We will jump a few steps and start creating today. Let’s see how practical and efficient we can be. The objective of this is to make you sense what it feels like designing with AutoCAD.

We need to start with a short description of the environment, potentially discovering new words that are specially used by AutoCAD drafters. It will also be important to know the right settings and the changes you need to do before you start using AutoCAD.

Drawing an object in AutoCAD

Two simple steps

1 – Click on the white sheet on the left upper corner

2 – Click on Open

You are now in the main window. Feel free to close the window on the left side (if you are working on the same version as I do), it won’t be useful for now.

If you did close the left windows, the following image is what you should be left with.

We are now set.

A line

To draw a line in AutoCAD:

1 – Activate the LINE command with a click on its appropriate icon.

or type command :- L  Enter 

2 – Click anywhere in the drawing area to tell AutoCAD where you want the first point to be

3 – Repeat the previous step after moving the cursor away from the first point.

4 – Press the ESC key on your keyboard to cancel the command.

If you have more than a line to draw, you don’t have to start each by starting all over again. You might have noticed that after step 3, AutoCAD was letting you draw another line considering its beginning was at the end of the previously drawn line.

If you look at the object below, you will see that it has 3 points.

If we were to draw this (we do not care about dimensions and line inclinations for now), we will

1. Activate the Line command
2. Click to indicate point 1
3. Click to indicate point 2
4. Press the ESC key

You must still have many questions about drawing a line, No worries! More will be covered in the upcoming tutorials.