AutoCAD 2012 Tutorial - First Level: 2D Fundamentals

Book excerpt: The primary goal of AutoCAD 2012 Tutorial - First Level: 2D Fundamentals is to introduce the aspects of Computer Aided Design and Drafting (CADD). This text is intended to be used as a training guide for students and professionals. This text covers AutoCAD 2012 and the lessons proceed in a pedagogical fashion to guide you from constructing basic shapes to making multiview drawings. The lessons are further reinforced by the video presentations found on the enclosed multimedia DVD. This textbook contains a series of eleven tutorial style lessons designed to introduce beginning CAD users to AutoCAD 2012. It takes a hands-on, exercise-intensive approach to all the important 2D CAD techniques and concepts. This text is also helpful to AutoCAD users upgrading from a previous release of the software. The new improvements and key enhancements of the software are incorporated into the lessons. The 2D-CAD techniques and concepts discussed in this text are also designed to serve as the foundation to the more advanced parametric feature-based CAD packages such as Autodesk Inventor. The basic premise of this book is that the more designs you create using AutoCAD 2012, the better you learn the software. With this in mind, each lesson introduces a new set of commands and concepts, building on previous lessons. This book is intended to help readers establish a good basis for exploring and growing in the exciting field of Computer Aided Engineering.