AutoCAD® 2012 FOR DUMMIES®

Drawing a (Base) Plate

With a properly set-up drawing, you're ready to draw some objects. In this example, you use the RECTANG command to draw a steel base plate and column, the CIRCLE command to draw an anchor bolt, and the POLYGON command to draw a hexagonal nut. (Both the RECTANG and POLYGON commands create polylines — objects that contain a series of straight-line segments and/or arc segments.) I describe these drawing commands in more detail in Chapters 8 and 9.

AutoCAD, like most CAD programs, uses layers as an organizing principle for all the objects that you draw. Chapter 6 describes layers and other object properties in detail. In this example, you create separate layers for the base plate, column, anchor bolts, and nuts. This might seem like layer madness, but when you're doing complex drawings, you need to use a lot of layers just to keep things organized.

Drawing rectangles on the right layers

The following steps demonstrate how to create and use layers, as well as how to draw rectangles. You also see how to apply fillets to objects and offset them. (Chapter 6 describes layers in detail, and Chapter 8 covers the RECTANG command. Chapter 11 explains the FILLET and OFFSET commands.) Start by creating a Column layer and a Plate layer and then drawing a rectangular column on the Column layer and a square base plate on the Plate layer:

1. Make sure that you complete the drawing set up in the previous section of this chapter and have the drawing open in AutoCAD.
2. Click the Home ...