- We're starting a new chapter now in our course
and we're going to take a look
at how we can draw accurately in AutoCAD.
Now, the first thing we're going to look at when you open
up the drawing is the grid and snap settings in AutoCAD.
So, make sure you are in the model tab down here,
bottom left, and that you're using the objects layer.
So, click on the word objects in the layer drop down.
It's a blue layer that you'll be drafting on,
so that you can distinguish it
from anything white on the screen.
Now, you'll notice when you open up this drawing
it has a grid.
You can see lots of little grid lines,
like squared paper that you've probably used
for mathematics at school.
Now, down on the status bar you'll notice here
we have two settings, two drafting settings,
grid mode, and snap mode,
and they're both on your notice.
Display drawing grid is on, snap to drawing grid is on.
If I right click over either of those
and go to grid settings that pops up,
just click on grid settings,
and you can see all the different grid settings
that you can set for snap and grid, in the snap
and grid tab in the drafting settings dialogue box.
So, I've made sure that snap is on and grid is on,
and that's those two icons down here on the status bar.
I've also made sure that my snap X spacing
and snap Y spacing are 50,
with equal X and Y spacing ticked.
I've also made sure the grid spacing I've got 50
and 50 there as well.
I've also got a major line every five grid squares, as well,
which is why, if you look at the grid squares,
you've got a sort of thicker line, five grid squares,
and then another line.
Click on okay once you've got those settings in place.
They should already be set like that anyway
when you open up the drawing,
and if you start zooming in by rolling up on the wheel,
you'll notice these grid squares get bigger.
See that I'm zooming in, zooming out.
So, zoom in so that the grid squares are a reasonable size,
like so, and I'm not worried
about where you start drafting here at all.
Just make sure that you can see the grid squares.
Now, one thing I could do here, just to highlight this,
is I could right click, go to options,
and I'm going to go to display and colors for a moment.
And if I change my uniform background color to white,
here for a minute, and just apply and close and okay,
there's the grid squares that I'm talking about.
When you're working with a black dark background
they're kind of hard to see,
but I prefer the darker background
because it's just easier on the eyes.
So, if you go for a white background
you can see those grid squares a lot more easily.
That's what I'm talking about.
I'll just right click and go to options again,
go back to the display tab, into the colors,
and I need to set uniform background back.
I'll restore that to its settings,
crosshairs, restore current element, viewport control,
restore current element,
because if I just change the uniform background to white,
I need to set those top three settings
in the 2D model space, back to their restored settings.
So, you select each one, uniform background,
crosshairs, viewport control, just restore each element,
and then apply and close and okay,
and you're back to the darker background.
You can still see the grid and so on,
but it's just I wanted to highlight it,
so that you could actually see what I was talking about.
So, now we're going to draft a very simple rectangle
using grid and snap only.
So, we're going to come down here to the status bar,
polar tracking, going to turn it off,
object snap tracking, going to turn it off.
Object snaps, turn it off.
So, you're not using any drafting settings
apart from snap and grid.
So, what we're going to do,
we're going to go to the line command on the draw panel.
There's the line command, and I'm just going to use the grid.
Now, you'll notice as soon as I come into the drawing area
with a command switched on, in this case, the line command,
can you see I'm snapping to each grid square?
And if I move along,
see my coordinates update by 50 each time in each direction?
So, we're going to start with a grid square there,
on the sort of five increments, left click.
I'm going to go along by 10 squares.
So, that will give me a distance of 500, left click,
and then I'm just going to keep going,
up by five there, left click, back across by 10, left click,
and I can right click now and close back to where I started.
Remember we did that previously,
and that closes me back to where I started.
So, I haven't used any object snaps.
Haven't needed to worry about distances,
because I know that each grid square is 50
and I'll just work that out as multiples of 50
drawing my rectangle like so.
That's how quick and easy it is to use
the grid and snap settings in AutoCAD.
They're a really useful tool.
You don't have to just draw straight lines though.
If I zoom out slightly, come down a bit.
What I could do there is I could use the line command again,
and perhaps go here, left click,
and then go across 10 squares again, left click,
and then I might come up to diagonally that one there,
left click and then back down to that one there,
left click, enter to finish the line command,
and there you go.
I've now drawn a triangle.
So, I could have a simple sort of house
sort of shape symbol going on there,
or there could be arrows
and boxes on a flow chart, for example.
So, using that grid and snap is really, really useful.
If you've got loads of regular little,
what I would call symbols and icons to draw an AutoCAD,
makes your life a lot easier.
Okay, I'm just going to zoom out slightly now,
and pan across a little bit,
and we're going to work with some different tools
in AutoCAD now in subsequent videos.
And I'm going to show you how to generate
some similar rectangles,
but using different methods of drawing accurately.