Fast Track to Learning AutoCAD

INTRODUCTION This method for learning and using AutoCAD is by no means exhaustive. It is merely my suggested method; I have used AutoCAD every working day for the past 15 years. In reality everyone adapts their own method of working to their own preference. The method that I detail here is one that I was taught and one that I believe will provide a good jumping off point. AutoCAD has been around for years and has gone through many different versions. As each version is released, it maintains most of the features of the previous versions so to make it backwards compatible, this means that new versions of AutoCAD can still open drawing files created by older versions ( AutoCAD drawing file is .dwg). As a result of this development there are 3 main ways you can input commands. E.g. to draw a line you can: 1. Key-in commands using the keyboard i.e. Type LINE to draw a line. 2. Using the drop down menus at the top of the screen i.e. Choose DRAW then LINE. 3. Using the screen icons. Find the Draw toolbar and click on the first icon If you want to draw quickly, I recommend No. 1, which is to Key-in commands. This has many advantages. You can use any version of AutoCAD You can use other peoples workstations without having to hunt around the screen to find their icons. For someone who is used to typing, even with two fingers, it is faster than scanning the screen for a particular icon or using the drop down menus.

So when you key-in commands you use shortcuts. A list of the more useful commands with their shortcuts are below:

AA, AR, B, BR, C, CH, CHA, CO, DI, DIV, E, EX, F, H,

*AREA *ARRAY *BLOCK *BREAK *CIRCLE *PROPERTIES *CHAMFER *COPY *DIST *DIVIDE *ERASE *EXTEND *FILLET *BHATCH

HE, I, L, LEN, LI, LTS, M, MA, ME, MI, P, PE, PL, PO,

*HATCHEDIT *INSERT *LINE *LENGTHEN *LIST *LTSCALE *MOVE *MATCHPROP *MEASURE *MIRROR *PAN *PEDIT *PLINE *POINT

POL, PU, REC, RO, S, SC, SPL, T, TR, W, X, XR, Z,

*POLYGON *PURGE *RECTANGLE *ROTATE *STRETCH *SCALE *SPLINE *MTEXT *TRIM *WBLOCK *EXPLODE *XREF *ZOOM

The above list is correct for when you load AutoCAD for the first time. However the designers failed to appreciate that you are far more likely to copy something CO than draw a circle C and having to type CO every time is a pain. So I recommend that you change the shortcuts for the commands highlighted in yellow, to the ones below: CC, K, *CIRCLE *CHAMFER

Used to create corners see section headed CHAMFER

C, MM,

*COPY *MIRROR

It is faster to type MM than MI

To change these shortcuts you have to amend the PGP FILE. This is the file where all the shortcut key commands are kept. The file can be found using your windows explorer in the AutoCAD folder under SUPPORT, and is called acad.pgp. Or on some versions of AutoCAD you can find it using the drop down menus TOOLS; CUSTOMIZE; EDIT PROGRAM PARAMETERS. Open the PGP FILE and physically edit it like you would a Word document the SAVE and CLOSE. To initiate the changes the easiest way is to restart AutoCAD or you can type in REINIT. The other annoying default that AutoCAD comes with is the RIGHT CLICK CUSTOMIZATION. This is set so that when drawing, every time you right click on the mouse an annoying dialogue box pops up. For fast CAD work it is better to use the right click to mean ENTER. To adjust this you need to choose TOOLS/ OPTIONS/ USER PREFERENCES/ RIGHT CLICK CUSTOMIZATION then pick: REPEAT LAST COMMAND option REPEAT LAST COMMAND option ENTER option

