Inside the AutoCAD Grid

By Michelle Ecker on June 13, 2016

The New York Institute of Art and Design offers online AutoCAD classes and because we do, we like to provide free tips for aspiring planners. Enjoy!

Inside the AutoCAD Grid

The latest AutoCAD programs on the market use a typical grid of lines like those on a piece of graph paper. They are meant to help designers as a visual aide of sorts, so ability to navigate and comprehend their meaning properly is therefore crucial in developing an understanding of the software overall. Getting started, here are some simple things to remember when familiarizing yourself with the AutoCAD grid:

  1. It can be turned on and off at the will of the designer. If you simply select the ‘grid mode’ button (found to the right of the ‘model’ button) on the status bar, the lines will disappear from your view.
  2. Once your drawing has been plotted, the grid will automatically disappear. This is standard and won’t affect the work you’ve done, so don’t panic.
  3. If you’re used to sketching on paper, remember this: when using the standard ‘acad’ template, the corresponding grid shown onscreen is set up to emulate the shape of an Architectural A-size, 12 x 9-inch sheet of drawing paper.
  4. If the grid on your computer screen is hardly visible to you, your hardware acceleration feature might be turned on (for some computers this happens by default). To turn it off, just click the ‘hardware acceleration’ button from your status bar.

Want to learn more? The New York Institute of Art and Design’s AutoCAD course can help you reach your goals. Request your free course catalog today!