| Introduction | p. 1 |
| What is AutoCAD? | p. 1 |
| The aims of the AutoCAD Express | p. 1 |
| The Express route through AutoCAD | p. 2 |
| Conventions used in the AutoCAD Express | p. 3 |
| Return or Enter? | p. 4 |
| Presentation of user-AutoCAD dialogue | p. 4 |
| Control keys | p. 4 |
| Menus | p. 5 |
| Other conventions | p. 5 |
| The Windows environment | p. 5 |
| Windows' Desktop | p. 5 |
| Window control | p. 7 |
| Windows Explorer | p. 8 |
| Windows hot-keys | p. 9 |
| Summary | p. 10 |
| Starting AutoCAD | p. 11 |
| Preparation | p. 11 |
| The AutoCAD icon | p. 11 |
| Creating a drawing | p. 11 |
| The drawing window | p. 11 |
| AutoCAD's menus | p. 14 |
| Selecting toolbars | p. 15 |
| How about a bit of doodling? | p. 16 |
| The tool boxes | p. 18 |
| Setting up the drawing environment | p. 18 |
| Drawing size | p. 20 |
| Drawing lines | p. 22 |
| AutoCAD's command memory | p. 25 |
| Linetypes and scales and colors | p. 26 |
| Saving the drawing | p. 31 |
| Autosave setting | p. 32 |
| Adding some text | p. 33 |
| Help! | p. 34 |
| Context sensitive help | p. 35 |
| Finishing up | p. 36 |
| A note on file security | p. 37 |
| Summary | p. 37 |
| Cursor and Display Control | p. 39 |
| General | p. 39 |
| Layers | p. 40 |
| Cursor location | p. 47 |
| Rulers, grids and snapping | p. 48 |
| Two dimensional coordinate notation | p. 50 |
| Digital setsquares | p. 53 |
| Snapping to objects | p. 55 |
| Zoom and Pan | p. 61 |
| Keyboard toggles and transparent commands | p. 68 |
| Finish for the time being | p. 70 |
| Summary | p. 70 |
| Drawing and Editing | p. 71 |
| General | p. 71 |
| Opening a drawing file | p. 72 |
| Rubbing out and OOPS | p. 74 |
| Object selection modes | p. 74 |
| Erasing some lines | p. 74 |
| Window selection | p. 76 |
| OOPS! I didn't mean to rub that out | p. 76 |
| Crossing windows and polygons | p. 78 |
| The Balloon drawing environment | p. 83 |
| Creating circles, arcs and ellipses | p. 83 |
| Circles | p. 83 |
| Many ways to draw an ARC | p. 85 |
| Rectangles and Ellipses | p. 86 |
| Adding text | p. 90 |
| Text styles | p. 92 |
| Style command | p. 94 |
| Wide lines | p. 95 |
| Aerial view | p. 101 |
| Donuts and discs | p. 102 |
| Shading with patterns | p. 103 |
| Summary | p. 107 |
| Constructive Editing | p. 109 |
| General | p. 109 |
| Drawing the arch | p. 111 |
| Editing a polyline with PEDIT | p. 114 |
| Moving objects | p. 116 |
| Rotating objects | p. 118 |
| Copying | p. 120 |
| Altering objects' characteristics | p. 122 |
| Enlarging objects | p. 126 |
| Stretching objects into shape | p. 127 |
| Mirror image | p. 129 |
| Multiple copies using ARRAY | p. 130 |
| Rectangular arrays | p. 131 |
| Circular arrays | p. 133 |
| Rotated rectangular arrays | p. 134 |
| Finishing up | p. 136 |
| Summary | p. 138 |
| Super-Entities | p. 139 |
| General | p. 139 |
| Making a block | p. 140 |
| Inserting blocks | p. 143 |
| Global blocks | p. 145 |
| Making a library of useful symbols | p. 146 |
| The kitchen sink | p. 147 |
| Coloured blocks | p. 149 |
| Editing a block | p. 151 |
| Assigning text information to blocks | p. 154 |
| Defining an attribute | p. 154 |
| Drawing the kitchen | p. 160 |
| Assembling the fitted kitchen | p. 164 |
| Editing attributes | p. 165 |
| A simple bill of materials | p. 168 |
| Hints on using blocks | p. 170 |
| AutoCAD's inquiry commands | p. 171 |
| Summary | p. 171 |
| Advanced Drawing and Dimensioning | p. 173 |
| General | p. 173 |
| A template for drawing a gland | p. 173 |
| Point and Divide | p. 175 |
| Trimming entities | p. 181 |
| Dimensioning | p. 183 |
| Dimension style | p. 186 |
| Editing dimensions | p. 193 |
| Standard dimension styles | p. 194 |
| Drawing a pentagon | p. 195 |
| Wrapping up dimensions | p. 197 |
| Summary | p. 199 |
| Adding Depth to your Drawings with 3D CAD | p. 201 |
| General | p. 201 |
| Isometric projection | p. 202 |
| The Express State Building in 2.5 dimensions | p. 208 |
| Views and more views | p. 212 |
| Multiple views | p. 214 |
| Model space and paper space | p. 215 |
| The Pyramids of Giza in glorious 3D | p. 218 |
| Making the faces solid | p. 222 |
| Define your own coordinate system | p. 224 |
| The all seeing eye | p. 229 |
| A dynamic viewpoint on visualisation | p. 236 |
| Getting things in perspective | p. 239 |
| Two more pyramids | p. 241 |
| AutoCAD's 3D box of tricks | p. 242 |
| Meshes | p. 243 |
| Generated surfaces | p. 245 |
| 3D objects | p. 248 |
| 3D solids | p. 248 |
| Summary | p. 250 |
| The Hardcopy - Printing and Plotting | p. 253 |
| General | p. 253 |
| Printing and plotting | p. 254 |
| Printers and plotters | p. 254 |
| Plotting the GLAND drawing | p. 254 |
| Altering the plot parameters | p. 256 |
| Scales and preview | p. 257 |
| Saving a VIEW | p. 259 |
| Multicolored plotting | p. 261 |
| Plotting a view | p. 262 |
| Postcript output | p. 263 |
| Plotting multiple viewports in paper space | p. 265 |
| A simple title block for EXP-GIZA | p. 265 |
| Paper space | p. 268 |
| Manipulating metaviews | p. 269 |
| Cross referencing drawing files | p. 275 |
| Dependent blocks | p. 277 |
| A note on XREF files | p. 279 |
| The softcopy | p. 280 |
| Safety first | p. 280 |
| Copying to other Windows applications | p. 280 |
| Object linking and embedding | p. 281 |
| Summary | p. 282 |
| Configuration | p. 283 |
| General | p. 283 |
| AutoCAD Preferences | p. 283 |
| Profiles | p. 283 |
| Display | p. 283 |
| Project file paths | p. 284 |
| Customizing a toolbar | p. 284 |
| Subject Index | p. 289 |
| Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved. |
