User Manual for LibreCad 2.

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Author: Bob Woltz
License: Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike (CC BY-SA 3.0)

INTRODUCTION TO LIBRECAD

This is the User Manual for LibreCad. I have written this manual using the KISS
principle (Keep It Simple Stupid) this manual is designed in Chapters and simple
instructions so that even someone entirely new to LibreCad and CAD in general can
learn to use it. This manual is designed for the user to follow as the user is using the
program in front of him.
So it would be to the users advantage to print out a copy of the manual to use to
follow the lessons given. I hope you enjoy your learning experience.

This manual is in English but permission is given to freely translate this manual into
other languages and file formats.
OVERVIEW

Go ahead and start up LibreCad and take a look at what you see on the screen. Notice
across the top there are words that you click on for pull down menus. Go ahead now
and click on each word to see the menus. Don’t select anything from the menus as of
yet, we will examine some of the selections in as we work through the manual.
Notice Icons below the words. Put your cursor over each Icon without clicking and
the program will show you what the Icon does. You will also notice Icons on the left
side. Move your cursor over these Icons also and you will note information on these
as well.
The top 7 are drawing Icons, The next 2 draw text and dimensions, The next Icon on
the left draws cross hatch and the one next to it is snapshot which is non-functional in
this version, The last 4 open different menus and functions.

Notice the bottom of the screen and you will see the command line. You can actually
draw using commands that you type in this area. We will use this in a later lesson to
get you familiar with the command line.
On the right side you will notice areas for creating Layers and Blocks. We will also
use these in later lessons.
The last area we want to look at is the Drawing area or the Workbench as it is
sometimes called. This is where you will do all of your drawing, dimensioning, etc.
You can also change the settings of the program and drawings too. We will examine
this next.
1 CHANGING PROGRAM AND DRAWING SETTING

Let's take a look at the Program settings first.

First, click on edit at the top of the page. Then select application preferences. Notice
the box that pops up. Notice you can change quite a bit under appearances. At this
point we are going to use the defaults the program has set up for us. Make sure
however that the Crosshairs is selected This turns the big Red Crosshairs in the work
area on and off.
Also make sure that Automatically scale grid is selected as well.
Now click the tab Paths. Notice we can define folders for things like fonts, hatches,
part library, templates. We want to create a folder for our Part Library and also
Templates.
For templates, type the following

C:\Documents and Settings\templates

C is the drive, \ User defines this \templates

Your templates will be saved to this folder.

C:\ User defines this \library

And now the 2 new folders are defined, and your parts and templates will be saved
there.
Next click on the default tab. We don’t want to change anything here, but notice that
we can change units here for instance like Millimeters to inches or any number of
units.
Also, it is always good to have autobackup on. If you have a shutdown for any reason
you won’t have to start all over again which can be very frustrating. When I taught
C3P I ALWAYS told my students to save their work frequently and I am also telling
you to do the same.

Ok, now click ok to close the box and we will look at Current drawing preferences.
Everything you do here affects the drawing you are currently working on ONLY. So
lets take a look.

Click edit, then select current drawing preferences. Notice the pop up box.
Click on the Paper tab. Here you can change paper size and also paper orientation.
Click Landscape and pull down the size menu and scroll to select letter. This setting
will allow printing from a home computer. Also most drawing projects use a
landscape orientation so that’s why we pick landscape.
Now click on the units tab. Here you can change units like we did earlier but the
choices are only in effect for this drawing. Here we may want to change the Length
from 4 decimal places to just 2. Do this by clicking precision and selecting 0.00 from
the pull down menu.
Now click on the Grid tab. Here we want to make sure that show grid is selected and
also orthogonal is selected. Notice you can select isometric grid too but don’t do that
now, we will play a little bit with that later on.
Now click the Dimensions tab. Notice there is quite a bit you can change, but we will
leave that as is for now.
Now click on the Splines tab. Here you can change line segments but again leave the
setting as is. Now click ok to close the box.

We have now covered settings changes and we also now have a blank drawing that
we can save that will automatically load these settings when we want to do a drawing.
Now click file at the top, select save as, type blankdrawing, and click save.
Congratulations, you just saved your first drawing.
2 DRAWING LINES IN LIBRECAD

Now we are going to begin drawing in LibreCad. We will start with lines. Lines can
be anything from lines to circles, rectangles, Arcs, ellipses, splines, polylines, and
even text. We can even change the color, thickness and properties of the lines. You
will learn how to do that in this lesson.

Above you see an example of a simple part drawing that a tradesman might get from
an engineer to make. It contains all the information needed to make this part.
So now lets look at drawing lines.

