Okay, so here we are in this first proper lesson with our new installation of AutoCAD Open.
And we're just going to look at some basics here.
This is just a very brief overview of the software.
Again, I don't want to go into body with too much detail.
You don't need at the moment or you won't understand.
So we're just going to have a quick look of what we're presented with when we first open a new installation
of the software now.
Well, if you are using someone else's software, or maybe it might be an installation that's been installed
in the workplace or something you've had on your computer for a while and you've kind of been messing
about with your screen may look a bit different here.
This is most of the default settings from a new installation with just a few drawings I've had open
here, and if this list on yours will be completely different.
It's just your recent drawings.
You've worked on recent documents, so it may have other things you've worked on, things someone else
has worked on, or it may be completely empty if you've just installed it.
Okay, so don't worry about that.
Other than that, you should see pretty much a similar thing with same screen.
And the first thing we're going to do is we're going to start a new drawing.
Okay, So that's up here.
The top left, you will see this kind of sheet icon here.
We're going to click that and that's just to start a new drawing.
Okay.
So here we go.
And with AutoCAD, when you start a new document, it comes preloaded with different settings depending
on what it thinks you're going to do.
So rather than just start from the beginning all the time, you start with a template and it's just
a blank drawing that already contains some just just some basic settings in the background.
And that's why when you say new drawing, it will ask which template you want to use.
There's different things depending on what you're doing and you can save your own templates.
We're going to have a course all on CAD management, which we'll go into that, but that's way advanced
for now.
All you need to do for now is select the one that just says a cad.
W.T. Okay, and open that and this will present you with a new drawing.
Now, you may or may not have this panel on the left hand side.
Okay, We'll we'll look at that later.
But you should have now a blank screen.
You may not have this.
Also, we're going to look at all that on how to get your setup the same as mine.
Okay.
So let me just close that.
Okay.
So just in case you didn't have that, I've turned those off.
And this is a completely blank screen.
Okay.
I recommend having this little view thing on and you can do that under your options.
We're going to look at the options in a minute.
Okay?
But first of all, while we've got this blank screen, I'll just go through the basics here with you.
So at the top, you've got your these are these are kind of standard commands you have in in various
software, things like new open, save, save as print.
And we've got some mobile options I wouldn't worry about at the moment, but that's kind of a basic
what used to be the kind of file and file menus.
So it's just you saves your opens, that kind of thing.
I won't worry about that.
This is you can actually select what comes up here.
Okay.
But you won't as a beginner, you won't know what most of these are.
How it loads with the default installation is quite good and I'll just leave it as it is.
Okay.
Then you've got these boxes underneath.
Now, if you can't see these, you have various options of how they are shown.
Okay, so if yours looks anything like that, you just need to go through that button and I recommend
having it in this layout.
Okay.
To follow along with course.
And these are basically your main tool panels.
So in AutoCAD we work with panels and we work with file menus.
So along the top.
You'll have all these kind of things.
It's going to look very complicated and maybe a bit intimidating at first.
Just don't worry about it.
Just ignore all them for now.
We don't need them.
We're going to use these as we go and it's going to be much more intuitive that way.
But basically you've got the main tools under this home menu which are draw, modify, annotation blocks,
etcetera.
Okay.
Again, we're going to look at all that as we go.
And then you've got your main blank area.
This is kind of your drawing space.
So if you imagine your drawing board, this is where you would actually draw.
So this is your area you can use, Okay.
And what I'm going to do, I'm going to set that up with those options we talked about.
So if you go up to this big red A in the top left and click that, you'll see down here you have a box
options.
I mean, under options.
We have these various tabs here.
Okay.
So I want you to go to user preferences and there's one right click customization, and then I want
you to.
Check these boxes.
So it looks like my screen.
So the top ones repeat last command.
Middle one is shortcut menu and bottom one is enter.
Okay.
If you if you select them that way, you're going to be able to follow along.
If not, your mouse isn't going to perform the same way as mine and it's just going to complicate things.
You're not going to understand what I'm doing when I'm clicking.
So if you just for the purpose of this course, if you're not already, select them like this, I recommend
you get used to using it this way.
This is how most people in the workplace use them.
This is a really fast way of working.
Okay, so apply that and then we're going to go under 3D modeling under this tab.
And down here you've got display tools in viewport.
Make sure all these are ticked and that one.
Okay.
And apply that and that will bring up this view thing there.
Okay.
It might have already been ticked.
Don't worry about it.
And that's it.
And that's all we need to know for now, really.
In the next chapter, we're going to look at a bit more about zooming and panning around and using the
mouse, etcetera.
But your card now should look same as mine and you'll be able to follow along in the course.