How to Draw a Line in AutoCAD

The first command I’m going to show you is the ‘LINE’ command. That is the most basic command to start using AutoCAD. First of all open your AutoCAD program (please use version 2000 if you have one because that is what I’m using). When something pops up saying “start from scratch” you can click the ‘OK’ button. Then a black screen will show up. Its the AutoCAD default you can change it later on what ever color suits you.

There are two ways for your to draw a line:

1. One is you can type it directly on the command prompt on the bottom of the screen. You don’t have to point your mouse, just type it in your keyboard then press ‘enter’. (See Figure 1)


Figure 1

2. The second one is by clicking the icon on the upper left side panel of the interface.(See Figure 2)

Figure 2

After that the command prompt on the bottom of the screen will respond a message “Specify first point:”. The program is asking you to pick a point in a screen using your mouse and cursor (the little cross thing moving on the screen when you move your mouse – see Figure 4 below) as a starting point of your line. You can choose the center of your screen as the starting point. After picking a point by clicking the left mouse button, the command prompt will ask again “Specify next point or [undo]:”.
AutoCAD is asking you to pick your next point to make a line. You just have to pick any area in the screen to make a line but for this task its better to make a horizontal line by clicking either on the left or right portion of the screen as shown below (you can toggle F10 if you want an automatic straight line called Polar Tracking) .(See Figure 3)



Figure 3

After picking the next point, just press the ESC key to terminate the line. Now there you have it! you have made your first line! hurray!(See Figure 4)

Figure 4

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