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AutoCAD 2015 and AutoCAD LT 2015 Bible

The most comprehensive AutoCAD book around!

Create a custom UCS (User Coordinate System) in AutoCAD

An excellent (and old) feature of AutoCAD is that you can define your own coordinate system:

The location of 0,0 The direction of the X axis The direction of the Y axis

A custom UCS is a common aid for 3D drawing. For example, if you’re drawing a peaked roof of a house, it’s much […]

Switch to plan view when you change the UCS

When you create a new User Coordinate System (UCS) in AutoCAD, by default, your viewpoint doesn’t change. Here I used the 3 point option of the UCS command to create a new UCS.

Create a new UCS with the 3 point option

Sometimes, you may want to return to plan view in that new […]

How to rotate the crosshairs and other techniques for drawing at an angle

Need to create a drawing at an angle? AutoCAD offers several options.

Use polar tracking to guide you

Right-click the POLAR button on the Status bar and choose Settings or click its down arrow and choose Tracking Settings. Set the angles you want and click OK. For example, a 45° angle will display tracking guides […]

Use dynamic UCS to speed up 3D drawing

One of the awkward parts about 3D drawing is the fact that you need to constantly change the XY plane. In the past, the only way to do this was to create a new UCS using the UCS command.

Since 2007, however, you can use the dynamic UCS feature, which makes the process of […]