Ok, lets begin,

1. Click file at the top of the page, then open and click on the file we saved
earlier called blankdrawing.dxf.
2. Before we go any further, look at the big red crosshairs at the bottom. It is
important to note that the horizontal line in the crosshair denotes the X
coordinate and the vertical crosshair denotes the Y coordinate. The center
point of the crosshairs denotes X=0, Y=0. Usually all drawings start at 0,0 so
for the most part, the first point of your first line will start there. The points of
the grid are spaced 10 millimeters apart so, that means if your crosshair center
is 0 then moving right of that on the X (horizontal) the next point is 10
millimeters (from the crosshairs) the next point is 20 millimeters, the next 30
millimeters and so on. Moving from the crosshair center (0) upwards on the Y
(vertical) the next point is 10 millimeters, then the next point is 20 millimeters
and so on. This will be especially important when we draw some lines from
the command line on the bottom. If all this is hard to remember don’t worry,
we will create a help layer later on as a reference.
3. Before we draw anything, click file, then save as, then type lines and save the
drawing. What we did was put the blankdrawing file away and now we have a
 file on your workbench called lines. This is the drawing we will use for
practice drawing lines.
4. Select snap from the top menu then select snap on grid. This will make it
much easier to draw strait lines.
5. Select draw then move your cursor down to lines and then over to 2 points and
select it. We are going to draw a line using 2 points.
6. Move your cursor over to the red crosshairs. Notice the your cursor is now a
crosshair and you have orange reference lines following it as you move to the
red crosshairs. Notice also that the red point snaps from point to point on the
grid now.
7. Put the crosshairs on your cursor over the center of the red crosshairs and left
click 1 time.
8. Without clicking move your cursor 50 millimeters to the right (along the X
axis) remember that each point represents 10 millimeters. When you get there,
put the crosshairs over the point and left click once, then right click 2 times to
come out of the drawing command. You have created a line.
9. Save your work thus far by clicking file save or the disk Icon at the top under
the menu bar.
10. We can also draw several lines one after the other easily.
11. Click draw, then lines and choose 2 points.
12. You will notice that there is a red point where you left off drawing the last
line. Move down and left click on that point 1 time.
13. Without clicking the mouse move your crosshairs (cursor) up (Y axis) 50
millimeters and left click 1 time.
14. Now without clicking move your crosshairs (cursor) to the left 50 millimeters.
Left click 1 time only.
15. Now move your crosshairs (cursor) down 50 millimeters to the big red
crosshairs and left click 1 time, then right click 2 times. You will notice that
you drew a square. This is the way that you can draw several lines in sequence
at one time.

Rectangles
Of course if you need to draw squares and rectangles there is an easier way to do it.
1. Click on draw, then line, then select rectangle.
2. Move your crosshairs (cursor) down to any point to the right of the square you
drew and left click 1 time.
3. Without clicking move your crosshairs (cursor) diagonally down to any other
point and left click 1 time, then right click 2 times and notice that you have
drawn a square or rectangle easier and in less time. Now you have another
drawing tool in your arsenal of tools.

Circles
We will now draw a circle.
1. Click on draw, then circle this time then select center, point.
2. Move your crosshairs (cursor) into the first square we drew. Select any one of
the center points and left click 1 time.
 3. Move your crosshairs (cursor) to the right 10 millimeters (that is the next point
over) and left click 1 time then right click 2 times. You now have drawn a 20
millimeter circle inside the square. This is just one of the many ways we can
draw a circle but the center, point method is used most often.
4. Save your work at this point by clicking file, save or the save Icon below the
top menu.

Now, we are gonna do a little teaser using the modify option. We will work with
modify at a later time but I wanted to tease you a little.
1. Select modify, move down and select stretch.
2. If you notice on the very bottom of the screen you will see a green hand and
you will notice it says specify first corner (this is a prompt to help you). It will
always show you what to do next. Quite handy, and it is a feature we used
often when learning C3P when I taught it. Let's continue now.
3. Select the top right point on the second rectangle or square that you drew.
4. Move your cursor without clicking to the right to the next point and then move
your cursor down to the bottom point that is 10 millimeters away from your
square or rectangle. Click 1 time. Notice the prompt on the bottom is asking
you to choose a reference point. Move your cursor over to the right edge of
your rectangle and left click anywhere on that line.
5. The prompt now asks you to select a target point. Move your cursor to the
right 10 millimeters (1 point) and left click 1 time, right click 2 times. Notice
you have made everything longer on that on side by 10 millimeters. You can
also use this method to shorten the side too.

Just thought I’d throw that in as a teaser. But now it is time to save your work once
again so do it now.

