in this video we're going to go over basic autocad tools and commands and we're going to start creating some shapes as i mentioned before in the previous video this section down here is called the command prompt and why is it very important it's very important because autocad works using commands think about it in a way of you tell autocad what tool to activate via giving it a command or giving it a direction each of the tools up in the ribbon it's equal to a command and each of those commands or tools has a shortcut in that shortcut it will make your work and your efficiency faster throughout creating your projects and this is when the command prompt becomes handy because you can type in here what that shortcut is for the command that you want to activate and it saves you the time for going through the ribbon and the panels trying to look to a all of the options and then finding the command that you want to utilize and in your resources on canvas there is a pdf that goes through all of the command shortcuts of autocad so i recommend you go through it and learn the basics once as we go along and now i'm going to show you the three different options in which you can access a command you can either click on the command you can type in the entire name of the command or simply the shortcut for example if i want to activate the line command i will click online and notice how the command prompt has been activated so the command prompt will guide you or will tell you what you need to do once a command has been activated in this case it tells me specify this first point what that means is i need to click somewhere within my drawing to specify where my line is starting so pay attention when you activate a command as to what the command prompt is directing you to do so i'm going to click on this once and i'm going to just simply drag on to the right i will go over in a little bit about the different other options that you see here on the on the screen but for now just focus on the command prompt read what it says now it as it's asking me to specify the next point so i'm going to go ahead and click where the next point is now in order for you to exit out of a command you need to hit the skate button on your keyboard if you don't hit the skate button you are going to continue being within that command that you have active so i'm going to hit the escape button and now i am no longer in that command now we're going to go over activating the command by simply going through the type the option of typing in the word using your keyboard so in this case i'm going to type in line and when i type in line notice how it's the first option in this window that pops up but at the same time any other command that is somewhat related to the word that i am typing it's going to show up here so these are all the commands within the software that have the word line in it so i'm going to click on line again notice how my command prompt is activated and it's telling me what to do so i'm going to go and again draw my line place the first point then click and press on the second point and i'm going to hit escape once now i'm no longer in the command the third option is by simply typing in the shortcut in this case the shortcut for line is simply the letter l so i type in l and again notice that the window pops up and it gives me the l but you don't even need to actually click on it you simply type the letter l and hit enter and that automatically activates that command and again you go back to the options of activating the command prompt i'm going to hit escape so i can show you this in the faster way that it would actually happen when you're working i'm gonna click l in my keyboard type enter and my command is now activated i click to activate the first point i drag and click to activate my second point and hit escape when i'm done again the time that you utilize to activate the command between the three when you use the shortcut it's significantly reduced and this is one of the reasons why we recommend you familiarize yourself and utilize the commands throughout creating your assignments in your project i'm going to quickly delete these lines that i drew and then i am going to go over units before we start diving more in depth about the different tools and start drawing and creating some shapes in order for us to activate units you're going to type in the word units using your keyboard and click enter this window will pop up by default this autocad template was defined under decimal and we want to make sure that we are on the architectural which activates feet and inches which is the measuring system that we're going to be using so just change this decimal to architectural under the type and click ok now at this point you want to save your file to make sure that your settings have been saved and now your file is updated to the correct unit so i am going to go ahead and click save and done again look at your command prompt it's telling you what was the latest command that you did and that was to save now we're going to go back to the line tool and i'm going to go more in depth at explaining what the different options are again i'm going to type in l enter l enter to activate that command i'm going to specify my first point okay and now the different options that i'm getting here is one that green line is kind of like directional point or directional line a straight line meaning that your line in this direction is straight and orthogonal the little square that you see in the middle with the blue line and the numbers that is the distance or the dimension of your line and you can kind of see that as you move left and right that number is changing and that's the actual distance of that line okay i suppose to the way that you utilized the scale and the hand drawing in this software you are going to draw everything to the exact dimension and then we're going to utilize the layout portion to print it to scale but again we'll go over that in an uh coming video for now i'm going to specify what that distance of this line is so you can try to kind of drag