Learning Autocad 2013 Tutorial 1: AutoCAD Introduction. 

I began at video 1 and worked my way through every video and practised, practised, practised, working every day from 6 to 12 hours; I'm now competent (though far from perfectly) to actually get drafting work and I'll be working before the end of this month (July 2013) having done about 120 hours with the videos and practise. Easycad4you made this possible due to his lucid explanations and, VERY importantly, entertaining tutorials. I'm now an AutoCAD addict and can't thank easycad4you enough.

I used Autocad back in 1999 for a civil engineering and architectural firm. I would like to get back into updating my knowledge and skills. Watching these tutorials makes me realize that it hasn't changed that much except when it comes to 3D modeling. We didn't have those features in 1999 versions of Autocad. Thank You!

Thank you so much i just had an interview and had no clue what he was talking about. He told me to get familiar with Autocad in 2 weeks you are my savior

I am a contractor, a beginner of beginners to autocad. I mean I didn't have a clue to what cad was until now. You are a very good teacher who really wants your viewers to actually understand the tutorial. I and I believe many others who watch this toturial won't mind supporting you in any way possible. Again, you are a very good teacher. Thanks man.

I just followed your first Autocad tutorial video and i love it. I find it very easy to follow and understand. I like the fact that you are covering the even the most basic things like saving and creating new documents. As a beginner i greatly appreciate the amount of detail you are putting in your tutorials. I know some people are saying skip these, but i think its great for people learning the software from the very start. Thanks so much and keep up the awesome work.

I havent used autocad since release 12. Started using 2013 wow big changes. Your tutorials are a big help! Thanks!

i just started a structural cad program, and your tutorials are helpful, thank you for your help :) you make it easy to follow, i use 2 laptops, one for your video the other for cad to follow along....but still finding it hard to learn new stuff like this, havent been in school for over 30 yrs

i have searched alot for good tutorials and yours is the best! u have a good way of explaining things like if i was 5 yrs old! pls keep the tutorials comming!

Thanks for the compliment, the intention is that one. I remember my own frustration way back when learning autocad and people explain things just assuming you know what they are talking about. I'm glad you benefited from it. Thanks again for posting.

You're obviously not bothered by the negative comments posted here and I admire you for that. I do appreciate your lecture. Keep on teaching. Thank you.

Hi, Thanks for your response! I was working from a CAD file which wasn't made by me and I had no idea what axis it was drawn in. After fiddling around for an hour I realised the original file was in x y and z axis so I used the 'Flatten' command and it worked like a charm.

Thanks a lot Dave for the comments and your own experience. I'm pretty confident it will inspire others not to give up with Cad and it is my pleasure to help in that way. All the best for you and my respects for what you have accomplished. Regards

Thank a lot! I'm a Aerospace Student, that has little drafting experience. Which I needed help with for school, and my new job as an engineering aid. THANKS!!!

Hello, you can see the command line on top of the status bar, just at the bottom of the model space or black screen. It is not as usual because is "floating" and not fixed at the bottom of the screen. One of the advantages of having it floating is that you have more screen space. In cad 2013, when you have it floating it will give you a transparent trail of your actions. You can have it floating of fixed; it is up to you. And you can always put it as usual just by dragging it down to the bottom.

Keep looking at the rest of the tutorials and will be easier than what you think. If you have any doubts just post and we will try to help you asap. Great for you and thanks for posting.

It's my pleasure, thanks for posting and make sure to enjoy the rest of the series.

I like the way he takes his time and did the presentation.

Great and nice tutorial especially for beginner to intermediate level. I hope anyone without prior knowledge of AutoCAD will find it useful. I enjoy the way you took time to explain in detail. Thank you for your selfless contribution.

just started Autocad and this is the best tutorial iv'e seen for begginers. well done and thank you. :-)

Many thanks for your words. I'm glad it's a big help to you and I really hope will be for more folks. Remember this is only the intro, so make sure to post any questions that may arise when looking at the other videos from the series. All the best for you as well, regards.

When you work that tiny it might look like it, but for cad they might be in fact touching each other. In your case, to double check draw 2 lines like u r doing to create a piece of pie from the circle. Then type "region", it will ask for a point inside, then click inside of the piece, if it is not touching it will give you an error message saying: "boundary not close" if creates the region is normal and you are ok. If gives the error reply back. Other dwg aids interfering might be the cause .

