Welcome to the next generation of training materials for AutoCAD, the Practical Guide.
This book will introduce you to the fundamental tools you need to learn to be successful and productive with AutoCAD.
Each stand-alone lesson provides you with the foundation you need to effectively apply these features directly to your work flow. Follow clear, concise explanations, and work through exercises to reinforce your understanding of common tasks that other professionals are performing daily.
“I taught AutoCAD at the collegiate and professional level for 11 years before joining Autodesk in their training department. I know the importance of good training materials and I know a great AutoCAD book when I see it. You are looking at one right now. Tracy and Rick have mastered the art of writing in terms that we can all understand without a need to impress or complicate the task at hand. Their goal is simple: to help you successfully use AutoCAD for your design work. They have taken their many years of training expertise and rolled it all into this well massaged book. How I wish I’d had this book when I was training people how to use AutoCAD!”
Lynn Allen
Global Technology Evangelist
In this new edition of the book we added a Challenge Exercise at the end of most lessons. These exercises ask you to perform tasks based on what you learned in the lesson without the step-by-step instructions to test your skills and understanding of the new material.
It is 540 pages, featuring 126 exercises organized into 42 lessons in 12 chapters. Each lesson includes detailed descriptions of processes and theory with many illustrations and diagrams, to help you understand “why”, not just “how”.
Instructors: our books are used in classrooms worldwide. Find out more about using them in your next class.
After completing this book, you will be able to:
- Understand the user interface
- Navigate through drawings with pan and zoom commands
- Create drawing objects, including lines, arcs, and circles
- Create and modify polylines, including rectangles and polygons
- Use Layers to control drawing objects
- Draw using Polar Tracking and coordinate methods
- Use Object Snaps and Object Snap Tracking
- Modify drawing objects
- Duplicate drawing objects
- Extract information from drawings with measuring tools
- Create and modify hatch patterns
- Create, insert, and modify blocks
- Work with external references
- Import a PDF
- Create and scale paper space layouts and viewports
- Print scale drawings and check plots
- Annotate drawings with text, dimensions, and leaders
Features and Benefits of all CADapult books:
- Lessons build upon one another using a contiguous dataset, providing consistency through the entire book
- Skills learned through easy-to-follow, step-by-step procedures
- Sequential exercises that follow one logical, real-world example project
- Flexible datasets allow you to “skip ahead” to a relevant lesson, or use as an on-demand reference guide
- Detailed explanations and chapter summaries facilitate learning and retention
- Written by instructors with decades of industry and teaching experience
- Tested and refined in classrooms with a broad cross-section of students
Authors: Tracy Chadwick and Rick Ellis
Foreword written by Lynn Allen
Physical Book ISBN 978-1-934865-58-3
Digital Book ISBN 978-1-934865-66-8
Written, printed and published in the United States of America.
Meet the Authors
Tracy Chadwick serves as coordinator and instructor for the Computer Drafting Technology program at Hutchinson Community College in Hutchinson, Kansas. He is responsible for teaching a wide range of courses, including those on engineering graphics, AutoCAD software, Inventor software, and Revit Architecture software.
Tracy has been an AutoCAD user since 1995, and has been teaching AutoCAD classes to working professionals and college students since 2001. His experience and dedication to teaching led to him being recognized by Autodesk, Inc. with the North America Award for Distinguished Performance in AutoCAD Software Training.
Tracy has also been recognized as a top rated speaker at Autodesk University, where he has presented for several years. He has recently begun serving as a mentor to first-time Autodesk University speakers.
Rick Ellis, president of Cadapult Software Solutions, Inc, has worked with and taught Autodesk Civil 3D, along with Map 3D and other Autodesk products since the mid-90s. He is the Author of several critically acclaimed books on Autodesk Civil 3D, AutoCAD Map 3D, Land Desktop and Carlson Software; including the Practical Guide series.
Rick continues to use Autodesk Civil 3D on projects in a production environment, in addition to teaching classes to organizations both large and small around the country, helping them get the most out of their design software investment.
This practical background and approach has made him an award winning speaker at Autodesk University, a member of the national speaker team for the AUGI CAD Camps and a sought after instructor by organizations around the world.
