I’m taking my first AutoCAD course from George Brown College. It’s distance education; so I don’t have to do the epic trek from my work in the far west to the east side of downtown on a weeknight. As course materials, I got two DVDs containing videos and other materials. And I have email access to the instructor.
This first course looks like it’s going to be fairly easy. There are three more for the basic certificate. They’re ‘continuous intake’, menaing you start when you want and finish as fast as you want. (You have to finish within 120 days of starting, though.)
When I installed Windows on my Macbook Pro in January, it was for connecting to work. This came later. It’s a happy coincidence that the video card in my computer is specifically listed on AutoCAD’s site as being supported for 3D graphics; I hadn’t planned this explicitly, even though I was aware of the possibility.
I’m going to replace the hard drive with a bigger one, though; 120 gigs is too small now.
Cool. Are you dual-booting into windows to run AutoCAD, or are you running a virtual PC? Hows the performance? Our office has been considering the purchase of a new laptop to replace the ageing boat anchor we currently have and the possibility of getting a Macbook has come up. I’d love to fool around with one, but it’s absolutely critical that the new machine can run ACAD smoothly.
Also consider more RAM. ACAD is an absolute memory hog, so get at least 2 gig if you can manage it.
I’ve been using ACAD almost daily for several years now (structural and architectural drafting) and I’m still learning new things. The depth and power of the program is amazing. With our recent upgrade to 2008, I’ve been having a blast creating dynamic blocks. If you’re planning to get into house design, consider looking into Architectural Desktop which is ACAD with a large number of design tools added-on.
Both. I have a Boot Camp partition with Windows installed on it. I can boot into that natively by choosing it at startup, or I can boot into Mac OS X and run it in a virtual machine under Fusion. So far, it’s taking forever to install. I’m going outside to look at the moon.
Get a MacBook Pro. It has a separate video card. My machine has a Radeon X1600 which is specifically supported by AutoCAD.
It just finished installing. Man, does that take a long time… since I was running Windows in a VM, it profiled the VM’s video card and went ‘eeeh… no 3D here…’ I’m sure it will be a lot happier running natively.
I have 2 gigs; I might max out the machine and get three. I definitely need more hard drive space.
I’m now posting from Windows. AutoCAD seems a lot happier in Windows running natively. For a workstation, Hodge, I’d recommend a Mac Pro if you were going to get a Mac. I’m not certtain that that would be the best, though. More exploration is needed.
Just in the beginning of the first beginner lesson, I was watching the video as the instructor showed examples of the different ways to get a circle, for example, and I was going, “I’ve been trying to do that in Illustrator for years!”
One of the unsung virtues of AutoCAD is that there are several ways to accomplish things. I’ve heard that it’s built that way so that there is no “one” way to do things - what’s intuitive for me may not be intuitive for you - end result is, everyone is more productive.
Unfortunately, it can also lead to a lot of confusion for beginners.
I definitely recommend learning learning the keyboard shortcuts for as many commands as possible. It will greatly increase your productivity when you’re not always searching for buttons or dropdown menu commands
That assembly is awesome. Completely alien landscape to me.
The best advice I ever got on AutoCAD was “Use the mouse as little as possible”.
Once you really begin to get into using the keyboard you’ll be shocked at how much more productive you can be.
Of course it’s been 8 years since I’ve even touched AutoCAD so YMMV.
I’m taking a Design Graphics course for my B.Eng., and we are using AutoCAD. We aren’t getting much “how to use it” teaching, other than the very basics, but I am very much enjoying it. The work you guys have posted is really cool.
I’m going to have to use it to design a staircase for an “Art Museum” of undetermined description. I’m thinking I’ll go with simple and functional, and incorporate rise and run recommended for elderly/disabled people, and child hand rails, etc. Go for a safety-first/max usability approach, because really, the only people who go to museums are kids on school trips and retirees (only somewhat kidding!)
AutoDesk provided us with a 14-month free use of Civil-3D Land Desktop Companion, though we are really only using the basic Classic AutoCAD functions, since that’s what the computers at school have. They are all the 2008 versions, too.
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