Well that's explained in the next tutorials but all you need to do is press the mouse wheel and move the mouse as usual, it actually works like Panning. Also by scrolling with your mouse wheel it zooms in and out focusing on the crosshair or cursor, so you point it at an object, and by scrolling you only zoom on that object. Hope this helps and best regards

Thank you so much ,you are the first person I've been able to connect with in 3 months! you are so very helpful , my best to you, Lisa

Thanks a lot for letting us know and sharing your opinion. Is awesome that your doing that. Make sure to go over the basic stuff, at the very beginning it'll seem boring but is necessary if you want to learn CAD the right way. Feel free to post if something turns out to be hard to understand and my respects for what you are doing at your age. Best regards

Your video is very helpful. I only have a 30 day trial and am trying to familiarize myself with AutoCAD as quickly as possible. I look forward to viewing your other tutorials!

I'm glad for you and that's just the beginning. Make sure to look at the others and feel free to comment and post if you need help. Regards

For sure. It is called Dynamic Input and you can turn it on and off by hitting F12 to activate it. That is one of the drawing aids and you can have a better understanding by going to "Learning Autocad 2013 Tutorial #4 "BASIC DRAWING AIDS". Hope this helps and best regards.

Thank you so much for your help!!!!! You have the best style of teaching I have found yet. very clear at a good pace

By default, Cad 2013 comes with the A (application menu button) on the top left corner & with the icons on top of the screen (Ribbon). If your Cad 2013 does not show this most likely what happened is that you imported from an old version the previous settings of the workspace. What you need is to turn it back to default. Look for a button on the status bar called "workspace switching", click, now click again on "drafting and annotation" to switch to default. If not solve it will need more info.

First off all you need to know Autocad to enter any recognized firm. In addition you could add any version from it like Autocad Architectural, Civil, MEP, etc. Other options are Revit, Inventor or Catia to add to your curriculum but absolutely Cad should be the first, it is the base for almost every Architecture/Engineering course at least here in the US. Hope this helps and Regards.

Good that you found it, those are considered Drawing aids (mostly at the bottom of the screen or status bar) and you can have an introduction to it in my tutorial: "Learning Autocad 2013: Basic Drawing Aids". This basically explains most of these and will give you an idea of how to use those properly and to speed up the drawing process. Regards

Thanks for your input and for watching also. Best regards

Even though I know how to draw a line it's definitely good to start from the top. Much appreciated and I plan to watch all the videos.

I wd like to thank the speaker for presenting such a nice series of presentation. Its explain nicely and everything is understandable. It is no need to say you are very skilled in autocad. I appreciate you to giving us opportunity of learning at no cost.. Thank u once again..and looks forward for postings at the advanced level of autocad.

Oh, you're right. When we did the video that was an issue but we corrected for the next ones. I think we will do a revised version soon. Thanks again and best regards

Thanks for your support, and I hope you keep looking at the rest of the tutorials. Best regards

You are very welcome, just make sure to look at the rest of the series cause this is just the beginning. Regards

Thanks a lot. In fact this is only a preliminary description of the basics of the software. You might want to also look at the rest of the tutorials. Best regards.

That's great, instead of a trial you might want to use an educational version. All the other videos following a sequence are in my channel or at the end of every tutorial you have the link in the annotations for the next video or for the playlist in each and every one. My best regards

Thanks for been so honest. I think that the following tutorials are a little bit better in that sense. Also i've been thinking about to redo it. Your opinion really helps a lot, to improve the next ones. Thanks for posting and best regards.

It is possible, although cad is a complex software is doable if you spend enough time working with it and get a good grasp from the beginning. The biggest challenge for you is the time. 2 months is honestly a short period unless you want to dedicate 3 or 4 hours daily to CAD. My advice is start looking at the series and it will give you an idea of how soon you can get it. For most people take longer than that but again is doable. Post if you have any questions. Regards

i am taking design fundamentals and this is really helpful...thanks alot..

You are very welcome, just make sure to look at the others, which compared to this one are way better since this is only the beginning. Best regards

Thanks for the suggestion. In fact I'm on it since that's the intention; produce a full 2D course for Cad 2013 and then a 3D. Just make sure to look at the ones after this cause we are right now producing the 8th tutorial of this series. If you have any questions just feel free to ask and we will be more than glad to reply.

Originally, Cad was done as windows based, however today it certainly can work with Mac too. I've used it both and there are differences in the system. You definitively can learn in Mac but everything will depend on your preferences and the system you are used to. I'm tempted to say use a PC because it is easier for most people. But again, although is possible to use it or learn it with the 2 systems, it's your decision. Hope this helps and best regards.

Well, then you have a great advantage since you learned back then. Autocad still uses all the features and commands of those days and to be honest, it is really handy when it comes to production. Now cad will only show you what is in the ribbon but still you can use via keyboard any previous command. Once you got into the new features it will be really easy for you to catch up. The new features make it easy to use it and 2013 version is a very good one. Best regards and thanks for posting.

