the program window, then in the drop-down menu select the line “Service”, then “Workspaces” and, finally, “Classic AutoCAD”.

By the way, I would like to draw your attention to the following: sometimes the command line crashes during work. You can return it to its place by clicking on the two words “ Command line"(how to find these two words - see Fig. 8) or by simultaneously pressing the key combination "Ctrl+9" on your computer keyboard.

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Now we have a screen like this, without the ribbon that took up a lot of space on top.

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We will remove the tool palette from the screen. To do this, click on the cross (shown in Fig. 10 by an arrow).

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Now let's change the screen color. I like the white color better. You can set the color as you wish or leave the screen color as black if you wish.

To do this, you need to right-click anywhere on the black screen.

A window will appear, select the word “Settings”, “click” on it with the left mouse button.

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The settings window appears.

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Click on the “Colors” button.

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