How to Make Solids in Autocad 2006
AutoCAD 2006 is a program for designing precisely-measured structures such as buildings and industrial machinery. Besides its 2D functions are tools for making virtual 3D objects, or solids. Its simplest objects, called primitives, are boxes, spheres, toruses (donuts), and related geometry. By assembling and shaping these primitives, AutoCAD users can create new solids of arbitrary complexity and detail. Developing proficiency in solid modeling involves a number of component skills, including navigation of 3D space, and basic transformations of solids, such as movement, scaling and rotation.
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Instructions
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Open AutoCAD and begin creating a 2D shape that you'll transform into a solid: Enter "line" at the command prompt.
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Click anywhere in the viewport and drag to create the first line segment. Click and drag again to make a second segment.
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Left-click the mouse to complete the second segment, then right-click and select "close" to produce the closed shape of a triangle.
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Click and drag any of the triangle's edges to illustrate a problem you'll solve shortly: The edge separates from the other edges, breaking the triangle. Solving this problem now will show you what to do when encountering the problem in future solid modeling projects.
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Press "Control-Z" to restore the triangle, then click any edge to select the triangle. Enter "pedit" at the command prompt. "Pedit" stands for "polyline edit," a command used to create a shape that you can make a solid from.
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Press "Enter" at the prompt, then select "Join" from the menu that appears.
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Click and drag a rectangular selection region around the complete triangle, then click to end the selection. Press "Enter" to join all edges to the single polyline shape.
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Click and drag any edge again, noticing that the complete triangle now moves. This indicates the shape is ready to be converted to a solid.
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Change the viewpoint to a 3D view. Enter "orbit" at the command prompt, then click and drag and drag slightly up and left until you can clearly see each axis of the "XYZ" tripod in the lower left corner of the screen. This action changes your viewpoint from directly above the triangle to a position slightly behind and still above it.
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Click the triangle to select it, then enter "extrude" at the command prompt. Notice that the triangle has expanded into 3D space. "Extrusion" means to expand or stretch a 2D shape into a 3D object.
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Click to end the extrusion and view your completed solid.
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References
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