Create geometry using the core design tools - AutoCAD Tutorial

- [Instructor] We're starting a new chapter now in AutoCAD Mechanical course, and we're going to be looking at the key geometry that you work on in your AutoCAD Mechanical drawings, and also the core design tools that we use. So we've got a new drawing in the library for you. It's called Cylinder underscore part.dwg. You can see it there at the top of the screen and download that from the library, to obviously follow along with this video and basically it's a cylindrical part. You can see some section markers here, A, A there's a side view there and if I just pan up slightly there's the A, A annotation waiting for obviously a section view to go in here. Now the first thing we're going to do is we're going to place a rectangle around all this hidden detailing here, so I'm going to zoom in nice and tight on that first, and you can see that all this magenta dashed lines here are the hidden detail. The circle is there as a point of reference, now what's really nice is you've got a whole load of cool design tools in AutoCAD Mechanical that are very different to your regular AutoCAD ones. So if I go to the rectangle command, you'll see I've not just got the regular corner to corner rectangle here. I've got all different ones. Midpoint of high, midpoint of base, center. I can draw squares in the same way. I'm going to select this one here, which is rectangle midpoint of base, full base and full height and you'll notice the little green number one with the X next to it. That's where I'm going to click on the center of that yellow circle. So if I click on that now, come into the drawing area. It says specify base middle point. So on your objects now, down here on the status bar, you just want to make sure that your center snap is on. Mine is, that's all good so I can switch that off again. So I'm going to click here like so, and that's the base middle point. Now when I do that, and I start moving out, can you see the rectangle starting to take shape if I move the mouse? So I need to specify my full base value, which is going to be 62. So I pop that in there, press Enter to confirm. So you can see now I've got my base and now I need to specify my height. now my height, my full height is going to be 12.5 so I'll pop that in there, press Enter and there's my rectangle, quick and easy using that little circle. It's a really really useful tool. Now we need to add some chamfers to the top corners in this front side view, so what I'm going to do now, is go to the modify panel again in the home tab on the ribbon, click on the fly out here and you've got fillet, chamfer and blend curves. Now these all look the same as the AutoCAD ones. Click on chamfer, somewhat different. The chamfer kicks in but it's all on the ribbon with a contextual chamfer tab. So I'm going to select distance up here first of all, the first chamfer distance will be five. Tab that down, second chamfer distance will also be five as well. I want to trim the geometry so I'll switch that one or off as you can see trim geometry, don't trim geometry. I want to trim the geometry, but make sure that all of these are set to the right values. So we have five and five, trim geometry. You can, when you do the chamfer add the dimensions as well and they'll go on the appropriate layers. I'm not going to do that, I don't want any dimensions in place. But what I'm going to do now, is just hover here click once there and there's the little preview, click again. Good thing is I stay in that chamfer command. There's no multiple required like in AutoCAD. With the right click multiple setting, so I go there, and I go there, get the little preview and Enter to finish that's how quick and easy it is. Now you'll notice when I press Enter. It's just prompting me to do things in the chamfer command you do have to hit Escape a couple of times to cancel. Okay just be aware of that one. Okay let's have a look now at adding some more chamfers, fillets using the tools in AutoCAD Mechanical. Now you'll notice here we've got some lines and here we've got some nice arcs. We want these grooves here to be the same over here. So we've got to add some fillets, so we go to the fillet command and you'll notice again, it's on the ribbon so there's the fillet tab. The fillet distance will be two. Now you can click on the down arrow and you've got some standard distances. So there's two so that's the radius and again you've got the trim geometry, insert dimension option. I just want trim geometry, and all I'm going to do here is go one, and two and one and two. Just make sure that when you do this it works appropriately you want to get the appropriate part of the line each time, can you see that? Otherwise it just won't do what you want it to do. Now you'll notice select object to create original length is kicking in there, now you'll notice can you see, it's kind of weird how this works. It works in a different workflow to the regular fillet command. So I'm just going to hit Escape a couple of times there and I'm going to undo what I've done. So let's undo those, you can see that fillet worked fine there, but now I've got to go back and do another fillet there, so I've got to be careful how I do this, so let's go back to that fillet command and select first object, just check your settings. You've got two and trim geometry in the ribbon up there. Select first object, so what I'm going to do now is I'm going to go first object here, second object there and it does that. Now it says now select object to create original length. You don't want that so you hit Escape once, like that. Make sure that you do that and then go back into the fillet command like so. Can you see that? Select first object or, and you can do polyline or add dimension there can you see that on the command line as well? But this is one where you do have to go in and select again, okay. So it's one here, one here, and then select object to create original length but to do that, and then do that can you see it just extends it out which is not what you want. So hit Escape a couple of times, undo that last step and I want to go back to the fillet again and it's going to be that one here, that one here. Then Escape, fillet again, that one here that one here like so. Then it's Escape a couple of times. So that's all our filleting and chamfering done. What I'm going to do now is I'm going to copy this view down minus the circle, so I'm just going to select everything. Like that, and I'm going to do simply a right click and copy like so and I'm just going to select the object. Now hang on a minute, surely I just selected that? Be aware that in AutoCAD Mechanical, when you do that copy you then select the object okay like so. So nothing's selected, copy is just literally copy. It's not copy completely. Hit Escape to deselect that command and go up here and you've got power copy or regular copy okay. Copy duplicates objects then select the objects. Right click to confirm, base point here on the center line I'll just drag that down using the polar tracking to there and Enter to confirm, and then just lose that circle, we don't want that circle there. So I'll just delete that like so. Now all I want to do is trim and get rid of the bits on the side of the section. So our section is this side, we want to lose the right hand side, so I zoom in. I'm just going to use the regular trim command here, you'll see there's trim there, going to use that as the cutting edge, right click or Enter to confirm. Trim these lines back here like so, Enter to finish. All these bits can disappear like that, Delete again and then I'm going to put all of these onto the layer AM zero so I come here like so AM zero and just hit Escape there, and you can see now that I've got the contour lines on the section as if I've cut through the object. So you can see how quick and easy it is to utilize all those cool design tools when you're generating drawings in AutoCAD Mechanical. It doesn't take long to get used to them but they are very different to regular AutoCAD.