AutoCAD® 2012 FOR DUMMIES®

9

Dangerous Curves Ahead

In This Chapter

• Rounding the curves with circles, arcs, splines, and clouds
• Dabbling in ellipses
• Dunking for donuts
• Making your points

Although straight-line segments predominate in many CAD drawings, even the most humdrum, rectilinear design is likely to have a few curves. And if you're drawing Audi car bodies or Gaudí buildings, your drawings are going to contain a lot of curves! Your drawings should also have a point; in fact, they may have several points, so at the end of this chapter, I fill you in on creating point objects in AutoCAD. But to begin, I show you how to use the following AutoCAD curve-drawing commands:

• CIRCLE: Draws circles. (You were expecting hyperbolic paraboloids, maybe?)
• ARC: Draws circular arcs — arcs with center points and fixed radii, not arcs cut from ellipses, parabolas, or some other complex curve.
• ELLIPSE: Draws ellipses and elliptical arcs.
• SPLINE: Draws smoothly flowing curves of a variety of shapes.
• DONUT: Draws filled-in rings and circles.
• REVCLOUD: Draws freeform “clouds,” the most common application of which is to indicate revised areas in the drawing.