APPLY and CLOSE. Now when you right click on the mouse it will ENTER instead of you having to find ENTER on the key board, no shortcut menus will pop-up irritatingly and you can right click to repeat the last command which is really useful when doing the same command many times like hatching lots of different areas with the same hatch. Another good idea to set up your AutoCAD for good draughting is to increase the size of your cursor crosshairs so that they stretch from left to right and top to bottom of the screen. This makes lining up objects such as Titles and Text much simpler. To do this use the drop down menus TOOLS/ OPTIONS/ DISPLAY/ CROSSHAIR SIZE and adjust the value to 100. You are now ready to start drawing. AutoCAD will remember the above changes so you do not have to do them every time you start up AutoCAD. You will have to do them again though, if you have to reload the AutoCAD software for some reason. If you are new to AutoCAD I recommend that you go through the above list of shortcuts and try out each one. When you enter a command say CC for Circle, and you are unsure what to do, always follow the instructions on the Command Line at the bottom of the screen. This is very good at telling you what to do at every step. If you get in a complete tangle then press ESC (Escape) at the top left of the keyboard. Or if you have finished one command i.e. CIRCLES and you now want to do another command i.e. TRIM then ESC is good for that too. The rest of the hints and tips for using AutoCAD I have put in alphabetical order. I suggest you go through them all and try them out. Some are obvious to regular AutoCAD users, however even people who have been using AutoCAD for a long time might find some tips that they were unaware of. AA - AREA Find the area and perimeter length of any closed POLYLINE by typing AA and selecting the POLYLINE . This is a really powerful designing tool. It can give you the area and perimeter of any shape, no matter how complex. It can save a huge amount of time from working it out long hand and is much more accurate too. B - BLOCK Used for making blocks which are bits of drawing that youve drawn once and never want to draw again. Once created the block is stored locally and saved with your drawing (for instance door handles for an Architectural

drawing). If you think that you might want to use the same door handle block in a another drawing then WBLOCK creates a separate drawing of your block. INSERT will insert your chosen BLOCK or WBLOCK into your drawing. In later editions of AutoCAD ,To Edit a Block - double click on it and it will open for editing once you have saved and closed the block edit all instances of that block on your drawing will be changed. This can be a brilliant time saver. For instance if you have drawn a fence with a hundred vertical slats all with pointy ends and the design is changed to square ends then if the slat is saved as a block then it is an easy task to edit one slat block and change the shape of the end and all hundred slats will magically be amended also. P.S. To use AutoCAD efficiently you never draw objects twice if you can help it. BLOCKS are a handy tool to help you achieve this. BYLAYER Keep your Colour, Linetype and Lineweight on the standard toolbar at the top of the screen as BYLAYER as much as you can. This makes changing the properties of objects on the same layer much simpler. For instance youve drawn your fence on a dedicated FENCE LAYER and you want to change the colour from blue to red, then you can go to the LAYER MANAGER and change the layer colour to Red and everything that is drawn with that layer will change to red. This highlights the importance of keeping strict layer control; it reaps dividends when it comes to editing. CH - CHANGE PROPERTIES This opens up the CHANGE PROPERTIES dialogue box. With this you can literally change any number of the selected object or objects properties. E.g. select a load of text and with CHANGE PROPERTIES you can change its height or any other feature of the Text. Also If you need to count the number of objects in a drawing then select them all and the number will appear at the top of the CHANGE PROPERTIES box. CHA - CHAMFER You can use CHAMFER as a tool to create corners from two lines. Set the DISTANCE to 0 so that it creates a sharp corner instead of a chamfer. This can be faster than trimming the two lines to make a corner and the lines do not even need to cross. If you change the shortcut command from CHA to K - see above then it is even faster. P.S. You can use FILLET in a similar way but instead of changing the DISTANCE to 0 you change the RADIUS to 0. CTRL C, CTRL V, CTRL X CTRL C = COPY CTRL V = PASTE CTRL X = CUT These copy, paste and cut commands come from word processing programs like Microsoft Word. In AutoCAD They are very useful for following the ethos Thou shall not draw anything twice. This is really useful for COPYING and PASTING bits of drawing from the same drawing file you are working on or from a completely different drawing. You can also paste as a block (drop-down menus EDIT /PASTE AS A BLOCK), this is really useful for creating quick blocks, though on the down side the computer gives it a random name like A$C60852817. When you Copy and paste a line or dimension from another drawing it carries with it the associated properties layer, colour, linetype and lineweight, this can save time from creating the same line type from scratch. Also works for Dimensions and Text.

