Introduction

      Welcome to the wonderful world of AutoCAD and to the fame and fortune that awaits you as an AutoCAD user. (Would I lie to you?)

      Believe it or not, AutoCAD is around 40 years old, having been born in December 1982, when most people thought that personal computers weren’t capable of industrial-strength tasks like CAD. The acronym stands for Computer-Aided Drafting, Computer-Aided Design, or both, depending on who you talk to. What’s equally surprising is that many of today’s hotshot AutoCAD users, and most of the readers of this book, weren’t even born when the program first hit the street and when the grizzled old-timer writing these words began using it.

      AutoCAD remains the king of the PC computer CAD hill by a tall margin, and, on top of that, is one of the longest-lived computer programs ever. It’s conceivable that the long-term future of CAD may belong to special-purpose, 3D, web-connected software such as the Autodesk Fusion and Forge programs. Until then, AutoCAD’s DWG file format is the de facto standard, and a lot of design software works with that file format. For the foreseeable future, AutoCAD is where the action in CAD will be.

      You may have heard that AutoCAD is complex and therefore difficult to learn and use. Yes, the user interface includes about 1,300 icons. But it has been my observation that the easier any software is to learn and use, the sooner you bump up against its limitations. A simple car with no accelerator, one forward gear, no steering, and no brakes would be easy to use until you reach a hill, a curve, or a stop sign, or you need to back out of a parking space.

      Yes, AutoCAD is complex, but that’s the secret to its success. Some claim that few people use more than 10 percent of AutoCAD’s capabilities. Closer analysis reveals that most people use the same basic 5 percent and everyone else uses a different 5 percent after that. The trick is to find your 5 percent, the sweet spot that suits your particular discipline. If you follow my advice, I think you'll find that using AutoCAD is as simple and intuitive as driving a car.

      It should be perfectly clear that if your career path has put you in a position where you need to know how to use AutoCAD, you’re no dummy!

About This Book

      Unlike many other For Dummies books, this one often tells you to consult the official software documentation. AutoCAD is just too big and powerful for a single book to attempt to describe it completely. The book that ultimately covers every AutoCAD topic would need a forklift to move it. Literally. Autodesk stopped shipping paper instruction manuals with the software somewhere around 1995, when the full documentation package grew to about a dozen volumes and more than 30 pounds.

      In AutoCAD For Dummies, I occasionally mention differences from previous releases so that everyone gains some context and so that upgraders can more readily know what has changed; plus, you’re bound to encounter a few of the billions and billions of