Out and About: AutoCAD Mobile Basics

JIM LAPIER: This is AutoCAD mobile Basics. So we're going to run through the basics of AutoCAD mobile. It used to be called AutoCAD WS. It used to be called AutoCAD 360. And now it's AutoCAD mobile as of a couple months ago.

So we're going to run through the basics of that, how to actually get into the program, draw lines, draw circles, modify your objects, share your files, go through a couple of little tips that I found along the way, and look at a couple of different accessories and so forth.

So real quick about me, I've been using AutoCAD since version 13. I've worked in pretty much every field that has to do with getting black lines on white paper. So drafting's my passion. It's what I've been doing.

I'm certified AutoCAD expert elite member. I was also named Autodesk-- one of their 35 under 35 designers to watch. I own small drafting and technical design firm. I teach part-time at a local community college.

I'm an author on Lynda.com, which is also LinkedIn Learning, I think, as of a few months ago. And I am a former genius at Apple Retail. So I have the pajamas. And I drank the Kool-Aid, and the whole nine yards. So I'm quite the Apple fanboy.

So again, real quick, we're going to run through the different account types that AutoCAD for mobile has to offer. There's free, and paid, and so forth. So we're going to run through those. We're going to look at the home screen, how you actually manage your files, and so forth, loading up your own cloud storage solutions.

We're going to run through the interface real quick, talk about the toolbar, and the dock, and so forth. We're actually going to do a little bit of drawing and editing of an actual file. We'll talk about annotating and markups, which is going to be the meat of what a lot of people use AutoCAD mobile for.

We'll talk about sharing your files with other users, collaborators, and so forth, creating prints right off the device. We'll talk about, again, a couple of best practices and tips. And then look at a couple of accessories that might help you out in the field.

So first things, first accounts. There are two different types of accounts. There's a free account, and then there's the subscription accounts. And the subscription accounts is actually two different levels-- pro and ultimate.

So this is as of today. This does tend to change every occasionally. So before you-- there's going to be a handout that's going to be uploaded this afternoon. So when that gets uploaded, there is a link that takes you directly to this little matrix here. So it's always up to date.

Essentially, if you've got the free version, which anybody can go into the app store, download the free version, sign up for free Autodesk account, they can upload, look at the files. They can actually use the measuring tools. But they can't change the file in any way. They can't add anything to it. They can't add dimensions.

They can't do anything. All they do is look at the file and pull measurements from it. So this tends to be really good for things like maybe contractors who just need a copy of the digital file to be looking at, or clients who really aren't all that AutoCAD competent, as it were.

The next version is the premium version. This one allows you to pretty much do everything that the app has available to you. You can modify the stuff. You can add new lines, add measurements, share the file, and so forth.

The only difference with the ultimate version is you get a little bit more storage space. And the files can be a little bit bigger. So I think you're capped off at around 10 megabytes for the premium version. You can go up to about 100 megabytes for the ultimate version.

So, the pro version right now is $5 a month or $50 a year. So it's not all that bad considering what you're getting. The ultimate version is $15 a month or $100 a year.

But if you're on a subscription plan with Autodesk, if you're subscribed to any one of the suites, you actually get AutoCAD premium already built into it. So all you have to do is go log in with the same AutoCAD account-- or Autodesk account that you're using, and you're automatically upgraded to the premium account on AutoCAD mobile.

So, let's take a quick look at the Home screen. So we've got the-- in the upper left corner of the screen, we have Settings, which I'll show you guys in just a minute. The file management, everything pretty much is done here.

So we have three little dots over here in the corner of each one of the file names. And you click on one of those, you get this nice little expanded pullout here that shows you everything about the file-- the file size, the date it was last updated. And this is also where you're going to go to do things like delete, rename, duplicate, and move the file. It's also where we come to manage the sharing of the files so that we can write other users to look at the file as well.

There are two different types of sharing. You can share this with what somebody called a reviewer or a collaborator. Now, reviewers can only view the files. It's essentially like a free account. That's all they can do.

So they can view the file, they can take measurements, and that's about it. They can't change or affect the file in any way. However, the collaborator can actually make changes, add lines, and so forth, all the same stuff that you can do to the file. So you have two different levels of access that can give your users.