C - COPY To write some new text on a drawing it is easier to copy an existing piece of text that has the right properties (Height, Font etc) and then edit the contents than to start from scratch with every item of text. To edit text either double click on it or type ED. CTRL and SPACE BAR When you are trying to pick one element that is either too close or on top of other elements. You can repeatedly press CTRL and SPACE BAR to cycle through all the elements in the area of the cursor before you pick the one you want. (This only applies to later versions of AutoCAD). CURRENT LAYER In later versions of AutoCAD there is an icon in the layer control toolbar. If you want to draw an object in a specific layer, select an object from that layer first and then click on this icon and it will set that layer as the current layer for subsequent drawing. You can always do this manually by scrolling down in the layer display, but its not as fast. Incidentally when scrolling down any menu and trying to find say defpoints you can jump to it faster by typing in d and it will start you off in the beginning of the ds in that list. DEFPOINT Anything drawn on the DEFPOINT layer will never plot out. This is useful for drawing construction lines or viewports. In the layer manager I change the colour of the DEFPOINT layer to something odd like dark purple so that it isnt confused with anything else on the drawing. It is very irritating to find out that by accident youve drawn a lot of your drawing in the DEFPOINT layer and crucial parts of your drawing have not appeared on the plots. This usually comes to light after the drawings have been put in the post. DESELECT If you have selected a large group of objects and you want to DESELECT some, press SHIFT and select the objects you wish to remove from your previously selected group. Also works with a cross box. DOUBLE CLICKING Double clicking on items can give surprising results for reducing time. Double clicking on a block, xref or Viewport will open it for editing. After editing you will need to close the editing operation after saving the changes (or not). To close the Viewport editing you can use the command VPMIN. Double clicking on an object will bring up the objects properties in a long dialogue box at the side. The same as entering CH or Change Properties. DI - DIVIDE Take a Line, Polyline, 3D Polyline or Spline and with this command you can divide the line into any number of equal parts. It puts Nodes (Points) at every division, or even more useful, you can put a Block at every division. Any block you like and you can choose to rotate it to align with the line or not. This is incredibly useful for say putting fence posts in plan at equal distances along a curved POLYLINE path, where the fence post is a Block. (See Blocks for more tricks). You can perform a similar task with MEASURE - ME, except that this puts nodes or blocks at regular predefined intervals.

E - ERASE Its obvious, it is used for deleting stuff. Dont be too precious about the drawing work that youve already done, if it wrong, just delete it. Sometimes it is quicker to start again from scratch, than to delete little bits and try and draw over it. You just get into a muddle with whats new and whats old and whats good and whats bad. Of course it is better not to draw wrong stuff in the first place, this is known as abortive work. My father told me a story from the days of draughting by hand, when his boss told him You draw in works time, but you rub out in your own time. Meaning he doesnt want to pay for abortive work. ESCAPE A Key in the top left of the keyboard ESC. Press it to end any command when youve finished it. Also very useful when you are in the middle of a command and youve tied yourself in knots and you quite literally need to Escape. F3 The row of Function keys at the back of the keyboard. Each one of them does something. F3 is a useful one as it toggles the SNAPS ON and OFF. Quite often you dont want your object to snap onto anything so pres F3 to switch snaps off (or on). F8 Another useful function key, it toggles ORTHO on and off. This enables you to draw at 0 and 90, or not. F - FENCE Fence allows you to trim or extend more than one object in one go. In the middle of TRIM or EXTEND when prompted to pick items you can type in F for FENCE and draw a fence line through all the vertical lines to trim or extend and press enter. All the lines will be trimmed or extended in one go. In later editions of AutoCAD you can do the same by dragging a right to left pick box (green one) over all the lines to select more than one, but Autodesk hasnt updated this technique for other useful commands such as LENGTHEN DE, which extends or shortens an object by a specific distance, for this command you have to resort to the old fashioned FENCE command. FREEZE OFF I use the icon for this on the layer toolbar. Click on FREEZE OFF and you can select anything from a layer that you want to freeze and it will freeze everything on that layer. Brilliant for those Architects drawings that have so many lines on them you cant see what is going on. HANDLES Obvious I know, but not to all. You can click on all objects to show the Handles, you can then drag and stretch objects by the handles, and if the snaps are on then the handles will snap onto other objects. H - HATCH Hatching is a constant source of grief and rarely works properly. It does however get marginally better with each new revision of AutoCAD. If you need to edit Hatch then there are some tricks you can use with later versions. You can TRIM hatch back to a line or polyline just like you would trim a line. You can also RECREATE BOUNDARY and once you have recreated it you can pull it about by the handles and the hatch will stretch to fill the new boundary (sometimes).

