Becoming an AutoCAD® Master This course outlines 10 practical philosophies which help you master AutoCAD. Gleaned from over 20 years of streamlining over 50 companies in Montreal.
1. Watch Others Work…
Lots of techniques ‘out there’ that are not documented:
A co-Worker sitting next to you may know something crucial to your work .
Some of the most productive people I know are the laziest! watch lazy people who keep up!
Watching someone work transmits information a lot faster than reading about something .
2. Trust Your Instincts…
When brain thinks “there must be a better/faster way to do this”… it is usually right.
Knows that your knowledge is always unfinished.
3. See Beyond the Documented Purpose…
For over 20 years powerful AutoCAD techniques have evolved in the Workplace:
These techniques are well understood – yet there is nothing about them in the manuals.
These techniques are widely used – yet they are not a part of any educational curriculum.
They typically formed out of a need to solve a crisis, and involve commands you already know how to use.
4. Learn the Program. All of It. You PAID for All of It!
Most users today do not even know, understand or exploit over 25% of the technologies they’ve already paid for.
The “shrinking pie syndrome:” How many of the features that you paid for do you use?
Do you use Regions? Solids? Rendering? DbConnect? OLE Objects? Diesel? Scripting? AutoLISP? Visual LISP? Visual Basic for Applications? ObjectARX? The Express Tools?
Examine your 2006 list of new technologies… How many of you are already using the sheet set manager? The plot and publish tools? Tables? Fields? Markups? New notation symbols?
Test yourself. take a tally of all the commands you use in a week… then compare them to the complete list of commands available in the program. All of them. what’s your percentage?
By taking on one command or system variable a workday, you can move thru the entire syntax in a matter of months and make an informed decision as to what you really need to know.
5 Minutes of learning new features may save you hours of worktime!
5. Small = Fast
The golden CADD rule: the smaller the drawing, the faster it is to load, save, and edit.
Several techniques have evolved over the years Which are founded on this observation.
Examine How TEXT can be manipulated to speed up drawing performance:
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STYLE command to temporarily simply fonts.
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QTEXT to speed up virtual screen.
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Text can be imported thru the MTEXT command at any time.
Examine the WBLOCK and BLOCK commands for some examples commands you may have thought you knew everything about offer amazing undocumented capabilities.
6. Programming is PowerDrafting
Express Tools started out as a series of AutoLISP/ActiveX routines.
All the great third-party applications down thru the years started out as AutoLISP routines.
If you can master PEDIT, you can master AutoLISP. It’s not hard stuff to learn.
There‘s a ton of sample code “out there” in the world to learn from.
There’s a ton of people who would love to teach it to you.
7. Stay Task-Focused
What if you need to:
Share your drawings with people who can’t use your DXF, DWG or DWF files?
Share your drawings with people who don’t need to edit but see/discuss your drawings?
Share your drawings with people you don’t want changing your drawings?
Share your drawings with people you really don’t want having your drawings in the first place?
Share your drawings with people using very old versions of AutoCAD or other CAD apps?
Share your drawings without giving away proprietary resources (block libraries, fonts, etc)
Share your drawings (including xrefs) with people who have very different directory structures?
Share your drawings without sending horrendously large files?
Consider a Screen Capture!!!
Print Screen Button (clipboard), paste into email and send, discuss. Done!
8. Experiment!!!
“Playing Around” and “Goofing Off” With AutoCAD is HIGHLY PRODUCTIVE
Call it “R&D” if you have to, but make time every week to fiddle around With AutoCAD
9. Don’t Buy Into the Myths…
There are a lot of myths circulating out there about:
How certain commands “should be used”
How certain commands “should not be used”
What certain commands “are only used for”
This causes:
A great deal of AutoCAD capability to go unexploited
A great deal of productivity to get bypassed
Users to stop thinking outside the box.
10. It’s not just what you know… it’s who you know.
A long time ago I gave up the notion that I could “know it all about AutoCAD”
Everyone specializes.
New techniques are born everyday.
The person sitting next to you knows something about AutoCAD you don’t. Same for co-workers.
Autodesk forums, AUGI forums, etc… interactive books!
Turn to your neighbor… get his/her card, put a face to an email address!!
Practice, practice, pratice makes perfect or at least take::
AutoCAD courses to create an AutoCAD Master given by trainer who is authorised from:
