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CADTutor provides the best free tutorials and articles for AutoCAD, 3ds Max and associated applications along with a friendly community forum. If you need to learn AutoCAD, or you want to be more productive, you're in the right place. See our tip of the day to start learning right now!
Free Tutorials and More…
The Tutorials section provides over 100 original tutorials for AutoCAD, 3ds Max and other design applications. Michael’s Corner is an archive of productivity articles that brings you the best AutoCAD tips and tricks. Our Forum is a lively community where AutoCAD users can ask questions and get answers. The Downloads area provides free AutoCAD blocks, free AutoLISP routines and free images.
Tutorials of the Moment
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AutoCAD 2010: 3D Move & 3D Rotate
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CADTutor Tutorials
Our tutorials are comprehensive but straightforward introductions to AutoCAD and related software. They are designed to help beginners get to grips with design workflows as quickly as possible. There are over 100 to choose from, some text/image based and others in video format. Whatever stage you are at in your learning, you should find a tutorial to help.
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Is there a way to simplify the "SSGET / SSNAME", perhaps with more modern commands?
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CADTutor Forums
Our forum is a vibrant community of experts and beginners. The main focus is helping beginners get to grips with AutoCAD and to help more advanced users become more productive. The AutoLISP forum is one of the busiest out there, providing expert advice for busy professionals.
AutoCAD Productivity
‘Sign Language’
From: AutoCAD Productivity Articles #136
Originally published: October 2014
For the last few versions we have seen icons next to the cursor for Geometric Constraints (left) and Selection Cycling (right), as well as the little icon for a Locked layer and the Match Properties paintbrush.
Those icons are displayed when the related feature is enabled.
Cursor Badges
But AutoCAD 2015 now has included a ‘cursor badge’ for several editing commands, such as Rotate and Erase (see figures below), along with Measure and even the Window and Crossing selection direction badges.
Some of you, however, may prefer not to see the new badges beside the cursor. If so, set the variable CURSORBADGE to <1>, which will disable all badges.
See all the articles published in October 2014
Michael's Corner
Between 2003 and 2016, Michael Beall (and one or two guests) wrote almost 600 articles for CADTutor. The focus of these articles is AutoCAD productivity, and although some of them are now more than a few years old, most remain relevant to current versions of AutoCAD. The article above is just one example. Check out Michael's Corner for a full listing.
Image of the Week
Gallery of Work
Over the years, our forum members have contributed hundreds of images, showcasing their amazing work. The images above are just a small selection that demonstrate the wide range of project types our community is involved with. Take a look at our gallery to see all the images published in the last 12 months.
Tip of the Day
Command line in a window (F2)
The command line can be very useful, especially for beginners because AutoCAD often gives useful prompts which helps when learning how to use some of the more complicated commands. The command line is also used by AutoCAD to report information back to the user, but sometimes that information may run to several lines of text, and disappear from view. A good example of this is the Distance command (you can run this from the keyboard by typing DIST). The problem is that by default, the command line is only two lines high and so if you use the Distance command, you don't even see the distance reported to the command line.
One way round this problem is to increase the depth of the command line to show more lines but this takes up valuable drawing area. A better solution is to display the command window using the F2 key on the keyboard.
As you can see above, the command window also allows you to scroll back through the command line so that you can review your recent drawing history.
Missed a Tip?
Did you miss yesterday's tip? Maybe you forgot to drop by or maybe you don't visit over the weekend. If so, you can now see all the tips published during the past week. Also, if you have a tip you'd like to share with us, you can post it on our forum and if we like it, we'll publish it here.