Autodesk AutoCAD 2010: Intermediate 2D Concepts Course

Welcome to the AudoCAD 2010 Intermediate 2D Concepts Course. There are a lot of new features in AutoCAD 2010. I'm going to cover just a few of those in this particular video. So what we're going to look at here is the Ribbon and the Panels on the Ribbon first of all. You'll notice that the Panels highlight now in AutoCAD 2010, and also the Icons highlight so that you can find them quicker. What you can also do is drag by clicking on a Panel, and this is a Sticky Panel, you can drag it into the Drawing Area like so, and when I click on the arrow here the extra Icons pop out in the direction of the arrow in a fly-out menu. I can alter that direction very quickly by clicking on this Icon here, and as you can see now the fly-out Icons appear at the bottom. I can also click on this little Icon here and it returns the Draw Panel back to the Ribbon as you can see. What you've also got are some nice new features as well. You have Parametric Tools now in AutoCAD 2010, and what you've got here on the Parametric tab on the Ribbon are Geometric, Dimensional, and you can also Manage those constraints as well. So these are Parametric Constraints. I've got a line here, I've got a line here. I want the angled line here to be permanently parallel to this horizontal line here, so I go to the Geometric Constraint here, Parallel, I select the line that I want to be parallel to. I then select the line that I want to make parallel. And make sure you pick it at the end that you want it to pivot on. So if I click on the left-hand end here it will pivot around this point. If I click on this point here it will also pivot around this point like so. What I can also do is look at the Express Tools here. The Express Tools is a new tab in AutoCAD 2010, so let's have a quick look at that. Express Tools are tools that have been written by users and organizations that actually utilize AutoCAD. One of my favorites is Arc Aligned here. I click on Arc Aligned and come into the Drawing Area. AutoCAD 2010 prompts me to select an Arc or an Arc-aligned piece of text. If I select my Arc here like so it prompts me to put some ArcAlignedText into the drawing. I select a Font, so I'm going to select Verdana Ð that's quite a nice Font. It's nice and easy on the eye. I'm going to put the text in here. So I'm going to type some text in: This is arc aligned text, like so. Put the word text in as well. Make sure that obviously you get everything in. Text Height, I put a value in there, Offset from arc. That's the offset of the text from the Arc itself. So, I've made a text Height of 6 millimeters and an Offset from arc of 3 millimeters. I OK that and it drops that text around the arc like so. As you can see, if I zoom in on that right now, there's a steady offset of 3 millimeters there from the arc and the text is 6 millimeters high. So as you can see, lots of new features in AutoCAD 2010, and what we're going to do now is, based on your existing knowledge of AutoCAD 2010, we're going to take you to that next level with your intermediate skills.  

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