by Mark Middlebrook
AutoCAD LT
®
2005
FOR
DUMmIES
‰
class="bi x0 y8 w1 h9"
AutoCAD LT
®
2005
FOR
DUMmIES
‰
class="bi x0 y8 w1 h9"
by Mark Middlebrook
AutoCAD LT
®
2005
FOR
DUMmIES
‰
AutoCAD LT
®
2005 For Dummies
®
Published by
Wiley Publishing, Inc.
111 River Street
Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774
Copyright © 2004 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

MATION THE ORGANIZATION OR WEBSITE MAY PROVIDE OR RECOMMENDATIONS IT MAY MAKE.
FURTHER, READERS SHOULD BE AWARE THAT INTERNET WEBSITES LISTED IN THIS WORK MAY HAVE
CHANGED OR DISAPPEARED BETWEEN WHEN THIS WORK WAS WRITTEN AND WHEN IT IS READ.
For general information on our other products and services or to obtain technical support, please contact
our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 800-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax
317-572-4002.
Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may
not be available in electronic books.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2004104564
ISBN: 0-7645-7280-6
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
1O/QZ/QX/QU/IN
About the Author
Mark Middlebrook used to be an engineer but gave it up when he discovered
that he couldn’t handle a real job. He is now principal of Daedalus Consulting,
an independent CAD and computer consulting company in Oakland, California.
(In case you wondered, Daedalus was the guy in ancient Greek legend who built
the labyrinth on Crete. Mark named his company after Daedalus before he real-
ized that few of his clients would be able to pronounce it and even fewer spell
it.) Mark is also a contributing editor for CADALYST magazine and Webmaster
of
markcad.com. When he’s not busy being a cad, Mark sells and writes about
wine for Paul Marcus Wines in Oakland. He also teaches literature and philoso-
phy classes at St. Mary’s College of California — hence “Daedalus.” AutoCAD LT
2005 For Dummies is his second book on AutoCAD LT and his seventh on the
AutoCAD family of programs.

Dedication
To the engineers at Middlebrook + Louie, and especially to Hardip Pannu,

Media Development Manager:
Laura VanWinkle
Media Development Supervisor:
Richard Graves
Editorial Assistant: Amanda Foxworth
Cartoons: Rich Tennant
(
www.the5thwave.com)
Production
Project Coordinator: Courtney MacIntyre
Layout and Graphics: Andrea Dahl,
Denny Hager, Joyce Haughey,
Stephanie D. Jumper, Lynsey Osborn,
Heather Ryan
Proofreaders: Laura Albert, Andy Hollandbeck,
Dwight Ramsey, TECHBOOKS Production
Services
Indexer: TECHBOOKS Production Services
Publishing and Editorial for Technology Dummies
Richard Swadley, Vice President and Executive Group Publisher
Andy Cummings, Vice President and Publisher
Mary Bednarek, Executive Editorial Director
Mary C. Corder, Editorial Director
Publishing for Consumer Dummies
Diane Graves Steele, Vice President and Publisher
Joyce Pepple, Acquisitions Director
Composition Services
Gerry Fahey, Vice President of Production Services
Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services
Contents at a Glance

Who Are — and Aren’t — You? 2
How This Book Is Organized 2
Part I: Lighting Up LT 3
Part II: Geometry Rules 3
Part III: Annotation for Communication 3
Part IV: Collaboration Makes the Drawings Go ’Round 4
Part V: The Part of Tens 4
Icons Used in This Book 4
A Few Conventions — Just in Case 5
Where to Go from Here 6
Part I: Lighting Up LT 7
Chapter 1: Why Be LT? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9
The LT Difference 9
Letting the CAD Out of the Bag 11
The Importance of Being DWG 13
Why Workalike Works 15
Chapter 2: AutoCAD LT 2005 Screen Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17
AutoCAD LT Does Windows — Sort Of 17
Passing the LT Screen Test 18
Standard Windows fare 18
Looking for Mr. Status Bar 23
Take an order: The command line area 25
Main course: The drawing area 30
A Palette Cleanser 33
Under the LT Hood 35
Revving up with system variables 35
The dialog box connection 37
Fun with F1 38
Chapter 3: Before You Start Drawing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41
Drawing and Editing with LT 41

Defending your border 102
All system variables go 102
Starting with a Template 103
Master Model Space 106
Setting your units 106
Telling your drawing its limits 107
Making the drawing area snap-py (and grid-dy) 109
Setting linetype and dimension scales 111
Entering drawing properties 113
A Layout Later? 114
Creating a layout 115
Copying and changing layouts 118
Where’s my tab? 119
Making Your Own Templates 120
AutoCAD LT 2005 For Dummies
xiv
Chapter 6: Draw Once . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .123
Introducing the LT Drawing Commands 124
The Straight Story: Lines, Polylines, and Polygons 126
Line it up 126
Connect the lines with polyline 128
Square off with rectangle 134
The many sides of polygon 134
Carving Curves: Circles, Arcs, and Others 136
A perfect circle 137
Arc-y-ology 138
Orbit with ellipse 141
Spline: The sketchy, sinuous curve 142
Donuts: Plain and jelly-filled 144
Revision clouds on the horizon 145