Icons

So far we have used the menu on top to draw with. Some people prefer to use the
Icons to draw. If you look on the left side you see 2 columns of Icons. When you click
the Icons a new menu with different Icons appears. Lets see how that works. Move
your cursor over to the left and place it over the slanted line Icon. You immediately
see a different group of Icons appear. These Icons have to do with drawing lines.
Remember when we drew a line using 2 points earlier ? well, if you click the Icon that
has a slanted line with a green point on each end, you will be able to draw the same
kind of line we did from the menu earlier. Also, you can see an Icon that has a
rectangle and 2 green points and this will allow you to draw a rectangle like you did
before. Try it now and see for yourself. You now have a choice…you can draw with
the menu across the top or use the Icons. Different people have different preferences.
Our workbench is pretty cluttered now so lets delete some lines. It is very easy to do
this.

1. Move your cursor over to the circle you drew and click on the edge 1 time.
Notice the circle turns to a red dotted line. This means it has been selected.
2. Now, simply push the delete key on your keyboard. You have deleted the
circle. One thing to note is if you delete a line by mistake, you can always
bring it back by clicking edit on the menu bar and clicking undo.
 3. If you want to delete everything you drew, then the easy way would be to
select “select” on the menu bar and then click on select all. Then press the
delete key on your computer. Everything is deleted but, once again, if you
made a mistake then select edit and then undo to bring it back.

Moving a line

Sometimes it is necessary to move a line because we need it to be in a different place.

1. Move the cursor over to the line you want to move and click on the line 1 time
to select it.
2. Now touch the line with the cursor and hold the left mouse button down.
3. Use the mouse to move the line to a new location and left click the left mouse
button on time and then the right mouse button once. You can see the line has
been moved. Click on the line with the left mouse button 1 time to deselect it.

As you can see, it is very easy to do. This also works with circles, ellipses, and all
lines. The one thing you have to remember though is if you want to move a rectangle
or square you need to select each side first. (If you select only one side then only one
side will be moved).
Now is a good time to save your work so go ahead and do that.

Changing Line Properties

Ok, we have drawn our drawing and now we need to change some of the line
properties. We can do this through the modify menu. We can change line colors, line
thickness, type of line, and even change length and location through this menu. Let's
see how that works.

1. Make sure you have at least 1 line drawn on your workbench. If you don’t,
then go ahead and draw one.
2. Once you have this, go ahead and click on modify on the menu bar. On the
pull down menu, select properties.
3. Go ahead and place the crosshair on a line on the workbench and left click 1
time. You will see a pop-up box like the one shown below.
Let's take a look at the line box. Look at the choices on the left color, width, and line
type. For color, you can change the line color of the selected line by clicking the color
menu and selecting he color you want. Go ahead now and select the color green and
then click ok. Notice the line on the workbench is now green. You can change the line
color as many times as you wish using this method.
Let's look at line type now. Put the white crosshairs over the line again and click. Our
line box pops into view again and this time we want to click the line type and a pull
down menu will appear. Notice you have many different line types to choose from.
We will select dash from the pull down menu and then click ok. Notice the line on the
workbench is now a dash line. In a drawing, a dash line usually denotes a hidden
feature. If you remember the L-Block drawing earlier you see a dash line on the front
view because base surface is hidden from view in the front view.
Line width is changed in the same way. You have choices on how thick the line
should be and the selection works the same way as the other two.
Why don’t you take some time now and experiment with line modification. Try
drawing some circles and rectangles too and see how line modification works for
them as well. When you are finished, go ahead and put away your line drawing by
saving it and then click close.
3 DIMENSIONING AND TEXT

We have drawn our work and now we need to add dimensions and text. First of all,
lets look at dimensioning a drawing. It would also at this point select edit then current
drawing preferences and then dimension and make sure the text height is 2.5 and if it
is not, then change it to 2.5 and click ok.

Dimensions

To start we need to create a drawing. So lets start a new one.

1. Click file, then open, and select blankdrawing and bring it back out on the
workbench.
2. The first thing you are going to do is click file, then save as and type
dimension and text and then click save. We now have a new drawing called
dimensions and text on the work bench.
3. The first thing we need to do is draw a simple object to dimension so now is a
good test to see how much you remember from the drawing lesson. Pick and
spot on the workbench and draw a rectangle. It can be any size or shape you
want. Go ahead and do this now. If you have a problem, refer back to the
drawing section of the manual.
4. When you have finished go ahead and save your work by clicking file, save or
the save Icon on the top.
5. Now click dimension from the menu bar on top. You will get the pull down
menu as shown below.

Let's look at the menu a moment. Notice several options are available to us. The first
4 are for dimensioning lines, the next 2 allow us to dimension a circle by defining
either the radial (radius) or diametric (diameter) of a circle. The next one, angular,
will give us the angle in degrees of an object. The last one is leader which is used with
text in a drawing and we will use that later in drawing. So now lets continue

6. Select horizontal from the dimension menu.