ID If you need to create a spreadsheet of coordinates for example, you can type in ID and pick a point and when the coordinates of that point come up on the command line. You just copy (CTRL C) the numbers and paste (CTRL V) onto an excel spread sheet. This also avoids any chance for typos. J - JOIN Use join command to join Lines and Polylines together. L - LINE L=LINE its obvious. LENGTHEN then DELTA. Shortcut = LEN then DE Good for lengthening (or shortening)LEN a group of lines by the same amount DE. Once youve chosen the length they all have to be adjusted by, you can use a FENCE - F to pick all the lines. LI - LIST List any item and it will give you a breakdown of all its attributes. Really handy for objects such as blocks that you need to know the name of, or whether something is an XREF, or whether its a line, polyline or 3D polyline. Similar to CHANGE PROPERTIES - CH. LTS - LINE TYPE SCALE If a dashed or dotted line appears continuous, it may because the LINE TYPE SCALE is set wrong. Try changing it to 1 then 10 then -1 and 100 then .01, you get the idea, until you pin down the required LTS to show up your linetypes the way you want them. This gets more complicated because as well as doing this globally you can pick individual objects and change their LTS through the Properties manager - CH. This also gets much more complicated as you can use PAPER SPACE LINE TYPE SCALE - PSLTSCALE and switch it on or off (1or0). This will enable the same LTSCALE to be displayed in Paper Space Viewports irrespective of the scale that is set for that viewport. Confused? I always am, so I use good old trial and error. LAYER MANAGER Left of the layer display is the layer manager this controls the Colour and Linetype and Lineweight of all the different layers and whether it is switched on or off or frozen on or off, or if you want the layer to plot or not (notice DEFPOINTS Layer never plots). You can select one layer or bunches of layers and change their properties globally. This can quickly change the properties of items in your drawing if you have been rigid with your drawing layers? Secondly - use CTRL A to pick all layers (works for text and other things too). Thirdly - double click on a layer and a green tick will appear which means you have selected it to be the Current Layer. LTYPE GEN When you turn a Polyline into a dashed linetype or any other broken linetype, as a default it will start and stop the dashes at every vertex. If you have lots of vertices close together then the dashed line `will appear to be continuous. This can be sorted out by choosing POLYLINE EDIT - PE then LTYPE GEN and choose ON this will make the linetype pass through the vertices as if they werent there. Alternatively alter the system variable that switches LTGEN on permanently, by typing in PLINEGEN and then ON

M2P Type this in when you want to pick a point equidistant between two other points, for example: If you want to mirror the left hand gate of a pair of double gates to create the right hand side, but do not have a line to mirror about, then when prompted to pick the line to mirror about, type in M2P and choose the left and right gate posts to define the midpoint to mirror about. MA - MATCH PROPERTIES In the Standard toolbar it is either a paintbrush icon or in later versions, a peculiar symbol that youll have to find. Incredibly powerful tool it paints the properties of one object onto another object or objects. I use it all the time ME - MEASURE Same as DIVIDE- DI except that it puts Nodes (Points) or Blocks at specific intervals along the Line or Polyline. Really useful for putting fence posts in plan along a Polyline at regular intervals. MIRRTEXT Type this in to the command line and you can toggle the ability to mirror the text. It will prompt an answer 1 or 0 i.e. on or off. Seemingly useless feature, who would want to type letters back to front? But strange as it may seem, you sometimes have to work on drawings where this feature has been switched on, also you might want to write the mirror image of Ambulance on the front of your drawing of an Ambulance! Model Space Model Space is the sheet you draw on as a default. It is an enormous 3 dimensional space so large you can draw the earth and the moon full size and the right distance apart. Navigating lists Some people dont know this, but if you have a long list of items in a dialogue box, such as in the Layer Manager, if you type the first letter of your search word you will jump to the first word starting with that letter in your list. Easier than scrolling down all the time. P - PAN It can be quicker to type P for PAN than to find the little hand icon. You can also hold down the mouse wheel. Pick Box - left to right and right to left It may seem obvious to hardened CAD Monkeys but I have come across occasional users who do not realise that there is a difference between dragging a select box from left to right and from right to left. When you drag a pick box from left to right (blue on later versions) you select items wholly inside the box. When you drag a pick box from right to left (green on later versions) you select items wholly inside the box and crossed by the box. P.S. Picking right to left is the only way to stretch an object by selecting several of its nodes. Previous Plot At the top of the PLOT dialogue box there is a box you can scroll down to choose Previous Plot. This sets all the plot options to become the same as the previous plot. This is faster than selecting all the options again every time you plot.