the line to where you want it let's say i want it to feed i can kind of try to go zoom in so i can try to get to two feet or an easier way is using your keyboards and telling the program what the distance of the line that you want to draw is in this case i'm going to type in 2 and notice that as soon as i type in 2 on my keyboard that number is being typed in into that box in the middle if i hit enter now that is 2 inches because i didn't tell the program that i wanted inches or feet so the program assumes that if i type in a number without any unit then that is a inches so if i want to do that again i'm going to type in 2 and i'm going to use the comma which is the symbol for feet and i'm going to hit enter and now it drew a 2 foot line okay so anytime you want to tell the program to draw between inches and feet you want to utilize the keyboard to tell it what you distance you want i'm going to now hit escape and i'm going to go to the next command which is the polyline okay and the shortcut for polyline is pl enter and what is this does is it can draw a continuous line and i'm just drawing different shapes to give you an example and i'm going to hit escape and if i hover over it now it highlights the entire line meaning that this whole line it's connected and it's one continuous line if i click on it you can see the entire line being blue to this selected you have to hit escape now i'm going to go back to typing in the line command so i'm going to hit l enter and i'm going to go back to drawing lines and i'm trying to follow a similar pattern i'm going to hit scape now i'm going to hover over it and notice how each one of these elements are individually highlighted and if i click on one only that line that i highlighted over or that i clicked is the one that i selected so the differences between just the plain line tool and the polyline tool it's that the polyline gives you a continuous selected line versus regular line that is giving you just an individual line between the two points that you have determined in autocad we have three different ways of selecting an element or a line that you have drawn we have the simple selection tool which is you hovering over in the element the line or the shape that you want to select and clicking on it once this is highlighted that means that that is why it's being selected we also have the selection option which is from right to left so you go anywhere next to the line or the shape that you want to select and you click outside and you drag your mouse and that gives you a green box the green box means that this is the select tool and anything that is slightly inside that green box box is going to get selected so if i'm just going to click somewhere outside and now these two lines got selected because they were within that green box that i created now i'm going to hit escape to deselect and i'm going to show you the cross select option and that is from left to right again i'm going to click somewhere outside of this and i'm going to do the same thing that i did with the green box notice how now this is a blue box if i click somewhere in here inside notice how nothing happened because for the cross select you need to completely enclose the entire line or shape that you drew in order for it to be selected so if i click here and let go notice how one two three in this little line here were selected because their entire length was within the cross selection box that i drew notice how this one did not get selected because it was not entirely within the box a better option would probably be showing the spline because it's a connected line if i select from right to left as long as i am slightly over this the line the entire line will be selected i'm going to hit escape if i do the same with the cross select i am going to click and drag notice how nothing is happening i'm going to let go and nothing was selected now i'm going to try again i am going to cross select clicking on the left and dragging my blue rectangle all the way to the right until it passes or that it covers the entire spline i'm going to click and notice how now the entire line was selected because it was completely within that blue rectangle of my selection box i'm going to hit escape those were the three basic forms in which you can select and as you get more familiar with utilizing the software you start to see where each of the different selection options make sense okay now we are going to look at a few additional draw commands or tools we're going to look at the circle okay i can click on it here or i can type in c for circle enter and now the circle command has been activated notice again what the command is telling me to do it says specify center point for circle so meaning that if i click anywhere that is at the center of my circle and it's as i go in and out of the shape the circle is getting smaller or bigger the same option as when drawing a line is available when you draw a circle you can see how the number inside the box in the middle is changing and that is the radius of the circle okay and this yellow dashed line it's the indication of that radius so if you wanted to draw a circle of a specific diameter you have to keep in mind that that the radius has to be half of your diameter in this case let's say that i want to build a two feet circle so i am going to type in 1 and utilizing the apostrophe symbol to indicate feet and hit enter now that circle is the dimension now i'm going to look at the rectangle tool and the rectangle tool is located in the top portion of the draw panel or again you can simply type in r and you start to see that the options will pop up you can see that the shortcut for rectangle is rec so if you type rec enter that activates the rectangle command again look at what your options are it says specify first corner point so i am going to click and what that means is that is a corner of my rectangle okay now if if i'm dragging to the right i am getting the two other sides that make up the rectangle so now i can not only identify the dimension of one side but of the second side