Autocad 2013 for dummies pdf download

need to learn AutoCAD, then you're no dummy!

Introduction Autocad 2013 for dummies

Let's get something straight upfront. You may have heard that AutoCAD is difficult, complex, 

or hard to learn and use. Well, it has been our observation that the easier any software is to 

learn and use, the sooner you bump up against the software's limitations. 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 pretty much everyone uses 

the same basic 5 percent. but everyone else uses a different 5 percent after that. The trick is 

to find your 5 percent. the sweet spot that suits your particular industry.

It should also be perfectly clear that if your career path has put you in a position where you 

Its amazing to think that AutoCAD came into being more than a quarter of a century ago, 

back in the last millennium, at a time 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 whom you talk to.) What's 

equally amazing is the fact that many of today's hotshot AutoCAD users weren't even born 

when the program first hit the street and the grizzled old-timers writing these words began 

using it! It's almost as amazing that, 29 years and counting after its birth in December of 

19112, AutoCAD remains the king of the microcomputer CAD hill by a tall margin, making it 

one of the longest-lived PC programs ever, and it will probably be a year older next year. It's 

conceivable that the long-term future of CAD may belong to special-purpose, 3D-based 

software such as the Autodesk Inventor and Revit programs. or to specialized market-

specific variations built on top of AutoCAD. At any rate. AutoCAD's .DWG file format is the 

de facto standard, and so AutoCAD will be where the CAD action is for the foreseeable 

future.

AutoCAD has grown more complex over the years, in part to keep 

up with the increasing complexity of the design and drafting processes that AutoCAD is 

intended to serve. It's not enough just to draw nice-looking lines anymore. If you want to play 

CAD with the big boys and girls, you need to carefully organize the objects you draw, their 

properties, and the files in which they reside. You need to coordinate your CAD work with 

other people in your office who will be working on or making use of the same drawings. You 

need to be savvy about shipping drawings around via the Internet. You may even need to be 

a little cognizant of working with AutoCAD in three dimensions.

AutoCAD provides the tools for doing all these things, but it's not always easy to figure out 

which hammer to pick up or which nail to bang on first. With this book, you have an excellent 

chance of creating a presentable. usable, printable, and sharable drawing on your first (or at 

least your second) try without putting a T-square through your computer screen in frustration.

This book is not Drafting For Dummies, or Engineering For Dummies, or Crash-Testing For Dummies,

or anything similar. We cover the basic principles of how to use AutoCAD to create and edit the 

objects (lines, circles, arcs, and so on) that make up engineering, architectural, and similar technical 

drawings. We do not cover drafting standards and practices for any particular industry or 

profession. For example, we teach you how to create dashed lines, but don't tell you specifically 

how and when they should be used to indicate hidden edges in solid objects.

Unlike many other For Dummies books, this one often does tell you to consult the official 

software documentation. AutoCAD is just too big and complicated for a single book to attempt 

to describe it completely.

about Autocad 2013 for dummies

AutoCAD is also too big and complicated for a book like this to cover every feature. We don't 

address advanced topics, like database connectivity, customization, or programming, in the 

interest of bringing you a book of a reasonable size — one that you'll read rather than stick on 

your shelf with those other 1,000-page tomes! The ultimate book that covered everything to do 

with AutoCAD would need a fork truck to move it.

Autodesk likes to keep its users (and us authors!) guessing about new features in future releases 

of the software. AutoCAD 2009 surprised users and authors alike with a totally revamped user 

interface, replacing the drop-down menus and toolbars of previous versions with a Microsoft Office 

2007-style Ribbon (happily, Autodesk doesn't force its users to adopt the new look the way 

Microsoft does — there's still an "AutoCAD Classic" interface available). AutoCAD's interface gets 

some tweaking in each succeeding release, if for no other reason than to include new functionality,

so even seasoned users will always find something that's a little different. This book focuses on 

AutoCAD 2013 and addresses its slightlyless-capable but much-lower-priced sibling, AutoCAD LT 2013.

We do occasionally mention differences with previous releases so that everyone has some context 

and upgraders can more readily understand the differences, and you are bound to encounter a few 

of the millions and millions of drawings out there that were created with older methods. We also 

mention the important differences between AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT so you'll know what you — or 

your LT-using colleagues — are missing so far as this book is concerned; the major difference is the 

almost-total absence of 3D capabilities in AutoCAD LT.

This book does not cover the discipline-specific features in AutoCAD-based products such as 

AutoCAD Architecture or AutoCAD Mechanical (except for some general discussion in Chapter 1),

 but most of the information in this book applies to the general-purpose AutoCAD features in the 

AutoCAD-based versions of those programs as well.

AutoCAD 2013 for Dummies pdf download