Once you actually open up a file, you get a screen that looks something like this. So across the top of the screen is what I typically call the toolbar. So that's all across the top here. That includes things like the Undo, Redo, and things like that.

There's a little icon right there that actually controls the grid in the background. So you can easily turn that on and off if you don't see the virtual grid, as it were. We've got the Sharing button right there. And that's we're going to go to actually create plots and also add users, and collaborators, and so forth. I promise after we run through this real quick, I'm going to do a demo. So you'll guys will see all this stuff in live and actually moving through.

We've got a full screen button. And then we have this guy right here. This is the Visor. So this actually pulls out. To show you guys, it's about five different-- or six different tabs that you can access.

So the first one is Layers. And it's just like Layers on AutoCAD desktop. You can turn layers on and off. You can lock them. You can make them current. You can rename them. Or you can delete them. There is even a Layer Isolate guy right up there.

Next tab over is the View. This is where you going to go to access the different Layout tabs that you have in your DWG file. So if you have 20 different layouts, or sheets, and so forth, you're going to find those right here. If you're looking at a 3D file, you can also control whether this is wire frame, or it's looking at it in more of a solid or a conceptual mode.

Now, with 3D stuff, you can look at 3D files, but they don't have any 3D editing or anything like that built into it. So it's pretty much just pulling up the file, and you can pan and zoom around it a little bit. But that's really about it.

Next one up is the Properties. And this has actually been recently updated. So you get a lot more choices.

You can see right now, I've got this line selected over here. And this gives me all the different properties of the line. I can find the layer and everything like that just like the Properties on the desktop version.

And we also have access to all the blocks that are in the DWG file. So if you've loaded up your DWG file with all the blocks that you're going to need, you have access to all of those. All you have to do is tap one and then click it out here in the drawing space to add it to your drawing.

Next up is Design Feed. This is where you can collaborate with other users. You can make comments on the drawing. You can tag locations, embed pictures, and so forth.

And the very last one is the Drawing Settings. So we have access to objects snaps in AutoCAD mobile. We also have access to object snap tracking in AutoCAD mobile. And you can control those settings here, as well as the main drawing. And they're also found right here.

Now across the bottom, I typically call this the Tool Dock. And this is where all of the actual drawing stuff and the editing stuff that you're going to go into are found. So the first one is basic drawing. So we have just about five different tools that we can use. We can draw lines, polylines, rectangles, circles, and arcs. And those are the five tools that we get to actually draw our geometry.

As far as editing-- editing I'm going to show you guys in just a moment. We're going to go through an edit an actual file. But the key to editing is you actually have to select the objects first. If you notice, there was no editing option down there at the bottom. There was Drawing, Annotating, and so forth.

Editing only appears contextually when you actually select an object. That's where you're going to get different tools based on whatever object you're selecting. If I'm selecting a line, I'll be able to do things like Offset, and Trim, and so forth. If I'm doing a block, I won't have those extra options like Offset and Trim.

And the big part of this is annotating. This is where I find most users actually really use AutoCAD mobile is actually just marking up, and annotating, and viewing files out in the field. So we can add dimensions to the drawing. They're actually added on their own annotation layer so that you can keep them separate when you're out in the field.

We can add revision clouds to call attention to things. We can actually sketch using a stylus or our fingers so we can make little hand sketches and so forth. And we also have access to the Quick Measure Tool, which is a really handy little tool for just pulling quick measurements. And we also have the option to do dimensions. We have a line dimensions, diameter, angular, and so forth.

Next up is Sharing, so that big button up in the upper right corner. We can actually plot and create PDFs directly from AutoCAD mobile. They're emailed to whatever user you want. Or you can email them back to yourself.

Right now, you can only use two plot styles. You can either plot it as color, or you can plot it as black and white. And that's pretty much it for the moment. But you can choose all the different paper sizes, whether it's ISO, or ANSI, architectural, whatever paper size you want. You can set a specific scale, obviously, so it's coming out accurate, and then email off the file.

So let's actually take a look at this. This is going to be kind of hard, but I'm going to try and describe as much as I can, the finger gestures, and the movements, and so forth as I'm going through this. But obviously this is the Home screen. It's just a matter of scrolling up. You can see all your files here. And you can look at these either in a list view like I have them here, or more of a thumbnail view using the icon in the upper right corner up there.