as well so i am going to click somewhere in here to create my rectangle now why are these different than creating a line and going around and making a rectangle well it's a shape so if i hover over it it's a complete shape it's not individual lines or a spline that i put together the same with the circle if i hover over the circle this is a closed complete shape these are the basic drawing tools that autocad provides now we're going to look at the basic modify tools which is the next tab from the draw tool it's called the modify tool we're going to first look at the move command which is the top one on the left side here again if you hover over the command and you wait for the window you will get a little note of what this command does but it's almost self-explanatory the move command it's going to allow you to move or to displace one of your shapes or lines from one area to another let's say in this case i no longer want my circle and my rectangle to be on top of each other so i am going to select my circle and i'm going to click the m enter for move so i am able to snap to this center point here and i will go over in the next video about all of the different options for snapping that we have within the software but for now i am able to click on the center of the circle so i'm going to click there and notice how now i have activated the displacement or the move command and now i am able to go around and place this shape or this circle in a different location note the yellow dashed line that is an indication of where the original point was and where the new center point is going to be i am going to click and now my circle was moved to this location i'm going to try again with a line i am going to select the line and click on m and enter and i'm going to this point this time grab it from the end point and notice that when you're able to snap you're going to see a little green box or circle that it's an indication that you're able to snap to the specific point in this case it's an end point i am going to click on that point and notice how now i am able to move this line again notice the number that is being updated that's an indication of how much you are moving this line again i am able to type in the specific distance that i want to move this line let's say that i want to move this line about 10 inches i am going to type in the number 10 and use the quotation marks to indicate that i want 10 inches and i'm going to hit enter now that line was moved 10 inches from its original point okay this is very very straightforward you either freely move your lines or shapes to the location that you want or you can specify the actual distance that you want to move we also have a copy command which means that it allows me to duplicate or create copies of any line or shape or geometry that i've already created so i am going to select the circle and i'm going to type in c which is the star of the letter copy but notice how c is the shortcut for circle c o is the shortcut for copy so i am going to type in co hit enter and again i am going to snap to the option which is the center and i'm going to displace the circle and snap to this point and i'm going to do the same and snap to this point the command is still active so i am able to make as many copies of this shape as i want once once you are done hit the escape button and now you are done with that command now i have three independent copies of that same shape okay now we're going to go over the rotate command and the rotate command gives you a lot of flexibility as to which way and what that angle of rotation is i am going to select the rectangle first and i'm going to type in ro enter which is the shortcut for rotate and i'm going to come in to the corner to snap to this corner of my rectangle and i'm going again always take a look at what the command is wanting you to do so in this case it says specified base point so i'm going to specify this corner as my base point i'm going to click in there and now it says a specified rotation angle now i can see that it is freely giving me an option to rotate in any direction along that point that i just specified okay now i can freely go ahead and just try to simply click and snap it but at this point i don't know what that rotation angle was if i try to do that again i am going to click on my shape click on r o enter click on this point again and now i let's say that i want to rotate 45 degrees so i'm simply going to type in 45 and hit enter so now it rotated that rectangle using that corner point it rotated it counterclockwise 45 degrees because that was the rotation side that i was aiming at and i type it in and specify 45 degrees i am going to try again now using the spline that i drew earlier i'm going to select that and i'm going to type in our o for rotate and i'm going to snap to this point click and i am going to set it on a 90 degrees and click to finish now we're going to take a look at the mirror command and it's located right under the rotate command on the panel but again you're going to type in m to try to look for the command but the actual command for mirror is mi since m is for move so mi is for mirror i'm going to type in mi and enter again look at the option it's asking me to select the object so i am going to select my spline and i'm going to hit enter so it's asking me to specify the mirror line so i'm going to use this line as my mirror line so i'm going to select on this point now it says specify the second point of your mirror line i'm going to go ahead and specify the end point now it's asking you if you want to erase the source object meaning do you want to erase the original shape that you are mirroring if you want to delete it because you no longer need it you will say yes or if you want to keep it you click on no so now i have two shapes that are identical mirrored to each other and you can do that on the vertical as i did by using a vertical line or you can also do it by using a horizontal line the last tool that i want to show you before we start drawing more shapes is the trim tool and the trim tool