Autocad 2004 learning curve

[6thandCongress]

I was wondering if anyone could share their experience with learning Autocad. I recently graduated with a CE degree and will be starting an entry level position working in land devo/site planning projects. I have alot of experience in working with Microstation however, I'm limited in my knowledge of Autocad. I know the majority of the simple commands but still not completely confident. I was wanting to know a realistic estimate of how long it typically takes a person to learn Autocad until they can be productive in the office environment. Any reccommendations on helping one to beat the learning curve. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[danielhyde]

The best thing would be to just search for AutoCAD tutorials in a search engine, or get some books and read everything. Also you could just open up AutoCAD and have a look around and experiment with everything.

The time its takes to learn depends upon the individual and want they want to do with the software, but if you understand and can visualise the things you our designing in real life then that’s half the battle and the rest can be picked up along the way.

 

[Jasonx10]

The rate at which you learn autocad will depend on the individual to some extent, but it's still not too difficult to learn once you find yourself working with it daily. Im in the mechanical design field and prior to accepting this job, I had NO experience with Autocad. If you're young and relatively familiar with computers in general, you'll probably have an easy time picking it up. Drawing-wise im already as fast or faster than my co-workers and I've been here 3 years (after about 6 months I felt i was familiar enough with autocad that i could handle pretty much anything). Design-wise is a different matter. Some of them have been doing this for decades, so obviously theres still a lot to learn there! Autocad isnt too tough to learn though. Just push yourself for a year and you'll probably catch up to your co-workers.