DraftSight Essentials : scale drawing with CAD software

The first interactive lecture, and something you can have a go at as a complete novice. It introduces the LINE tool, and then shows you how to use the TRIM and EXTEND tools, covering the screen each time in lines which you can just go ahead and edit.

Drawing shapes like RECTANGLES ,CIRCLES and ARCS is a very simple process in DraftSight, and this lecture will get you started. It also introduces the POLYLINE, a unique and essential CAD tool with lots of uses.

When you draw in a CAD program, one of the basic rules is to always draw with complete accuracy. It is actually much quicker and easier to draw in this way anyway, and this lecture shows you how to employ the help of two essential DraftSight tools, Polar Guides and Esnaps.

This interactive exercise is meant to be a lighthearted first attempt at drawing something, in this case a Snowman. Starting with a finished (sort of) drawing in the screen, you can have a go at making a rough copy just using the tools covered in the course so far, before I show you how I would draw it.

Introducing the powerful MIRROR editing tool, which can be used to make copies of existing drawn objects in a wide variety of ways.

Two more essential editing tools, the MOVE tool which you will use all the time to re-arrange objects in your drawings, and the STRETCH tool which is a brilliant way to create new drawings from old ones, and a massive time saver.

Both these objects, the POLYGON and the ELLIPSE, can be really tricky and time consuming to construct by hand. Once again, DraftSight makes the difficult things simple and straightforward, and takes the effort out of drafting something.

Another interactive lecture, in which I invite you make a copy of a simple drawing of a house, again using the tools covered in the course up to here.

It is actually really quick and easy to draw a RECTANGLE to a given size, and here I show you how. CIRCLES are even simpler, and drawing LINES to a length is no problem either.

More great editing tools. The COPY tool is pretty self explanatory, as is the ROTATE tool, but the OFFSET tool is another CAD specific tool which can be a real time saver.

Another drawing of a House, but this time it has dimensions on it and therefore everything has a size. I invite you to make a copy, before showing how I drew it.

Why use LAYERS when you can draw everything on one layer? The answer is, it will save you huge amounts of time and work in the long run. Learn how to create a LAYER, and how to change its colour and other features to make your drawing life a lot easier.

Nothing to do with chickens and eggs, HATCHING in CAD is simply the process of adding either a patterned or colour fill to the parts of your drawing that require it.

Another interactive exercise; a simple PLAN with a few dimensions on the left of the screen, just hit the PAUSE button and have a go, before I show you how I drew it.

A SHEET in DraftSight is really a digital piece of paper, set up to print to a certain size and scale with the help of a VIEWPORT. This lecture introduces you how to both, and shows how to change UNITS as well.

Two very useful little editing tools which are invaluable for refining drawings quickly and easily.

Setting up sheets and viewports to different scales takes all the hard work out of outputting drawings once they are ready to print. This lecture shows you how to to that.

Dimensions are one of the most powerful and productive features of CAD, and once they are set up correctly, you can dimension even complex drawings in minutes. This lecture gets you started and shows how to create a dimension style.

Once you have set up a dimension style, you need to make sure it will look okay when the drawing is printed; the text size, arrows and other variables need to be the right sizes, and that is covered in this lecture

Getting the text height right, and then saving the the drawing for future use. You will only have to do this once in your CAD drawing life.

Here I show you how to use the dimension style you have set up to quickly create lots of new ones to any scale you want, and combine them with sheets set up to match.

Download the sample file and have a go at dimensioning it yourself. I show you why it is a good idea to always have your dimensions on a different LAYER to the rest of the drawing as well.

DraftSight provides you with a constant history of what you are doing, and a pointer to what you need to do next. All you need to know is where to look, which what this lecture shows you. The standard DraftSight help is also really comprehensive if you need to find something out.

It's always nice to be able to customise things to suit your way of working, and setting up DraftSight toolbars is really simple once you have seen this lecture

Whether you want to print your drawing out as on paper, or make a PDF digital file you can send anywhere in seconds, this lecture shows you how to output drawings