is located next to the rotate tool on the top and the trim tool has two options it has the trim which is cut in and you can see the symbol being eight scissors or an extension and i'm going to show you what each of those do again you can always try to see if you can find the command first by typing in the first letter of that command so in this case is t for trim and notice how tr is for trim so i'm going to type in tr and enter if you hover over any line it is going to automatically recognize that that line is within another shape and it's going to give a little x red x as an indication that that piece of the line it's going to be removed if i click on it and i click on this one now those two lines were removed i'm gonna hit escape to show you what happened remember how this was a splined meaning that it was a continuous line since i removed part of that line now only this portion continues to be a spline or a continuous line but now this portion it's no longer part of that spline because i deleted its connection now it's a single line okay so keep that in mind even though you created it as a spline you can always split it if you end up in a situation in which you trim the line now i'm going to show you a few other options with the trim command so i'm going to go back to trim tr enter and now i'm going to hover over the circles here again notice how it's reading that this section of the circle is within another shape and it's going to trim it but not only that if i hover over the edge of this circle it wants to trim the circle from this intersection point to this intersection point so a good way to remember what trim does is it wants to trim any line the is extending from one point and another point okay if i look at this edge of the circle for example it wants to trim this entire part of the circle from this intersection point to this intersection point if i look at this line on the rectangle it wants to delete it from this intersection corner to this corner okay and you can kind of hover over all the lines that you have around intersect them within each other to kind of understand what the trim tool would do before you actually do it it will that remove or trim the line until you press or click on it i'm going to go ahead and remove this portion of the circle so i'm going to click and remove and i'm going to do the same with this one i'm going to click on remove now i'm going to do the same with this one and this one and this one and this one so now i have the entire portion in the middle clear i'm going to hit escape now notice how this portion of the circle this portion of the circle still a continuous line but these two portions of this circle are now independent single arcs because i remove both sides of the circle that made it continuous so keep all of that in mind when you are trimming to make sure that you are doing the full intent of the trim to end up with the shape that you want to end up otherwise you might end up with pieces of a shape that you did not intend the next part of the trim command is the trim extend i'm going to go and click on that and this does the opposite of cutting it extends the line to the next line or intersection point so i'm going to hover over this line look at how it's trying to extend that line up to the rectangle side because that's the next intersection point i'm going to click and now that line has been extended i'm going to hit escape when i hover over it now that spline that i had has been extended and now it maintains its relationship of a spline i'm going to hit escape go back to trim and extend click on it and i'm going to do the same with this side again notice how it's doing that okay it's extending to this end but if i hover over the other end it's doing the same thing to extend to the next intersection point which is part of this circle if i do that over the circle point or this small arc that i had left notice how it wants to bring back part of that circle it understands that this shape originally came from a circle and it wants to create that circle again so i'm going to click on it and i'm going to hit escape again notice how that line now it's one continuous line it's no longer just a small piece of line individual again i'm going to click on the extend and i'm going to do the same on this side i'm going to hit escape and now i have almost a complete circle again and that was the summary of what trim and extent do if at any point you want to delete any line or any shape you simply hover over it or use any of the two selection options and once it's selected you simply click on the delete button in your keyboard and now that line or shape has been deleted if you deleted it by mistake and you want to bring it back there's two ways that you can do that you can simply click on control z to bring that back or i'm going to delete it again to show you again you can go up in the top here on the quick access toolbar and click on this arrow to see a list of your commands these are all the commands that you have recently utilized and you can go back as far as this allows you to go back so you can always go back to the latest command if you want to undo something that you erased or any other command let's say that you created a trim or an extend and you no longer want it so you can simply just go back up to the point in which you want to start again let's say i'm going to give you an example i'm going to go back four steps of my trim extend and here it is now i am back at the same shape that i was before i did the extend so this is a very useful tool in the event that you are just trying to play around with different shapes in different forms and then you decide to go back to the original shape the original form that you started with okay again keep keep saving make sure that you continuously save your file to avoid losing any work and if you don't want to go through the a or through the access toolbar you can simply click ctrl s and that saves your file and you can always double check that the command went through by looking at the latest command in the commands option