AutoCAD Design Overview and it's Specialization Area

• Computer designing software used for 2D, 3D and drafting.

• Developed and marketed by Autodesk.
• First released: - December, 1992 on microcomputer with internal graphics controller.

• Available 
  • Desktop application:-1982.
  • Mobile application:-2010.

• Used: - By Industries, By architects, Project Managers, Engineers, Graphics Designers and other Professionals.
• Five most common specialization areas are:-

        A. Mechanical Drafters: - Plans for machinery and mechanical devices.

        B. Architectural Drafters: - Plan for residential and commercial buildings.

        C. Civil Drafters: - Plan for use in design and building of roadways, bridges, sewer, systems and major projects. 
        D. Electrical Drafters: - Prepare diagrams of wiring electrical system layouts, panel designing cable designing electrical project designing, switch yard and sub-station designing. 
        E. Electronics Drafting: - Wiring diagram for use in the making, installing and repairing of electronic gadgets.

• Native file format (extension): -

[ dwg.]

AutoCAD DXF drawing exchange format, allow importing and exporting drawing information.

• It is:
         a. Available in: - English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Brazilian Portuguese.

                 b. Later on: -Russian, Czech, Polish, Hungarian.

• It supports APIs for customization and automation. It include AutoLISP, VisualLISP, NET, VBA, ObjectARX (C++ CLASS LIBRARY).

          Base For:

        a. Products extending AutoCAD functionality to specific fields.

        b. Creating products like AutoCAD Architecture, AutoCAD Electrical , AutoCAD Civil 3D or, 

        c. Third party AutoCAD based application.

• Variants: -

           a. AutoCAD LT: - Lower cost version ,reduced capabilities, old version(November 1993), can’t be used on multiple machines, doesn’t support LISP, ARX, NET, VBA.

           b. AutoCAD 360:- account based mobile, web application, friendly to multiple machines, online access to drawing, flash based software (“smart pen” mode) linking to third party cloud-based storage. 
           c. Student version: - licensed for free(student and teacher)- 18th month renewable licensed.

Overview of AutoCAD Design

2D Drafting:-lines, circle, arcs, polylines, rectangles, polygons, splines, points, text, area hatching, lengthen, construction lines, extrude, trim, ray etc…

3D Modeling:- surface modeling, solid modeling,3D primitives include boxes wedges, cones, cylinders, spheres.3Dimages wireframe images, hidden line images, shading and rendering images.

Extrude and revolve solids from 2D objects and Boolean operation to 3D objects (union, subtraction, intersection). Operation to 2D and 3Dobject moving, copy-paste, mirror, rotating, erasing. View and zoom panel (UCS:-user coordinate system). Dimensioning and Tolerancing , linear dimensions, angular dimensions, radius dimensions, diameter dimensions, base line dimensions continuous dimensions, leader, sixe and geometric tolerances. Object layer, color, line types, groups, blocks, attribute, references, Plotting Generation of post Script files.

Five primary areas of the AutoCAD graphics window:-

• MenuBar: pull-down menus are accessed through the menu bar.
• Status Bar: provide status information including color, layer, coordinate display etc…. 
• Drawing Area: the centre area called drawing area, area in which we draw drawing. 
• Screen Menu: AutoCAD original menu interface, but now primarily used for option selection. 
• Command line: It is area where we enter command and option from the keyword.

All menu items are organized in a hierarchical data structure.