Chapter 9: Get Specific with Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .203
Getting Ready to Write 204
Simply stylish text 204
Taking your text to new heights 207
One line or two? 210
Your text will be justified 211
Using the Same Old Line 211
Saying More in Multiline Text 213
Making it with mText 214
mText dons a mask 217
Keeping tabs (and indents) on your mText 218
Modifying mText 220
Setting the Text Table 220
Tables have style, too 220
Creating and editing tables 222
Checking Out Your Spelling 224
Chapter 10: Dimension This! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .227
Discovering New Dimensions 229
Anatomy of a dimension 229
A field guide to dimensions 230
Dimension associativity 231
Pulling out your dimension tools 232
Doing Dimensions with Style(s) 233
Borrowing existing dimension styles 233
Creating and managing dimension styles 234
Adjusting style settings 237
Drawing Dimensions 241
Lining up some linear dimensions 241
Drawing other kinds of dimensions 243
Trans-spatial dimensioning 244

Plotting in color 281
It’s a (Page) Setup! 283
Continuing the Plot Dialog 284
Troubles with Plotting 287
Part IV: Collaboration Makes
the Drawings Go ’Round 289
Chapter 13: Be a Block-Head (And an Xref-Man) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .291
Rocking with Blocks 292
Creating block definitions 293
Inserting blocks 297
Attributes: Fill-in-the-blank blocks 299
Exploding blocks 304
Going External 305
Becoming attached to your xrefs 306
Layer-palooza 307
Creating and editing an external reference file 308
Forging an xref path 308
Managing xrefs 309
Blocks, Xrefs, and Drawing Organization 310
LT Is No Raster Master 311
xvii
Table of Contents
Chapter 14: CAD Standards Rule . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .313
Why CAD Standards? 314
Which CAD Standards? 315
What Needs to Be Standardized? 317
Plotting 317
Layers 318
Other stuff 319
Tools to Make Standards Easier 320

Chapter 17: Ten Ways to Swap Drawing Data with Other
People and Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .345
DWG 347
DXF 348
DWF 348
PDF 348
WMF 349
BMP, JPEG, TIFF, and Other Raster Formats 350
Windows Clipboard 351
OLE 351
Screen Capture 353
TXT and RTF 354
Chapter 18: Ten Ways to Work in an AutoCAD World . . . . . . . . . . . . .355
DWG Is Your Friend 355
AutoCAD Users Are Your Friends 355
A Pox on Proxies 356
Forget Sheet Sets 356
Raster Disaster 356
Xclip Exemption 357
From Flatland to 3D 357
The Customization Limitation 357
Other Differences 358
Trading Up (or Trading Down!) 358
Index 359
xix
Table of Contents
AutoCAD LT 2005 For Dummies
xx
Introduction
A

Unlike many other For Dummies books, this one does tell you to consult the
official software documentation sometimes. AutoCAD LT is just too big and
complicated for a single book to attempt to describe it completely.
This book focuses on AutoCAD LT 2005. I do occasionally mention differences
with previous versions, going back to the highly popular AutoCAD Release 14
and AutoCAD LT 97, so that everyone has some context and upgraders can
more readily understand the differences. (Chapter 1 includes a rundown of
the version history of AutoCAD and LT.) I also mention the important differ-
ences between full AutoCAD LT and AutoCAD, so that you know what you’re
missing.
Who Are — and Aren’t — You?
Together, AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT have a large, loyal, and dedicated group
of longtime users. (Autodesk claims to have sold more copies of AutoCAD LT
than of AutoCAD, as of a few years ago.) This book is not for the sort of people
who have been using AutoCAD LT for a decade, who plan their vacation time
around Autodesk University, or who consider 1,000-page-plus technical tomes
about AutoCAD as pleasure reading. This book is for people who want to get
going quickly with AutoCAD LT, but who also know the importance of develop-
ing proper CAD techniques from the beginning.
However, you do need to have some idea of how to use your computer system
before tackling AutoCAD LT — and this book. You need to have a computer
system with LT (preferably the 2005 version). A printer or plotter and a con-
nection to the Internet are big helps, too.
You also need to know how to use Windows to copy and delete files, create
a folder, and find a file. You need to know how to use a mouse to select (high-
light) or to choose (activate) commands, how to close a window, and how
to minimize and maximize windows. Make sure that you’re familiar with the
basics of your operating system before you start with AutoCAD LT.
How This Book Is Organized
If you saw the impressive and apparently random piles of stuff cluttering my

After the drawing setup preamble, the bulk of this part covers the trio of
activities that you probably spend most of your time in AutoCAD LT doing:
drawing objects, editing them, and zooming and panning to see them better
on-screen. These are the things that you do in order to create the geometry —
that is, the CAD representations of the objects in the real world that you’re
designing. By the end of Part II, you will be pretty good at geometry, even if
your ninth grade math teacher told you otherwise.
Part III: Annotation for Communication
CAD drawings do not live on lines alone — most of them require quite a bit of
text, dimensioning, and hatching in order to make the design intent clear to
the poor chump who has to build your amazing creation. (Whoever said “a
3
Introduction