AutoCAD Basics - Section 1

CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS AUTOCAD?

Before talking about what Autocad is, we necessarily have to refer to the acronym CAD, which in Spanish means “Computer Aided Design” (“Computer Aided Design”). It is a concept that emerged in the late 60s and early 70s, when some large companies began to use computers to design mechanical parts, especially in the aeronautical and automotive industries. These were currently obsolete systems and with which, in reality, they were not drawn directly on the screen -as we will do in Autocad at the time- but they were fed with all the parameters of a drawing (coordinates, distances, angles , etc.) and the computer generated the corresponding drawing. One of its few advantages was to present different views of the drawing and the generation of plans with photographic methods. If the design engineer wanted to make a change, then he had to change the drawing parameters and even the corresponding geometry equations. Needless to say, these computers could not perform other tasks, such as sending an email or writing a document, since they had been explicitly designed for this.

An example of this type of equipment was the DAC-1 (Design Augmented by Computers), developed in the General Motors laboratories with IBM equipment at the beginning of the 70's years. Obviously, these were systems whose cost escaped the possibilities of smaller companies and which had really limited scope.

In 1982, after the emergence of IBM-PC computers two years earlier, the predecessor of Autocad was presented, called MicroCAD which, despite having very limited functions, meant a significant change in the use of CAD systems, since it allowed Access to computer aided design, without major investments, to a large number of companies and individual users.

Year after year Autodesk, the creative company of Autocad, has been adding functions and features to this program until it becomes a sophisticated and complete environment of drawing and design that the same can be used to make an architectural plan of a house-room more or less simple, to draw with him a three-dimensional model of a complex machinery.

In the introduction we mentioned that Autocad is the favorite program of complete industries, such as construction and various branches of engineering, such as automotive design. It is even possible to say that once a design has been made in Autocad, it is possible to use other programs to submit said designs to simulations of computer use tests to see their performance depending on the possible manufacturing materials.

We also said that Autocad is a program for precision drawing and to facilitate this type of drawing, it offers tools that allow to work with simplicity, but also with accuracy, with coordinates and with parameters such as the length of a line or the radius of a circle.

In addition, in recent years Autocad has taken a small leap forward in its use, forcing users to go through a somewhat steeper learning curve. From version 2008 to version 2009 Autocad abandoned the classic descending menus so common in many programs for Windows to adopt the type of interface with "Command tape", typical of Microsoft Office. This meant a massive reorganization of its various commands, but also new features in its functionality and in the workflow it proposes.

Therefore, in the next chapters we will see why Autocad, despite these changes, is the obligatory reference for all those people who want to seriously develop computer-aided design projects.

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4 Comments

  1. It is very good free teaching, and share it with people who do not have enough economy to study the autocad program.

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