Subtitles of the Movie

AutoCAD has specific elements such as the ribbon, menus, dialog boxes and other tools that are common to other Microsoft Windows Applications. For example the ribbon in AutoCAD is very similar to the ribbon in Microsoft Office 2007. However the Command Line down at the bottom of the screen in AutoCAD is unique to AutoCAD. It was the original primary place where you communicated with the software when AutoCAD used to run on MS-DOS. Before Microsoft had actually come up with Microsoft Windows and normally on the Command Line you're prompted to Input Information so let's start from scratch here. As you can see we've got a completely blank AutoCAD 2009 screen at the moment with no active drawings. We're going to use the Quick Access Menu and the Start Up Dialog Box to start up a blank Metric Drawing first of all. So let's go up to the Quick Access Menu, click on New. Now by now you should have hopefully utilized the starter variable and set it to 1 as per previous exercises. So what we're going to do, we're going to click on this icon here, start from scratch if you haven't done so already, select Metric here and just click on OK. What that'll do is it'll prompt AutoCAD to open up a blank Metric Drawing using the ACAD ISO.DWT File. So let's have a look at that Command Line down at the bottom of the screen. Command Options appear on the Command Line and any capital letters represent the letters that you can Enter to use that option. Doesn't have to be a capital letter though. For example if I want to draw a circle, that is on the Home Tab on the Draw Panel here, there's the Circle Command, if I click on the Down Arrow there, there's lots of different Circle Options. So let's select the default Center Radius. If I click on there and come into the drawing area, the Dynamic Input prompts me for the Center Point of the Circle. Look at the Command Line, the Command Line is also prompting me for the Center Point of the circle. So if I were to type in say 50, 50 I could that without the Dynamic Input switched on. Let's have a look at that. I go down to DYN here on the status bar, click on it, switch it off. I now only have the crosshair on the screen but down on the Command Line here if I just click in the Command Line here and type in my coordinate now, 50, 50 for example that's going to be the center of my circle and press Enter. My circle now starts at 50, 50 as you can see, look, when I move the mouse now there's my circle, and I'm going to give that a Radius let's say of 20, that would also be a diameter of 40. Look at the Command Line again, as you can see if I type in D now and press Enter it'll prompt me for a diameter of the circle, I type in 40, press Enter and there's my circle of 40 diameter or 20 radius. I'm just going to pan slightly there to bring the circle up to the center of the screen and zoom in a little as well. So there's our circle, all using the Command Line, not using the Dynamic Input. Now what you will have noticed there as well is I actually placed the circle using a coordinate. Now let's put Dynamic Input back on because coordinates are very useful in Dynamic Input. So I click on Dynamic here and Dynamic Input is now back on. Now you have 2 different types of Dynamic Input, you have Dimensional Input and what they call Pointer Input. Now what we're going to do, we're going to look at both and the idea here is we're going to utilize the Dynamic Input, Objects on the screen, we're just going to look at the coordinates system in AutoCAD. Now coordinate system right now is working with absolute coordinates that 50, 50 that I typed in was from 00. Now because I've done a Pan and a Zoom the UCS, the X and the Y down here, just here is set to 00, how do I know that? If I look at that little cross there in the box, just here, that is telling me at the moment that my UCS is sitting at that origin 00. Now when you input coordinates in AutoCAD you enter them either in World Coordinate System, the WCS or the User Coordinate System, the UCS. Now the full explanation of this is available on page 45 in your AutoCAD essentials, Autodesk authorized training courseware manual. Now you can get hold of these manuals if necessary on the Internet from the Autodesk website. But what we're going to do is look at Absolute and Relative Coordinates. Now these are based on Cartesian Coordinates. Now all Cartesian means is it uses an X and Y axis and they intersect at 00 to form the origin. So we know that we're at 00 here with the little cross here on the UCS and the UCS is currently sitting in the World Coordinate System, the reason we know that, is why going upwards as shown on the screen there is positive, X going to the right horizontally is also positive. If I went in the opposite directions of those they would be negative, in AutoCAD negative purely denotes direction. So put a negative in front of a coordinate, it's a negative direction, a different direction. If you put a negative in front of an angle when you're typing in an angle it means that the angle goes in a different direction.