SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE

Top Ten AutoCAD Tips & Tricks

By Mick Hintz

Theses ten tips will help you to create professional quality AutoCAD drawings.

1. Draw everything to full (actual) scale. Draw accurately. Use Object Snaps and Ortho. Use Associative Hatching and Dimensioning.
2. Use the Spell Checker before printing.
3. NEVER open a drawing from a floppy disk, Zip disk, CD, or USB Flash drive. You will crash AutoCAD. Save it to your hard drive or a network drive first. Make sure the drawing is not “read-only.”
4. Save early and save often! Always save your drawing before printing.
5. DO NOT draw on layer 0. Place everything on its own layer. Name layers so that they are easily identifiable (i.e. Walls, Doors, Furniture), or use the AIA CAD layer guidelines.
6. Use color to represent line weight and adjust the lineweight by layer. Type “LWEIGHT” and give it a value of “1” to display lineweights on screen. Refer to the lineweight sheets posted in the plotter room.
7. NEVER Explode Attributes or Dimensions. Use the appropriate editing tool.
8. When using layouts (AKA paper space), keep it simple. Use model space for everything that has a scale and relates to these objects like dimensions, notes, etc. Use layouts for setting up your sheets to plot. The only objects in the layout, should be the title block, title block information, notes related to the sheet, and viewports. Set the scale and layer visibility in the viewports, and plot the sheet 1 to 1. It’s a good idea to lock the viewports after you set the scale, to keep from inadvertently changing their scale. Remember to keep it simple. You may have to pass the drawing on to a colleague, your professor, or your boss.
9. Always keep your eye on the command prompt. AutoCAD will walk you through any command and its options, as long as you read the command prompt. This has gotten significantly easier since AutoCAD 2006. The command line now appears at the cursor location.
10. Clean up and Defragment your hard drive regularly to keep AutoCAD and Windows running smoothly. Try to keep at least 1 Gb of free disk space at all times. Avoid programs that run in the background like KaZaA and Instant Messenger.