CADTutor

Learn AutoCAD with our Free Tutorials

Welcome to CADTutor

CADTutor provides the best free tutorials and articles for AutoCAD, 3ds Max and associated applications along with a friendly community forum. If you need to learn AutoCAD, or you want to be more productive, you're in the right place. See our tip of the day to start learning right now!

Free Tutorials and More…

The Tutorials section provides over 100 original tutorials for AutoCAD, 3ds Max and other design applications. Michael’s Corner is an archive of productivity articles that brings you the best AutoCAD tips and tricks. Our Forum is a lively community where AutoCAD users can ask questions and get answers. The Downloads area provides free AutoCAD blocks, free AutoLISP routines and free images.

Tutorials of the Moment

Recently viewed tutorials

CADTutor Tutorials

Our tutorials are comprehensive but straightforward introductions to AutoCAD and related software. They are designed to help beginners get to grips with design workflows as quickly as possible. There are over 100 to choose from, some text/image based and others in video format. Whatever stage you are at in your learning, you should find a tutorial to help.

Forum Latest

Currently Active Topics

This Week's Hot Topics

CADTutor Forums

Our forum is a vibrant community of experts and beginners. The main focus is helping beginners get to grips with AutoCAD and to help more advanced users become more productive. The AutoLISP forum is one of the busiest out there, providing expert advice for busy professionals.

AutoCAD Productivity

Layer Previous

by Michael Beall

From: AutoCAD Productivity Articles #132
Originally published: February 2014

PreviousLayers are the lifeblood in AutoCAD, and efficient management thereof is the key to your own quality of life; specifically, your sanity.

The Layer Previous button can be a real time saver and is, at its core, a Layer-specific ‘Undo’.

How to Use Layer Previous

  1. Open a drawing, then make a new layer [MC_FEB2014], give it a color and make it current; this will be our testing layer.

  2. Change the Color of any other layer in the current drawing, but don't make that layer current.

  3. On our test layer, draw a small rectangle somewhere.

  4. Click Layer Previous and the rectangle remains, but the color of the layer you changed is restored.

  5. Freeze several existing layers, then Rotate the rectangle.

  6. Click Layer Previous and the previously frozen layers are thawed… but the rectangle is still rotated!

See all the articles published in February 2014

Michael's Corner

Between 2003 and 2016, Michael Beall (and one or two guests) wrote almost 600 articles for CADTutor. The focus of these articles is AutoCAD productivity, and although some of them are now more than a few years old, most remain relevant to current versions of AutoCAD. The article above is just one example. Check out Michael's Corner for a full listing.

Tip of the Day

AutoCAD 2007 - Where's my old XREF Manager?

CUI Dialogue BoxA lot of people using AutoCAD 2007 and above don't like the new XREF Manager, so here's a simple way to get the old one back.

AutoCAD 2007 introduced a new way to manage XREFs and to bring up the "old" XREF Manager, you have to type CLASSICXREF at the command line. Well, if you want things back the way they were and use the classic XREF Manager as the default from the keyboard and from the menu, a few adjustments will get you there…

First, go to Tools ❯ Customize ❯ Edit Program Parameters (acad.pgp). This command opens the ACAD.PGP file in Notepad. This is where all the keyboard shortcuts are defined.

Next, scroll down until you see XR (or use Edit ❯ Find…), change the value from *XREF to *CLASSICXREF and save (File ❯ Save). Close Notepad and return to AutoCAD. Enter the command REINIT, check the "PGP File" checkbox and click "OK". That fixes the keyboard so that next time you type XR, you'll see the old manager and not the new one.

To change your Menu, type CUI at the command line. In the "Customizations in All CUI Files" pane of the "Custom User Interface" dialogue, go to Menus ❯ Insert ❯ External References… and click on it once to highlight it.

Now, in the "Properties" pane, change the "Macro" setting from ^C^C_externalreferences to ^C^C_classicxref, click "OK" to save the changes and you're done.

Today's tip is by StykFacE

Missed a Tip?

Did you miss yesterday's tip? Maybe you forgot to drop by or maybe you don't visit over the weekend. If so, you can now see all the tips published during the past week. Also, if you have a tip you'd like to share with us, you can post it on our forum and if we like it, we'll publish it here.