Brand New to Autocad

[maxcain]

Hello all I have 2004 and I am brand new never used it before,can anyone recommend any books that I can get at the bookstore that will get me going,also if I apply myself everyday how long till I can get a job?

[David Bethel]

Welcome to the world of LINEs ARCs and CIRCLEs

I've never meet anyone who is proficient in all aspects of AutoCAD, so a good thing to do is to determine what discipline of CAD you want to to become familiar with. There are quite a few to choose from:

Architectural designs
Industrial designs
Modeling
Parameterics
Mapping
Civil engineering

and the list goes on.

A good book is any that you can learn from.

-David

[f700es]

Hello all I have 2004 and I am brand new never used it before,can anyone recommend any books that I can get at the bookstore that will get me going,also if I apply myself everyday how long till I can get a job?

Some good advice, figure which discipline you are interested in (Arch, mech, civil, whatever) and take a class at a local community college, tech school. Class are not too expensive and will give you a running start.

[CADTutor]

Different books work for different people - check out your local bookshop. However, I have found that many of my students like Ellen Finklestein's book, The AutoCAD Bible. There is a short review of it here (http://www.cadtutor.net/acad/general/resource/resource.html) along with links to some good online tutorials.

Of course, you could do worse that take a look at the tutorials at CADTutor.net (http://www.cadtutor.net/index.html). Maybe start with Drawing Objects (http://www.cadtutor.net/acad/acad2ki/draw/draw.html). :)

[Paul Sweet]

AutoCAD 2004 & AutoCAD LT 2004, by David Frey, published by Sybex, helped me. This website, and the tutorials on it, has also been very helpful. I had previous experience with other CADD programs, so it was largely a matter of getting used to new terminology, and doing similar things differently than I was used to.

[Barry Clark]

Funny enough, I actually got what I needed from the AutoDesk Publishing books.

I believe the book is called "The Problem Solving (solver's?) Approach" or something like that.

[Flores]

There are some good FREE ACAD tutorials to be found on the web, such as:
http://www.cadtutor.net/acad/index.html
and
http://www.caddigest.com/subjects/autocad/tutorials/index.htm
But if you want a hard-copy that you can hold in your hands, you might want to check out a local community college that teaches ACAD. For one, there bookstore will be able to recommend a book for the intro/beginners class. Secondly, many students sell there books at the end of a semester, and post it on a bulletin board there to sell it for 20%-40% off.

This is the last book I used:
http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072528621/ and it was pretty straight forward. www.amazon.com has used books also, but you may have to pay for shipping.

Flores

[Pringals]

The book I have referred to since acad 2000 came out, is "Inside Autocad 2000". It's a number 1 best seller and even though I am using Autocad 2005 now-a-days, I still refer to it now and then. ... such as today, I needed to refresh my memory on creating custom line styles since it's been a year since I created them for my company.

I haven't looked into any other books. This book and/or a quick google search have helped me with any conflict or question I've had.

Good Luck


Brian