Drawing Environment Overview This lesson describes the AutoCAD® Civil 3D® (AutoCAD®) software drawing environment. Whether refreshing your knowledge or learning for the first time, these exercises will help you develop familiarity with basic entity creation and modification, entity properties, layers, blocks, layouts, and template files. A strong knowledge of these basics will enable you to work with the AutoCAD Civil 3D lessons and software more efficiently. This lesson is intended to help students become familiar with the basic drawing environment of Civil 3D, which is based on AutoCAD. Students who already have a strong working knowledge of this topic should proceed to Lesson 2, AutoCAD Civil 3D Interface. Objectives After completing this lesson, you will be able to: Navigate the Civil 3D drawing environment, zoom and pan to view objects, use the command window, use the Help system, and explore environment settings and function keys. Configure fundamental drawing settings and options such as Scale, Grid, Snap, Object Snap, file paths, and display colors. Create basic AutoCAD objects such as lines, polylines, circles, arcs, and polygons using menus, palettes, keyboard commands, mouse controls, coordinates, and object snaps. Modify AutoCAD objects using multiple techniques including grip editing and object properties Use layers to control object display. Navigate and view objects in 3D. Create reusable blocks. Use externally-referenced drawings in the current drawing. Draw objects in paper space (layouts) and configure one or more viewports in a layout. Create a properly formatted layout with required elements such as a title block, north Lesson 1 AutoCAD Civil 3D 2010 Education Curriculum Student Workbook Unit 1: Civil 3D EnvironmentUnit 1 - Lesson 1: Drawing Environment Civil 3D 2010 Student Workbook ▪2 arrow, border, and scale. Configure the page setup and plot layouts to an engineering scale. Exercises The following exercises are provided in a step-by-step format in this lesson: 1. Navigate the Civil 3D Drawing Environment 2. Review Options and Drawing Settings 3. Create Objects 4. Modify Objects 5. Navigate the 3D Drawing Environment 6. Create Blocks and Use External References 7. Work with Layouts and Viewports 8. Plot an Engineering Drawing to Scale Civil 3D Drawing Environment AutoCAD is the drawing environment used by AutoCAD Civil 3D design software. The software enables you to design in 3D, therefore, it is critical for you to learn the basics of the graphic environment prior to continuing through the rest of this curriculum. In the early years of CAD, design was performed separately from the drafting and production of final drawings. Civil 3D has changed this paradigm so that design and production are performed simultaneously. Understanding the drawing environment is crucial to design using the intelligent objects of Civil 3D. Feeling comfortable with creating and modifying objects, layers, viewing in 3D, using blocks, and being able to print to scale will help you be more productive as you learn the design tools of Civil 3D. These exercises cover many basic concepts and the novice user is strongly encouraged to work through each one of the exercises to gain a full understanding of the graphic environment of Civil 3D. A few key terms are: Key Terms Grips Small squares and triangles that appear on selected objects. After selecting the grip, you edit the object by dragging it with the pointing device instead of entering commands. UCS Icon An icon that indicates the orientation of the UCS (User Coordinate System) axes. (UCSICON). Grid and Snap A grid is an area covered with regularly spaced dots or lines to aid drawing. The grid spacing is adjustable and the grid dots are never plotted. Snap settings relate to an invisible grid that locks the pointer into alignment with the grid points according to the spacing settings.Unit 1 - Lesson 1: Drawing Environment Civil 3D 2010 Student Workbook ▪3 Snap grid does not necessarily correspond to the visible grid. Object Snap (Osnap) Methods for selecting important geometric points on an object while you create or edit a drawing. Examples of object snaps include endpoint, midpoint, and center. Layer Layers are used to organize drawing data. Every drawing object is assigned to a layer. Objects can adopt the layer visibility settings, including on\off, freeze\thaw, color, and linetype. Selection Window A selection window is used to select one or more objects that a command can act upon at the same time. Implied windowing means using a right to left window to select items the window touches and a left to right window to select items entirely within the window. Named View A view, or graphical orientation, that can be saved and restored. Block A generic term for one or more objects that are combined to create a single object. External Reference A drawing file referenced by another drawing. Layout The environment in which you create and design paper space layout viewports to be plotted. Multiple layouts can be created within each drawing. Contract drawing borders are usually created on layouts. Viewport A bounded area that displays some portion of the model space of a drawing. A viewport is created on a layout. Paper Space One of two primary spaces in which objects reside. Paper space is used for creating a finished layout for printing or plotting, as opposed to doing design or drafting work that is performed in model space. Model Space One of the two primary spaces in which objects reside. Typically, a geometric model is created in a three-dimensional coordinate space called model space. A final layout of specific views and annotations of this model is placed in paper space. Drawing Template Files Drawing template files (DWT files) contain standard AutoCAD settings, layer definitions, linetypes, symbols, paper space layout definitions, dimension styles, and text style definitions. In addition, template files can include Civil 3D drawing information in either the Settings tree (including Civil 3D settings, object styles, label styles, tables, description keys, and point import\export formats), or the Prospector tree (including Civil 3D objects such as point group and surface definitions).Unit 1 - Lesson 1: Drawing Environment Civil 3D 2010 Student Workbook ▪4 Exercise 1: Navigate the Civil 3D Drawing Environment In this exercise, you navigate the
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