PL - POLYLINE Polylines are multiple lines joined end to end, they behave as a single line. If you explode a Polyline you get a load of individual lines. Try and keep lines as Polylines where ever possible, it is much easier to edit a Polyline for layer type or line width etc. than it is to pick lots of individual lines. PE - POLYLINE EDIT Used to convert lines into POLYLINES, also to change its WIDTH or change it into a SPLINE this will create a smooth curve from your POLYLINE and FIT will make the curve go through the original vertices. When creating a long POLYLINE, one that involves a lot of points, possibly hundreds, you sometimes make a mistake and miss a point and you dont notice it until the end. If this happens, dont swear and kick the cat, instead choose PE and select the POLYLINE for Editing, choose INSERT VERTEX and a cross will appear on your POLYLINE then pick NEXT or PREVIOUS to move the cross along your line to the correct place then choose INSERT VERTEX to place a new vertex on your line. If it is not in the right place, manipulate it with the handles. QUICK SELECT Brilliant for selecting lots of items that arent necessarily on a specific layer. Can be accessed from drop down menus or via the CHANGE PROPERTIES box (at the side). With QUICK SELECT you can select anything on the screen by its colour, layer, linetype or virtually any other feature. For instance many times I have used it to change all the text of a certain height to a different height, due to a change in drawing scale. Select QUICK SELECT then select TEXT and HEIGHT and enter the figure for the height say 80. Quick Select will select all text of that height . Once selected you can then use CHANGE PROPERTIES to change the height from 80 to say 100. Job done! RAY This command produces a line of infinite length from one point. Very useful for construction lines from one part of your drawing to another (with ORTHO ON). Even quicker to start of with one RAY then copy it to all the other parts of the object that you want to project. Like a single sided X LINE. Right click to get toolbars Lost your toolbars? Right click on any toolbar to get the toolbar list up then just tick the one you want. Rotate Reference Quite often when you want to rotate something it is not by a specific number of degrees that you can easily enter. But it is more usually to line some other object at a peculiar angle. After choosing ROTATE - RO, if you then choose the REFERENCE command, you can rotate an object to line up with another line or 0/90deg if ORTHO is ON. You may need to draw construction lines first. SAVE LAYER STATES With later versions of AutoCAD you can save the layer states and give it a name or a number. This can be done in the LAYER PROPERTIES MANAGER. Once the LAYER PROPERTIES MANAGER is open you can see if there are any layers frozen or switched off or not. Right click somewhere in the dialogue box that isnt on something that you can select then choose Save Layer States, and enter a name, I Usually choose 1. Now you can mess about with the drawing switching layers on and off without losing the original drawing selection. To restore the Layer States you go back into the Layer Properties Manager and right click as before but this time selecting Restore Layer State. Type in 1 or whatever you called it, and your drawing is restored. This is very useful for just working on one layer, you can save layer states, freeze off all other layers, do what you have to do to the remaining layer and restore the original settings.

SHIFT RIGHT CLIP SNAP OPTIONS When you are in the middle of a command and you havent selected the right snaps to complete the command, you can hold SHIFT down and use right click on the mouse to bring up the snaps dialogue box. At the bottom of the box is the main OSNAP SETTINGS, this shows your default snap options and can be amended to select/deselect snap options like Perpendicular or Nearest for instance. SELECT - PREVIOUS Just spent 10 minutes selecting 200 items to move and instead of moving them to the right place it snaps onto some random point 50m away? Well instead of kicking the cat again! and selecting all 200 items for a second time - at the prompt - SELECT type in PREVIOUS and it will automatically choose the last things you selected, all 200 of them. Steal Dimensions and Text from another drawing To avoid setting up a Dimension Style or Text Style in your drawing just steal the one you want from another drawing using CTRL C and paste it into yours, CTRL V, and all the Dimension and Text Properties will come with it including the layer it is on. Also works for Linetypes too. S - STRETCH Stretch saves a lot of time when changing any object to be shorter or longer. Drag a right to left box over the corner points of the objects, pull it out and type in the distance, if ORTHO is on then the object will deform in the 0/90 deg direction. You can stretch hatch too in the same way, but first you have to go into HATCH EDIT or HE and RECREATE BOUNDARY, then STRETCH the boundary corners using the drag right to left pick box. STRETCH REFERENCE Same method as ROTATE REFERENCE SUPERHATCH On later versions this enables you to use any Block as a hatch pattern. Very clever and useful for producing unusual hatching such as a stone wall pattern. TRIM or TR Select everything When you have a lot of trimming to do, at the command line prompt SELECT CUTTING EDGES, try selecting everything in the area where you want to do the trimming, you can then go around selecting the individual lines you need to trim. TEXT COPY and PASTE You can copy (CTRL C) text from any MS Word or EXCEL file and paste (CTRL V) it into an AutoCAD Multiline text box (MTEXT). This can take the backache out of typing notes onto drawings. TXT2MTXT This will convert multiple lines of single line Text into Multiline Text. This is very handy as single line Text cannot be edited like Multiline Text, this is sometimes necessary when editing other people drawings. TEXTMASK If you want your text to sit over a part of your drawing with lines and objects under it and you still want to read what it says, then you can select a TEXTMASK this is in various places depending what version of AutoCAD you are using, it can be in the express tools at the top of the screen or in the multitext editor. When you have chosen the offset you