Now over in the upper left corner is the Settings. This is where you going to go to change your account type, sign in and out of your account, if you like. This is also where you're going to go to change your settings. So we only have some basic options here for colors, and backgrounds, and so forth.

My model space right now I've got set to black. I have a couple of shades of black and white, and that's about it. So if you're trying to set your background to magenta, or cyan, or something like that, you're going to be out of luck. But this is where I can control the magnifier positioning, the keypad actually shows up when I'm drafting and so forth, and also whether or not you're sharing in any information out to Autodesk.

I'm going to click back there and go back to Designs. And that's going to take me back to my Designs page. So I've got a whole series of files here. If I click on the three little dots to the right of any of these files, we get all the information.

I can download these files for offline access. I can look at the name, the date, and so forth. I can also rename the file with just a click and typing in a new name. I'll call it "Set 2 Beta," hit return, and the file's been renamed. And it's actively being synced right now back out to the cloud.

This is also, again, where I can manage the sharing. So all I have to do is click on the little "Add a Person." And I can choose if I want them to be a reviewer or a collaborator.

I want to open up a couple files here. So this first one here-- so this is a six-megabyte file. It's nothing huge. But for a mobile device, it's actually a pretty good size.

But I want to show you just how fast that drawing was opened, so six megabytes, pretty quickly. Again, this is in iPad Pro. So this is kind of like the top of the line workhorse kind of iPad that I'm using.

But I can really easily zoom in. I can pan around, open up that visor real quick. And let's go take a quick look at some of the other sheets here. So you can have all my information right at my fingertips.

And I'll take a step back. And let's look at another file here. Actually, let's do this real quick.

Also on the Home screen, up in the top upper left corner, there's a little cloud. If you click on that, that's where you can go to Add your own company storage. So if you don't want to use Autodesk servers, you want to you use your own, maybe you've got a Dropbox account, or Google Drive, and so forth, all you have to do is click on that button, pick on which service you want, and then verify your account, sign in, and then you'll have access to all the files that are on that drive.

So, this is a basic project file, nothing overly fancy. This is actually a modified version of one of the ones that-- one of the sample files that actually comes with Autodesk. So I want to take a quick look at what we can actually do with this file.

So here, I've got my nice formal living room there, nothing really special. But I need to add a little bit of furniture to it. So I'm going to go into the drawing menu. I'm just going to click on draw down the bottom there.

And I'm going to click on the rectangle tool. And then I'm going to draw a small-- I need to draw a rectangular little coffee table right in the middle of the room there. So there's two different ways of doing this. I can either tap, and then tap the other point. Or I can tap and drag to draw my rectangle, whichever one I'm more comfortable with.

I'm going to tap and then drag my finger across. And we can see that I get both the horizontal and vertical measurements there. If I let go, down at the bottom here, I get this handy little number pad. All I have to do is click down here in the number pad, and I can type in the specific dimensions that I want. So this is just as precise as AutoCAD desktop.

This particular one, I need to make, let's see, 2 foot 6". And we're going to make this one 4 foot-- I'm sorry, 5 foot, let's say, 8". There we are. And we'll all done.

I hit done. And there is my little rectangle there. I'm trying to change my color here. Maybe that'll be a little bit easier to see in the future.

The next thing I need to do is we have a nice little coffee table right over here. I want a mirror that over. So what I'm going to do is just tap on it to select it. And now I get this contextual menu that pops up here across the bottom.

This is all the cool stuff I can do with a polyline. So I can copy it, delete it, move it, scale it, and so forth. In this particular case, I want to mirror it around that sofa there so I have the same coffee table on the other side. So I'm going to click on the mirror icon there.

And now I need to specify my mirroring axis, just like I would on the desktop. So again, I have access to all the objects snaps. So the key to this is place your finger kind of close to the object snap that you're looking for and leave it there for just a moment.

When you get close, you see that little loop that pops up in the upper left corner there? That's showing me what's underneath of my fingertip. This way I can rock my finger around just a little bit. Once I get the point that I want, I can release, and that's the point that it's picked up.

