Tutorial on drawing trains incrementally

However, clicking on the small arrow symbol will reduce the dialog window to an icon which is placed as a strip along the right side of the screen.

Polar Tracking in AutoCAD

Discover how to boost your AutoCAD skills by learning to use the Line tool with Polar Tracking switched on. This feature allows for more efficient drawing by enabling you to snap to specific angles with the cursor instead of manually inputting them into the command line.

• The tutorial teaches how to use Polar Tracking with the Line Command in AutoCAD. Polar Tracking allows users to snap to specific angles with the cursor instead of typing the angles into the command line, making drawing faster and easier.
• The Polar Tracking feature can be activated from the Status bar in the AutoCAD interface.
• Users can select incremental angles such as 45, 90, 135, and 180 from the drop-down menu that opens to the right of the Polar Tracking icon.
• Incremental angles are presets that divide evenly into a 360° circle. Additional custom tracking angles can be added through the Tracking Settings at the bottom of the menu.
• The tutorial provides a step-by-step guide to creating a drawing using the Line Command and Polar Tracking, starting from a point of 0,0 and building up to a complex shape.
• After completion, the tutorial instructs users to save their work as a .dwg file, ready for further use or editing in future exercises.

Explore how to use the Line tool with Polar Tracking switched on. When using any drawing command, Polar Tracking allows you to snap to specific angles with the cursor instead of typing the angles into the command line. This can make your drawing much faster and easier.

This exercise is excerpted from Noble Desktop’s past AutoCAD training materials and is compatible with Photoshop updates through 2020. To learn current skills in AutoCAD, check out AutoCAD Bootcamp and AutoCAD classes in NYC and live online.

Note: These materials are provided to give prospective students a sense of how we structure our class exercises and supplementary materials. During the course, you will get access to the accompanying class files, live instructor demonstrations, and hands-on instruction.

Topics covered in this AutoCAD tutorial:

Using Polar Tracking with the Line Command

Exercise Overview

In this exercise, you’ll learn how to use the Line tool with Polar Tracking switched on. When using any drawing command, Polar Tracking allows you to snap to specific angles with the cursor instead of typing the angles into the command line. This can make your drawing much faster and easier!

1. In AutoCAD, close any files you have open.
2. From the Start tab, click on the large Start Drawing button to create a new drawing.
3. In the bottom right Status bar, click on Polar Trackingto switch it on (so it’s blue).
4. To the right of the Polar Tracking icon click the arrowand select the incremental angle 45, 90, 135, 180 from the menu that opens. NOTE: Incremental angles are preset angles that can be divided evenly into a 360° circle. You can add additional custom tracking angles by clicking on Tracking Settings at the bottom of the menu.
5. Click on the Line tool to start the Line Command.
6. Type in a first point of 0,0 and press Enter.
7. Move the cursor upwards and snap to the green vertical 90° Polar Tracking line. When you snap to a Polar angle, the distance and angle will appear in a gray box: USE ACTUAL SCREENSHOT
8. Type in a distance of 10 and press Enter to complete the first line segment. As you’ll continue to see throughout the exercises, using Polar Tracking to determine the angle means that you do not need to press the Tab key and enter the angle manually, which can save you a lot of time.
9. For the next line segment, move the cursor up and to the right until it snaps to the 45° green Polar Tracking line.
10. Type in a distance of 10 and press Enter to complete the second line segment.
11. For the third line segment, move the mouse to the right to snap to the 0° horizontal angle, then enter a distance of 20 and press Enter.
12. Move the cursor downwards for the next line segment, snap to 90° and enter a distance of 10.
13. For the next line segment, snap to 135° and enter 10 for the distance.
14. To complete the last bottom horizontal line segment, click on the Close option in the command line.
15. Nice work! Save the file by going to File > Save As and navigating into Class Files > AutoCAD Class.
16. Name the file polar line drawing.dwg and click Save. Keep the file open as we’ll continue to work on it in the next exercise.

What’s in the Work Area

The Canvas: The canvas is all the space inside the Inkscape window available for you to draw on. It includes the area that houses the artwork you’re working on and the area outside the page boundary.

The Page: The page, also called the artboard, is part of the canvas. It is bounded by solid lines and represents the region containing printable artwork. By default, the artboard is the same size as a 210 mm × 297 mm sheet of A4 paper, but you can enlarge it (for example, up to 11 in. × 17 in. and larger) or reduced to card-size.

The Scratch Area: The scratch area is all the area outside of the page boundaries. You can use this space for storing pieces of imagery that you can use later in your artwork, trying out experiments, doodling, and more.

Viewing Your Artwork

When you first open a file, Inkscape displays it in Normal view mode. In this mode, you can see how the artwork will print. If you are working on an image that is really large or complex, you might prefer to view the work in Outline mode. You will see only the outlines of individual objects. Objects that are partially or totally hidden behind others will be visible as outlines, thus allowing you to manipulate them more easily. You also give Inkscape a break because it doesn’t have to redraw the screen every time you make a change.

1. Choose View >Display mode >Outline. You now see only the outlines of objects. Use this view mode to find objects that are not visible in Normal mode.
2. Now choose View >Display mode >Normal. The image returns to its previous color version.
3. Choose View >Color display mode >Grayscale. Colors are transformed to their grayscale equivalents. Use Grayscale as a way of previewing your work before printing it using a laserjet printer or displaying it using a non-color medium.

Getting Acquainted with the Toolbox

The Inkscape toolbox contains selection tools, drawing, painting, and erasing tools, and more tools whose uses you’ll find more about as you go through these tutorials. You make a tool active by either clicking on it or using a shortcut key (also called a or Hot Key) combination as shown below.

The Mesh, Dropper, and Connector tools are available when you click on the double-arrow button at the bottom of the toolbox.

1. You select a tool by either clicking on its icon in the toolbox or by pressing the tool’s keyboard shortcut key combination (Hot Key combination). For example, you press F3 to select the Zoom in or out tool. Selected tools stay active until you choose a different tool.
2. If you can’t remember the shortcut key for a tool, you can position the cursor over that tool’s icon and a tooltip will appear showing you the tool’s name and shortcut key. The Inkscape manual also contains a list of all the shortcut keys. You’ll learn about the Inkscape manual later in this tutorial.

For the sake of easy reading, I will call tools by a shortened name. For example:

• Select and transform objects tool — Select tool
• Edit paths by nodes tool — Node tool
• Zoom in or out tool — Zoom tool
• and so on …

Please leverage the explanation if you’d like

This is a bit of the story I told during my XP Day 2007 talk Embrace Uncertainty. It’s rare when you get to quote Johnny Rotten, Roger Waters, Paul Simon, Pete Townsend, John Lennon, and the Spice Girls in the same talk.

Feel free to use the examples using a creative commons license. Let people know you borrowed them from me.

If you’d just like the Mona Lisa slides, you can grab those here.

The general ideas here are written in a StickyMinds.com article with a little less ranting. You might share that version with your boss.

Stay tuned

If you want to get more about specific strategies for iterating sensibly in Agile development, please visit me at a tutorial I’ll be teaching at a conference. Also pay attention to this site and blog as I resurrect my long overdue book from it’s current purgatory.

Finally, if you’ve read this blog in ThoughtBlogs (and my web analytics tell me most of you do) this may be the last time my blog appears there. Please subscribe directly, or look for me on ThoughtWorks alumni blogs. I’ve had a great time at ThoughtWorks for the last several years, but it’s time to set out on my own.

Thanks for reading.

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