Posted by RobertAlexander on Aug 02, 2019; 1:25am
URL: https://forum.librecad.org/Quick-start-guide-No-mucking-about-work-in-progress-tp5717616.html

Hello!

Learned Technical drawing at high school back in the '80's. Have some idea of "Autocad" style drawing.

( Commands do things, you create a list of commands, drawing is output of all the commands on paper )

Now I know that there is lots of good information buried here on this forum. I get that.
However searching through the thing looking for relevant info's is tedious, done it on other forums and it's a pita.
 So I am going to try to start from scratch and make a primer.
( It's not for the professionals or highly proficient cad educated etc )



lets try some basics: Open Libre CAD and follow my instruction:

Draw circle:
Goto: Tools, circle, center point ( left click on the "center,point" button )
Left Click on your drawing sheet anywhere. ( sets a point )
key: 20 ( type 2 then 0 )
key : Enter ( press enter key )

You now have a circle with a 20 radius at the point you selected!!! Yey!

Lets try a variation.

Draw circle.
Goto: Tools, circle, center point ( left click on the "center,point" button )
Left Click  on your drawing sheet anywhere. ( sets a point )
Move mouse pointer away from the centre. ( circle radius is stuck to pointer)
Left click on drawing sheet. ( will set the radius at that point )

You now have a circle with n radius. whoo!

Abort circle:
Goto: Tools, circle, center point ( left click on the "center,point" button )
Left Click  on your drawing sheet anywhere. ( sets a point )
Move mouse pointer away from the centre. ( circle radius is stuck to pointer)
Press the ESC key. ( circle will disappear )

The circle you were creating has disappeared. oooh...


If you right click on the drawing sheet while drawing the circle it will do the same
as the ESC key.
However if you right click again after doing this it will unselect the circle drawing command. ( you selected it when you pressed the "center,point" button )

The left click and right click can be hard to understand if you start randomly start clicking away.


What did we learn today?

Select a command in the tool bar ( Circle: "center,point" ) .
Left click to set center.
Key in radius and key enter to finish command.
OR Move mouse pointer to set radius, left click to finish command.
Key esc  to cancel.
OR Right click to cancel.
Extra right click unselects command.

This simple lesson gets you drawing immediately and drills you on some of the
underlying structure of the CAD way.

and there is a lot to learn so we may as well "learn on the job"!

Lets get drawing!

Next up:  the dreaded "snaps" ...

RobertAlexander. NZ Aug 2019

PS. I am refining this post on the fly. Essentially I want it to include wording etc that will be used    
throughout. i.e Key: means to press a key on your keyboard: Key: enter, key: esc etc.      
and buttons are in the software. ie. press the "centre, point" button on the toolbar/menu ...  
Actually could just use "key" and "Press" as the actions associated with the keyboard and command toolbar/menus respectively. Is this too terse?