want around your text and possibly the colour of the background (usually none) then select your text and a WIPEOUT rectangle appears around your text effectively clearing the drawing from under your text. The drawing is still there, you can reverse the process by TEXTUNMASK. UCS OB Type in UCS (Universal Coordinate System shown by X Y arrow in bottom Left of screen) then OB (object) to line up the UCS with an object of your choice. Once this is achieved you can move, copy or stretch objects along the axis of the new UCS (with ORTHO on). This operation is invaluable for stretching objects at an unusual angle. Lock viewports If you are near to finishing your drawings and you have viewports set up in paper space, then it is often more convenient to edit your drawing through the viewports, by double clicking in the viewport. This will involve continually hopping in and out of viewports to edit various parts of your drawing. If the viewports are not locked when you zoom inside the view port the scale will be altered, sometimes imperceptibly causing an error when you come to print out. To overcome this type in MV then choose LOCK and toggle OFF/ON and then choose the viewports you wish to lock or unlock. Newer versions of AutoCAD have a padlock in the bottom right of the screen which does the same thing. TOOLS-ENQUIRY-VOLUME - CENTROID This is a Brilliant tool for finding the centre of gravity of unusual shaped objects. WIPEOUT This will create a mask that will hide part of your drawing that you want to appear to be behind something else. To create a WIPEOUT first you need to make a frame which is a POLYLINE. Type in WIPEOUT and choose POLYLINE. After you have created your wipeout you might need to use DRAW ORDER to bring your chosen object in front of the WIPEOUT. Then go back into the wipeout command to choose frame ON/OFF to toggle the WIPEOUT frames ON and OFF. This switches all the wipeout frames on/off globally for the whole drawing. You need to switch the frames on if you want to delete them or change their layer. If you use wipeouts a lot you might want to change the type in command to WW via the PGP file. (see PGP FILE). XL BISECT If you want to bisect an angle then the solution is not immediately obvious. The best way is with XL Bisect. Enter XL (XLINE) and then BISECT, choose the line that describes one side of the angle and then the other and the XLINE will bisect the two lines. X\ Type this in to your dimension line text (X and forward slash) and any text after this will appear below the dimension line under the initial text. This is good for saving space on lengthy dimension texts. <> You can edit dimension line text to change the given dimension to something else. If however you want to change it back to show the original correct dimension then type <> and the correct dimension will show in its place. Also you can type in the dimension text - Length of wall =<>mm which will appear as Length of wall = 2100mm.

GENERAL GOOD DRAUGHTING PRACTICE Only draw things once. COPY and PASTE and INSERT BLOCKS and use XREFS, but never draw the same thing twice. Dont delete objects on a drawing just move them away from your drawing area, then when someone changes their mind and you have to resort to a previous design you wont have to draw it again. It also makes sense to move it away a set distance say 10000. To complete a drawing, it is very tempting to draw things that havent been designed yet, this is a bad idea as once it has been drawn up in AutoCAD it can become set in stone and will become a permanent part of the drawing even though it hasnt been properly designed. For instance when drawing a building it might be tempting to put in a certain size column, but an Engineer might not have done the sums to check that that column size will hold the building up. Once it is in the drawing however it is easy to assume that somebody has designed the columns and the next thing you know someone has built it. If you do have to include guessed objects in your drawing then choose a weird colour for them, like purple. When you delete a block, use the left to right pick box option that chooses things inside the pick box. If you dont, you might delete part of the block that you cant see because it is off the edge of the screen, and it might be a vital part of the drawing. I hope you have found this guide useful and informative. If you have any comments, questions or would like to suggest an addition to this guide then please send it to [email protected].