Drawing off of a surface

[Matthew Rawls]

I am accustome to solid works and now in autocad I am haveing a horrible time getting off of the inital plane when drawing 3d strutures.

So my question is how do I insert a new plane to draw on or how can I draw off a objects surface.

[JD Mather]

UCS F1, You might be more comfortable if you can get Autodesk Inventor as the equivalent of SolidWorks rather than trying to use AutoCAD.

[Matthew Rawls]

Thank you, I got the job done but its not pretty. i have a rough drawing of what i wanted, which for the moment is all i needed. But in the futur... near future, I will need an exact drawings with proper dimensions. Other than the tool that lets u rotate your drawing around on the axis of your choice. Is there a way to not move my drawing and just swtich to the Y Z plane ?

[Doove]

You would feel more at home with Inventor, which is also parametric and sketch / part file driven.

 

UCS control in autocad is not quite as intuitive as MCAD software.

 

Bring up your UCS toolbars, and investigate them, there are buttons to revolve around axes to get to yz etc.

 

There is also the UCS command which has an option to select a face.

 

Also check your help menu for the Dynamic UCS option, this may help you though it can be a bit of a pain.

 

You can create scripts etc, attach them to custom buttons or command aliases (assigning the command to a key) to rotate your UCS as well if you're really keen!

[ReMark]

I see by your profile that you have no choice as to what software you are using therefore you'll have to make the best of it as I don't think the firm you are interning with will be in any rush to run out and buy a license for Inventor.

 

I suggest you look at how the UCS (User Coordinate System) is managed and how one can align it in such a way as to make drawing on different planes easier.

 

If you have any questions then post them in the proper forum and we'll do our best to answer them and guide you through you transition to AutoCAD from Solidworks.