AutoCAD For Dummies, 19th Edition

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, ...