What’s New in the AutoCAD® 2020 3D Drawing and Modeling - Learning Guide

We, here at ASCENT, are always looking for feedback from both the users and instructors of our courses. After a careful analysis of the feedback, we incorporate the changes to the guides to make them better, accurate, and relevant to the latest industry trends. I am excited to tell you about the changes that I included in the AutoCAD® 2020 3D Drawing and Modeling learning guide, that is now available from ASCENT. This year I focused on making the practices effective and straightforward by adding more steps, figures, labels and captions. I added figures to display what to expect after a command is performed. I also modified the content and reworded or changed the Chapter Review Questions such that the questions are relevant to what is being taught in the content.

The biggest change to the guide can be noticed in the practices. Additional steps along with relevant figures have been added to explain the process better. These additions can be seen throughout the learning guide.  As an example, as to what type of changes and clarifications are added to the practices, see the following:

Practice 2d – Mechanical Project – Machine Part:

Steps and hints along with relevant figures have been added. This removes ambiguity and confusion while doing the practice. For example, to explain where to add the cylinders and what to expect after you Boolean them from the box, the following steps and figures have been added.

• Use SW Isometric view and XRay visual style to display the where the cylinders were added, as shown in Figure.
• On the Solid tab>Boolean panel, click (Subtract) and remove the cylinders from the box, to get the solid shown in the Figure.

Practice 3b – UCS X, Y, Z commands:

Steps and labelled figures have been added to explain how to use the different UCS commands.

• On the Home tab>Coordinates panel, click (UCS, Face). At the Select face of solid, surface, or mesh prompt, move the cursor over the bottom edge of the face of the extruded polyline that is facing towards you. Verify that the X axis is parallel to the bottom edge of the face, as shown in the Figure. Click to place the UCS on the face. Press <Enter>.

• Draw the closed polyline and circle shown in Figure, with the lower left corner of the polyline touching the lower left corner of the object’s face.

Hint: To draw the arc, use the Arc option of Pline command with a diameter of 3.0 (as shown in the Figure). Select the Line option of the Pline command to draw the rest of the lines.

Practice 4f – Creating Revolved Solids:

Steps and labelled figures have been added to explain how to use create a revolve.

• In the Solid tab>Solid panel, click (Revolve). Select the green polyline as the object to revolve, as shown in Figure, and press <Enter>.

• Snap to the center of the cyan ring for the start point of the axis of revolution. Snap to the center of the red object (as shown in Figure) for the end point of the axis.

Practice 5b – Aligning Objects in 3D: 

Bulleted sub steps have been added to further explain the process.

• On the Home tab>expanded Modify panel, click (Align). Select the gray cylinder and press <Enter>.
• For the first source and destination points, use the left side quadrant point of the cylinder and top corner endpoint of the cube, as shown in Figure.
• For the second source and destination points, use the right side quadrant point of the cylinder and bottom corner endpoint of the cube, as shown in Figure.
• For the third source and destination points, use the center of the cylinder and midpoint of the cube, as shown in Figure.
• The cylinder and the cube are placed as shown in Figure.
• On the Home tab> Modify panel, click (3D Align) and align the object that you created in Step 3 to the unfinished bracket, as shown in Figure . (Hint: Select the object (union) and use two source points on this object as shown in Figure. Select three destination points on the unfinished bracket as shown in Figure. Select the last two destination points along the respective Polar Tracking lines.

Conclusion

Throughout the guide, I added steps and labelled figures to explain how to perform a certain command in the practice. I also added figures to show the expected results once that command is completed. All the practice are improved with clear instructions. Out of those, I showed parts of few practices as examples here in the post.  Further, I tweaked the content and reworded or changed the Chapter Review Questions to remove ambiguity and make the questions relevant to the content. The learning guide AutoCAD® 2020 3D Drawing and Modeling is sure to keep your teaching and learning experience seamless and accurate.

About the Author

Learning Content Developer<br><br>Renu has worked with Autodesk products for the past 20 years with a main focus on design visualization software. Renu holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering and started her career as an Instructional Designer/Author where she co-authored a number of Autodesk 3ds Max and AutoCAD books, some of which were translated into other languages for a wide audience reach. In her next role as a Technical Specialist at a 3D visualization company, Renu used 3ds Max in real-world scenarios on a daily basis. There, she developed customized 3D web planner solutions to create specialized 3D models with photorealistic texturing and lighting to produce high quality renderings.

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