AutoCAD for Beginners

I've spent 25 years and counting in the pipe trades. Not sitting in a classroom - in the field, on the job, reading prints and marking up drawings that other guys had to build from. I have had some classes but all in all I had to learn AutoCAD myself, the hard way by doing it, because nobody was going to slow down and teach a tradesman software like it was some delicate art form. They give you the tools and the basics but its you that has to do it!

This book is the guide I wish someone had handed me on day one.

There's no fluff here. No 40-page history of computer-aided design, no chapter explaining what a mouse is. You open AutoCAD, and by the end of Day 1 you're drawing. By Day 7, you've built a complete, dimensioned floor plan from scratch - the same kind of drawing you'd hand off to a crew or a foreman.

Every command in this book is one I actually use. Lines, circles, offsets for pipe and wall thickness, trim and extend for cutting things back to where they actually need to meet, layers so your drawing doesn't turn into spaghetti, dimensions that update themselves when you change something. No wasted pages on tools you'll never touch.

What you'll learn:

• The AutoCAD interface and how to move around a drawing without getting lost
• Precise drawing with coordinates, Object Snap, Ortho, and Polar Tracking - no eyeballing measurements
• The core drawing tools: lines, circles, rectangles, polylines, arcs
• The modify tools that do the real work: move, copy, rotate, mirror, trim, extend, offset, fillet, array
• How to organize a drawing with layers so it doesn't turn into a mess
• Text, dimensions, and annotation that actually communicate to whoever reads your drawing next
• How to set up a layout and print (plot) a drawing at the correct scale
• A complete final project: a scaled, dimensioned floor plan, start to finish

If you work with your hands for a living and need AutoCAD to do your job - not to become a graphic designer - this book gets you there in a week, one command at a time.

About the Author
John Smith has spent 25 years and counting working as a pipe tradesman, reading prints and working from drawings on the job every day. AutoCAD wasn't taught to him - he learned it the way tradespeople learn most things: by needing to know it, and figuring it out. This book is written the way he wishes someone had explained it to him the first time.