I'm planning to do it once a week or every two weeks but it will depend mostly on my free time. Now I'm finishing the second one. Regards.

It is indeed possible but you'll have to put the hours in with these videos and practise, parctise, practise. You'll do it as long as you work at it. Cheers and best of luck!

Hi Fisheye lens, If it helps you, I've seen a lot of guys in their prime struggling with CAD. In fact one of its biggest challenges is understanding the basic concepts -So is not because you're back after 30 years- You can find most of these (at least for 2D) in the series up to the 4th video. After that, it provides some exercises to practice and learn at the same time. Just to let you know, if you need some help feel free to post any questions. Hope all the best for your plans and regards.

Well, you'd be surprise knowing how many people ask about those things. And some of the complaints i received from people is not teaching from scratch. Although your point is valid, because not been comfortable with windows or mac would make really hard get into the software, but a lot of beginners want everything explained to the max and they ask for it. Thanks for your comment.

I will, and thanks for your support. All the best for you and regards.

It is my pleasure, just make sure to post if you need help or something is not as clear as you would like. My best regards.

Before, i need to finish this one for Cad 2013 but it could be in the future. Inventor is a very powerful modeling software but is intended primarily for a specific task as its name suggest.

Thanks a lot for the input. You mean to enter in the video tags in youtube? I don't know how that might fix it. Should i do something else? Please let me know. Thanks again in advance.

This is very great so far, I know the basics but I wanted to watch it from the introduction. Keep it up :D, great work

You have to activate some Drawing Aids, you will have a tutorial on that in #4 called "Learning Autocad 2013: Basic Drawing Aids" but my suggestion is keep going in the sequence cause you'll need some other basic info before jumping into that. Hope this helps and best regards

You are absolutely right, however I just didn't want to left out those which are not familiar with the basics. Nevertheless, I'm considering the possibility to do another one removing the things most people know. Thanks a lot for your opinions and comments, best regards.

No, that is right, think of this concept in terms of coordinate display as the way you look and can use the UCS (also you have the WCS). Now the coordinate entry systems are (as you said) absolute, relative and polar. These are complex concepts but at least you should have a basic understanding so you feel ok. I'm pretty sure you'll get a good grasp of this idea looking at the tutorial #3, "Introduction to drawing" which covers it. Pay a look at it and let me know how it goes. Best regards

Yes I can, First, look at the second tutorial which explains how to use the automatic saving features of CAD. This is addressed starting at minute 1:38. Your problem can be resolved by going to the "drawing recovery manager" and retrieving the last saved drawing. This is explained at minute 2:55. If after that you still can't do it, I'll be more than happy to guide you step by step. Just have in mind that you've lost some work depending on your settings. Plz, Try it and post.

Thanks for your comment and suggestion, but when a person is learning Cad from scratch needs some other concepts and basic understanding of the software before getting to the point you are suggesting. However they will get there and will benefit from your suggestion thoroughly. Again, thanks for posting.

You are absolutely right, however I just didn't want to left out those which are not familiar with the basics. When i went to school there was bunch of people asking for those obvious things still at the mids of the initial course. Nevertheless, I'm considering the possibility to do another one removing the things most people know. Thanks a lot for your opinion and feedback, Best regards.

Thanks for letting us know. Keep looking at the rest of the tutorials. I'm pretty sure that you will benefit from them also because those are hands on exercises which will teach you from scratch most of the basics of the software. Best regards.

clear and concise explainations of the basics. thanks

You, my friend, are awesome! Thank you for sharing! Stay blessed!

You should continue adding more tutorials! This helps a lot :)

Oh, and also you can see the reference to the command line in the tutorial @ 9:15 min to @ 11:00 min. It briefly gives an explanation on that. Best regards.

Yes you can in the options, if you need some help let me know. regards

Great, also remember if you have any questions just feel free to post are ask. Regards

Yes put it into the video tags, it will fix it, try it.

Hi alvin, If you refer to the ribbon, where some tools are displayed for the windows version, unfortunately there is no option for this in mac. Please let me know if there are something else i can do for you. Regards

Thanks for your input, that is actually the intention: start from the very basic concepts of cad for those wanting to start from scratch. Please check the rest and feel free to comment and share your feedback. Best regards

thank you very much, I will come back to your offer : ) I'm going to become an engineer soon, but my study program isn't considering autocad at all...

