Uncover the tricks and tools of creating technical drawings in AutoCAD, focusing on creating detail symbols. This article guides you through the process of drawing circles and using the 'specify' command, ensuring accuracy and efficiency in your AutoCAD usage.
Key Insights
- The 'specify' command in AutoCAD implies either clicking or typing a value. This is particularly useful when creating technical drawings that require precise inputs.
- When drawing circles, the Center Radius circle tool allows you to input the specific center point of your circle. AutoCAD also offers the flexibility to switch between specifying the radius or the diameter of the circle, ensuring accurate dimensions.
- Using view options like 'zoom extents' can aid in filling the screen with the drawn geometry, providing a clearer view of your work. Remember to frequently save your work, which can be done quickly in AutoCAD using the Control + S keyboard shortcut.
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In this video, we will continue drawing the detail symbol. As a reminder, we will draw only the circle and the horizontal line for the detail symbol.
Please refer to your PDF handout as we walk through this video. To draw the circle for my detail symbol, I'll go to the Home tab, Draw panel, and find the Circle button. I want to make sure that this says Center Radius, and it does.
If you're seeing a different option, the button might be under this fly-out dropdown. Here, you'll see all the circle options with descriptive text. I'm going to choose Center Radius and move my cursor into the drawing area.
Now, if we check the command prompt, we can see that it is asking us to do something. It reads, 'Specify center point for circle, ' followed by options in brackets. We don't need to change the options for now.
Instead, let's focus on the word 'specify.' When you see 'specify' in a command in AutoCAD, it means either click or type.
Specifying means you can either click something on the screen or type in a value. I know I repeated that, but it's very important to understand that when you see 'specify, ' you can either click something on the screen or type in a value. In this case, just to try it out, I'll click on the screen, and I can see that I have successfully placed the center point for my circle. Now, when I move my cursor, I can see the circle getting larger and smaller.
I can click again to set the size of the circle. Now, this is excellent. We've successfully drawn the circle.
However, I don't know exactly where the center point of that circle is or the size of the circle. These are two bad things, especially when creating technical drawings in AutoCAD.
In this case, if we check the handout, the center point will be at 0,0, and the diameter is half an inch.
I'm going to go up to the undo button, and I'll reactivate my center-radius circle. Now, instead of clicking, let's type to specify the center point. In this case, I'll type 0,0.
I don't need to type a third zero because we are in 2D space. So, I'll hit ENTER, and I can see that when I move my cursor, my circle starts to be drawn in the bottom-left corner of my screen.
Now, I have the diameter value from my handout, and this is where the options in the command prompt come into play.
We are drawing with the center-radius circle, which means that the command prompt currently reads, 'Specify radius of circle.' If I typed in 'half inch' right now, it would be the wrong size.
Instead, I want AutoCAD to ask for a diameter, and I can see in my options that I can switch to diameter.
I can scroll down and click the word 'diameter' to activate this option, or you'll notice that the 'D' is a different color in the word. I can type 'D', hit ENTER, to lock in diameter as my option. Now, the command prompt reads, 'Specify diameter of circle, ' and I will type '1/2' for half an inch, then hit ENTER.
We can just barely see the circle in the bottom-left corner of our screen. To fill the screen with the circle, I'll go to my view options, zoom, and select 'Zoom Extents.'
'Zoom Extents' fills the screen with all the geometry you have drawn.
Now, to double-check that I have the right size for this circle, I will select the circle and go to Modify > Properties. This will open our properties window, which allows us to see and update geometry data.
Here, I can see that the circle is drawn at 0,0,0, which is where we wanted it. The radius is a quarter inch, and the diameter is a half inch, both in direct proportion to one another.
As a reminder, you can update this information in the properties window at any time, in case you've drawn it in the wrong position or at the incorrect scale.
For practice, I'll undo the circle and draw it one more time.
Circle, I see 'specify', I think click or type, 0,0,0, hit ENTER, type 'D' on the keyboard, and hit ENTER for the diameter option. My diameter will be '1/2', or I could type 0.5, which represents half an inch.
I'll hit ENTER on the keyboard, then go to View > Zoom > Zoom Extents. I'm going to press CTRL + S on my keyboard to save the file.
The CTRL + S keyboard shortcut is very important when working in AutoCAD. It is a very common shortcut. You can also save by going to File > Save, and here you can see the CTRL + S keyboard shortcut.
