Mark Middlebrook's AutoCAD Books

• A new "quick tour" chapter that takes you through the four major components of CAD drafting: setting up a drawing, creating objects, editing objects, and plotting.

• A new table in the "Edit for Credit" chapter covering the commands on the Modify toolbar.

• Increased coverage of metric drafting. (Dave lives in Canada, so now we have a metric expert on the team!)

• Lots of new example drawings in the figures, taken from a broader range of real-world drawings.

• Coverage of the new dynamic input and dynamic block features in AutoCAD 2006.

• Some new jokes from Dave!

And as with all of the previous editions, this book is not just about how to run commands. Throughout the book, we emphasize real, practical techniques for creating technical drawings with AutoCAD.

In order to make room for the new "quick start" chapter, we've moved the 3D chapter that appeared in most previous editions onto the Web. You can read it here.

After talking to a number of users and folks at Autodesk, I found that the majority of LT users are using the software to create drawings from scatch - i.e., they're doing what most people do with AutoCAD. Thus, I reorganized the LT Dummies book to be more like the regular AutoCAD For Dummies book.

AutoCAD LT 2005 for Dummies lacks the 3D chapter from AutoCAD 2005 for Dummies and includes instead an introductory chapter that provides a primer on the major CAD drafting activities: drawing setup, creating objects, editing, and plotting. In addition, the book discusses major differences between LT and AutoCAD and gives a number of pointers on how to "play nice"" with co-workers and colleagues who use full AutoCAD.

• A new chapter covering the new AutoCAD 2005 sheet sets feature.

• Coverage of the excellent text improvements in this version of AutoCAD: text tables, automatically updating text fields, background masking, and new drafting symbols.

• A significantly updated plotting chapter to account for the Plot dialog box's streamlined, more manageable design.

• Description of the revised Layer Properties Manager dialog box and new status bar stuff.

• Some new jokes, some improved jokes, and fewer really dumb jokes!

• Coverage of the interface and command changes in AutoCAD 2004, including the new palettes, xref improvements, and mText tabs and indents.

• A new "Introduction to 3D" chapter that describes the concepts and commands required in order to create 3D models in AutoCAD.

• A new "CAD Standards Rule" chapter that introduces readers to the "why, what, and which" of CAD standards and then discusses the CAD standards checking and enforcement tools in AutoCAD 2004.

• A significantly updated "Drawing on the Internet" chapter that covers the new Reference Manager, PUBLISH, and drawing protection features.

• Streamlined humor and generally improved readability.

The improvements and changes in this edition include:

• More sensible use of AutoCAD default settings as the baseline throughout the book.

• Better coverage of object properties, CAD precision techniques, and editing.

• A new drafting example chapter early in the book that introduces you to real, honest-to-CADness, proper drafting practice - not just how to run commands.

• Better coverage of dimensioning, including the new geometry-driven associative dimensions and trans-spatial dimensions in AutoCAD 2002.

• A "Drawing on the Internet" chapter that provides real context and commentary - rather than hype - on AutoCAD's Internet-related features.

• Coverage of the interface changes since AutoCAD 2000, such as the Today window (including how to turn the damned thing off!).

• Coverage of text attributes in blocks, including the new attribute features in AutoCAD 2002.

• Lots of food and wine jokes.

In addition, most of the material applies equally well to AutoCAD 2000, AutoCAD 2000i, and the respective LT versions. Throughout the book, we've flagged features that are new in AutoCAD 2002 or 2000i. If you're using any of these versions (AutoCAD 2002, 2000i, 2000, or the respective LT versions), I recommend that you get AutoCAD 2002 for Dummies rather than either of the older Dummies books. The new book is better.(And I must confess that I get a larger percentage of royalties on this book!)

The big distinction between this book and AutoCAD 2000 for Dummies is not so much AutoCAD vs. AutoCAD LT -- the features of the two programs are virtually identical at the beginning-to-intermediate level we're addressing in these books. Instead, Bud and I aimed AutoCAD 2000 for Dummies at people who aspire to spend a lot of time using AutoCAD (or LT). We wrote AutoCAD LT 2000 for Dummies primarily for people who have no illusions about becoming full-time CAD drafters, but who want to work with the existing drawings and the drawing processes that are already in place in their companies or industries.

This is the only AutoCAD book I know of that tries to address directly the occasional user who wants to tap into drawings created by other people. The first major section of the book covers various ways of working with existing drawings (plotting, mark-up, light editing, drawing exchange, pasting drawings into Word documents, Internet stuff). We saved creating new drawings for the second major section. If you use the book, I'm interested to hear whether our organizational scheme works for you.

Bud wrote most of this book, and I went over all of the text with a fine-toothed comb. I also wrote the chapters on plotting and using the new Properties and AutoCAD DesignCenter windows.

Although we wrote the book way back in 1997 for AutoCAD Release 13, much of the information remains applicable to Release 14 and later versions. The book covers customization with macros, menus, toolbars, scripts, fonts, linetypes, and hatch patterns. It also includes primers on AutoLISP and Dialog Control Language (DCL).