Another thing is that if you retrieve it from the back up copy and it has a "$" symbol or a "bak" extension, you need to change the file extension to "dwg" so it opens correctly with CAD. So, try what i just told you, see if you can get it from the recovery manager and if not, I'll give you the rest of the steps. Please post your results so others can benefit from it too. Best regards

That is the default screen in any windows computer for CAD 2013 when installed from scratch. You can have several palettes on both sides as extra tools that you can close on demand. Additionally, the ribbon on top can be minimized also. Please check your version and let me know if you had a previous version of CAD in your computer. Another option is that it imported the settings from your old version. Also you can move around the position of your palettes anywhere. Get back to me w/ the info.

thank you very much i look forward to seeing more tutorials in the future! really good stuff

Greets from Mexico City!

oh, the quality is clear and HD for sure. but the screen is a little bunched together is what i meant. the font is a little hard to read on these old eyes lol. Its manageable though. please keep the videos coming. i am determined to get my foot in the door of learning this software

Thank you very much I'm just starting to learn the autocad and your video was a big help for me! :) awesome!

No, in fact the interface is pretty similar, but there are a lot of differences some are obvious but most not. With 2012 you can't open 2013 since it has a new dwg format. So if you're planning to use 2013 and 2012 then it could be a good option to upgrade, if not, i wouldn't recommend it until you're comfortable enough with Cad because from one version to other it changes and you get easily lost. Best regards

Thanks for your comment, it is actually very basic but for those wanting to get into the CAD world is important to understand the basic concepts. Regards

Nice job explaining all of the features!

After finishing this series I will do it but I'm still missing some tutorials in 2D, then I will go to 3D and you'll see is not that complicated. Best regards

Love your style of teaching...any chance you have a tutorial for Mac users? I am an Autocad beginner and am finding it challenging to learn it properly from a PC perspective and finding other tutorial's unclear. Hoping so and looking forward to your response!

Thank you, I just have a quick question. Which software is best/useful for civil engineering students? Also, (kind of goes with the first question), which software is most preferred by companies (like which one will help me stand out)? Thanks once again !!!

Hi Start a new drawing from scratch by going to App. menu button, select File, New and then get from the list of available templates the one for 2D. In my tutorial "Learning Autocad 2013: Drawings and Templates" it is explained how to do it. On the other hand, you can always go to 3d in any model space by using any command requesting a 3d operation (Ex: orbit) so your best option is to know how to handle properly the model space. Also double check the workspace to be Drafting and annotation

I don't have any videos on Mechanical. However, it is a good idea if you start with CAD. After that you will be able to move to MEP. Even though MEP not my strong part I can assure you Cad will help you a lot before getting into Mechanical. Regards

Your are a Legend man. You saved my assignment marks :)

No it is not normal at all. Did you download it from the autodesk website or from some other place? I really hope the best for you.

It is similar. Some people prefer Cad, others Revit. It is good to know both if you are in this business. Regards

You have many options here in RU-vid. A lot of people are doing free tutorials, so you have plenty to choose from. If you want something structured and aimed to teach you Cad from scratch try our following tutorials which will give you a solid starting point. Best regards.

I don't know what you mean by "you posted 2012". All our tutorials are labeled as "Learning Autocad 2013". The version I'm using is the one you can download also as "Student version" directly from autodesk. Hope this helps, Best regards

Yes is possible, but you need to have solid understanding of Cad. To use a picture as a background you need to import it as an OLE object and then you can create your model in the foreground. Regards

It is my pleasure. Just know that this is the first one of the series "Learning Autocad 2013". When looking at the others, i suggest you to go by the predefined order and make sure to post any questions. My best regards.

Great then, still is important to understand the basics. Try the suggestions i mentioned and no other thing will replace your personal effort. Best regards

Yes, it is possible. Keep an eye on the next tutorials because that's my intention: to teach from zero. The most difficult part is the very beginning because you need to learn basic concepts which are unique to design software and in most cases to AutoCAD. At the same time is a little bit boring for those which are comfortable with CAD but extremely necessary for new ones. Feel free to ask any question and thanks.

Then you'll get a lot from this series, make sure to look at the other tutorials and it will make way more sense to you.Cad is not that complicated, all you need is a little of dedication. Hope the best for you. My best regards

Hello, You are right, but just as i told Marcus, you need to have solid understanding of Cad. In addition you will need also a good computer. Thanks and regards

just downloaded cad and I will learn it now : )

Why does my tool tip only shows the word Polar?How can i change it back?It doesn't even specify any line when i put the dimension.What to do?

Thanks for the tutorial. I'm a postgraduate student just about to start learning CAD from scratch. Do you think these videos are a great starting point for me? Where and how can I lay my hands on the software for practice. Thanks again.