Precision Tools Basics

Drawing elements precisely refers to using precision techniques and tools to specify points and distances with as much exactness as the program allows. Luckily, AutoCAD provides a comprehensive package of tools for this task. In AutoCAD, a lack of precision makes editing, hatching, and dimensioning tasks much more difficult and time consuming. Controlling your precision can be a time saver as long as you keep these facts in mind

• Small errors in precision in the early stages of creating or editing a drawing often significantly affect productivity and precision later.
• CAD drawings are often used for much more than giving pictures to someone. If the drawings have been properly created, they can also be queried for factors such as size, area, and quantity.
• Drawings may guide manufacturing and construction projects; drawing data may drive automatic manufacturing machinery. Huge amounts of money, and even lives, can ride on a drawing’s precision.

Technical drawing tools are the tools used for technical drawing, including, and not limited to: pens, rulers, compasses, protractors, and drawing utilities. Drawing tools may be used for measurement and layout of drawings, or to improve the consistency and speed of creation of standard drawing elements. The tools used for manual technical drawing have been displaced in use by the advent of the personal computer and its common utilization as the main tool in computer-aided drawing, draughting and design, CADD.

The default work area is roughly 16’×9’ at full scale, given a decimal measurement system in which 1 unit equals 1 inch. Metric users will find that the default area is roughly 550 mm × 300 mm, in which 1 unit equals 1 mm.