AutoCAD | Essentials PLUS
A virtual course led by an Autodesk Certified Instructor, covering the fundamental knowledge required to use AutoCAD for a range of design and drafting projects.
Description
AutoCAD | Essentials PLUS is an interactive two-day virtual course crafted for beginners aiming to build a solid foundation in AutoCAD for individual and group projects. Led by a Certified Autodesk Instructor, this course is designed for new users seeking to explore 2D design tools and workflows essential for producing professional drawings.
Throughout the course, you will explore AutoCAD’s user interface, learning how to create and modify drawings with precision and efficiency. You will begin by navigating the interface, customising workspaces, and managing different file types essential for project setup. You will work with key commands to produce accurate designs, such as drawing lines and polylines, using the coordinate system for precision, and organising your drawings with layers to streamline editing and project management. Essential modification tools like Move, Copy, and Trim will help you refine and adjust objects, while shortcut keys and dynamic input will enhance your drafting speed and accuracy. As the course progresses, you will delve into annotation tools to apply text, dimensions, and leaders to your designs, ensuring that you clearly communicate your design intent. Additionally, you will explore drawing sheet creation, manage external references, and understand how to use blocks to standardise and streamline your workflows.
By the end of the course, you will navigate AutoCAD with confidence and have a solid foundation to take on increasingly advanced design projects. These essential skills will empower you to work efficiently, consistently producing organised, clear, and professional deliverables, setting the stage for continued success as you grow as an AutoCAD user.
Learning Outcomes
During this course, you will explore the following topics:
- Module 1 – User Interface | Coordinate System | File Types: Explore how to navigate the AutoCAD interface with ease, customise workspaces to suit your specific needs, and manage a variety of file types that are crucial for effective project setup. You will learn how to switch between different views and files using the application menu and shortcuts. This module provides a solid foundation for optimising your workflow, ensuring you can handle multiple projects and file formats with confidence and efficiency.
- Module 2 – Shortcut Keys | Lines & Polylines | Model Space | Dynamic Input | Layers: Learn how to effectively use AutoCAD’s coordinate system to ensure drawing precision and accuracy in your designs. Practise creating and modifying lines and polylines in model space, and gain proficiency with shortcut keys and dynamic input to streamline drafting workflows and increase productivity. Understand how layers function in organising designs, allowing for efficient editing and project management.
- Module 3 – Modify Objects: Discover AutoCAD’s key modification tools, including Copy, Move, Offset, Fillet, Chamfer, Explode, Erase, Stretch, Scale, Array, and Trim. You will learn how to apply these powerful commands to adjust, reshape, and refine objects within your drawings, ensuring both precision and consistency in every aspect of your design. These tools will enable you to modify complex designs with confidence, enhancing the overall quality and accuracy of your work.
- Module 4 – Styles | Dimensions | Text | Leaders | Tables: Learn how to create and modify annotation styles, including dimensions, text, leaders, and tables to ensure clear communication of design intent. You will explore the differences between annotative and non-annotative objects, gaining a thorough understanding of how to scale your annotations appropriately for different views, layouts, and presentation formats. These skills will help you maintain consistency across all project documentation, regardless of the scale or complexity of the design.
- Module 5 – Layouts | Viewports | Paper vs Model Space | Scales: Practise creating and managing drawing layouts, adjusting viewports to control display scales, and deepening your understanding of the relationship between paper space and model space. You will also learn how to configure plot settings for ensure accurate output, whether you are preparing your drawings for printing or for digital sharing.
- Module 6 – External Links | Images | XRefs | PDFs: Explore how to embed, manage, and update external references (XRefs) such as images, PDFs, and other AutoCAD drawings to enhance your project workflows. You will learn how to effectively use these external files to collaborate with team members, ensuring that everyone works with the most up-to-date information.
- Module 7 – Blocks | Design Centre | Palettes: Learn how to create, manage, and organise blocks to reuse standardised elements efficiently across multiple projects, saving time and maintaining consistency in your designs. You will also explore AutoCAD’s powerful Design Centre and Palettes tools, which allow you to easily access and insert blocks, layers, and other content, streamlining your project workflows.
- Module 8 – Beyond Essentials: Explore advanced tools and techniques designed to further enhance your workflows, including template creation, workspace customisation, and a range of additional productivity tools that can significantly improve efficiency. This module will be covered if time permits, however, the Course Handbook provided for this course describes these topics in detail.
Courseware
Before the course, you will receive a Course Pack containing training notes and/or files that need to be downloaded prior to joining the training. Please note that our training sessions are not recorded to maintain the privacy of all participants.
This course also includes three months of complimentary access to course-related eLearning materials to further ensure your knowledge retention. Login details to the e-platform will be provided upon request following the training.
System Requirements
Participants joining this course virtually will need:
- AutoCAD '22 or higher, or AutoCAD LT '22 or higher installed on their computer (required). We strongly recommend that participants join using the most recent version of the software. Please contact us if you need to purchase a software licence.
- The latest Zoom version installed on their computer (required).
- A stable internet connection with a minimum download speed of 10 Mbps (required).
- A secondary screen to follow instructions shared by the course instructor during training, along with a mouse for easy software navigation (recommended).
- A headset to ensure clear communication with the instructor, and preferably a microphone and webcam for interactive conversations (recommended).
Certification
ARKANCE, an Authorized Autodesk Training Center, delivers high-quality training for Autodesk software users. Upon successful completion of the course, participants will receive an official ARKANCE Certificate of Completion, demonstrating their commitment to ongoing professional development.
Additionally, participants are encouraged to register their attendance with Autodesk Education to receive a Certificate of Completion from Autodesk. To obtain this certificate, participants must follow the steps provided in the confirmation email sent after registration and submit a post-training feedback survey within 60 days of completing the course.
Prerequisites
To join the course, participants will need basic computer skills and a solid understanding of drafting concepts. No prior experience with AutoCAD is required, but exploring the user interface beforehand is recommended.
Additional Information
Our Core Curriculum Series courses are regularly scheduled and delivered virtually by Autodesk Certified Instructors, Bluebeam Certified Instructors and experienced Subject Matter Experts. These sessions are priced per ticket and open to the public, meaning you will attend alongside other registrants.
Alternatively, all our courses can be organised privately for your team, following either a standard agenda or a customised curriculum tailored to your specific requirements. Private training sessions are available both virtually and in-person.