Now I need the upper point up here. So again, I'm going to place my finger down, get it kind of close, and then see if I can-- oh, there it grabbed my point and mirrored it for me without-- let's try that on one more time. I want to get that right.

So let's grab that. Going to go down, grab my Mirror tool. And again, I'm just going to place my finger over it, kind of rocket back and forth till I get the object snap that I want. And then I can drag straight up to get the next point that I want, and then release. Once I've got it, I tap on the screen, and there's my coffee table.

So the key with us is leave your finger there for just a second, kind of roll it back and forth just a little bit so you get the object snap point that you're looking for, and then move your fingers onto the next point. It takes a little bit of practice, a little bit of getting used to. But once you get used to it, it's not that bad.

So the next thing I want to do is I want to add a circular coffee table down here in my living room down here. And for this, I'm going to use the Smart Pen tool. So I can do this with my finger. All I have to do is select the tool. And what this does is AutoCAD tries to help you complete your objects, whatever it is. So if you're scribbling on the screen, it tries to figure out whatever it is your intention and actually make it an actual piece of geometry.

So in this particular case, I want to make it round. So what I'm going to do is start the squiggle around on my-- as I start to move around, we can see I actually get my circle. And all I'm doing is just doing this with my finger, just dragging it around. If I get back to where it starts, I can let go.

And now this has got a 3-foot radius. That's a rather large coffee table. So I want to make that a little bit smaller.

So all I'm going to do is actually tap right-- no, let's try that one more time. So Smart Pen, draw my circle, and then I'm going to tap. And I can scale this guy. I can move him around. I can do whatever it is I want with him. Is that green easier to see back there than the red stuff? Good.

All right, so looking at my plan, I also see another little point that might cause some problems there. I've got this built-in TV center up here on the second floor. And it's running right into the door jam.

That's going to make it difficult when they're actually trying to install the door jam. Obviously, you're going to have this piece of furniture running right up against the door trim. So I want to make a note that they need to go back and take a look at that.

So I'm going to click on annotate. And I'm going to draw a little rev cloud. And I'm just taking my finger, tapping on the screen, and just dragging my cursor around till I can drag my little rev cloud.

I want to add some text to that as well. So I'm going to click on Text, tap on the screen where I want to place it, and type out my little note, and hit the green checkmark. And that way, somebody knows they need to go back and actually look into that and make sure that that's going to fit, or if we need to move the door, or whatever else we need to do.

Now over here, we have this foyer. And I think the client wants to put a desk over here in this alcove over here. But they need a dimension. They need to know how big that alcove is.

So I can actually add actual dimensions to this. If I go down to the Dimension Tool here, I've got the Align Dimension here. I'm going to come down here, place my finger, again, just do my little rock back-and-forth hover motion till I get the midpoint, drag it straight over, and there's my perpendicular point. So I know I've got my horizontal dimension.

And then when I let go, I've got a little grip on there that I can use to actually pull that dimension up and place it wherever I want. This particular one, I'm just going to move it up just a little bit and click. And there's my dimension. So now they know exactly how big of a desk they can put in.

Now what if I don't necessarily-- when to add dimensions, I just need to pull some quick measurements. I want to look down here at the kitchen area. And I need to get some just basic clearances and so forth, figure out exactly how much room I've got around that island to make sure that they're going to be able to walk around that kitchen properly.

So to do that, I'm going to come down here to Measure. And at the very last one all the way down here on the right, I have got Quick Measure. And in my opinion, this is one of the coolest features of AutoCAD mobile.

All I have to do is tap on the screen one time, and I get all the dimensions to the nearest geometry, so everything horizontally, vertically. I get the angles if there are any odd angles. And I can keep doing this. I'm locked in this mode for as long as I keep tapping. So I can pull as many of these dimensions as I want.

Or if I need something a little bit more fluid, I can actually tap on the screen and drag my finger around the screen to get live dimensions. And this is even quicker than I could possibly do it on the desktop. So I can work my way around, find all the dimensions that I need, and make sure that I've got all the clearances that I need to get the-- somebody to be able to actually work in that kitchen.

So let's actually start modifying this little guy just a little bit. I'm going to come down here to one of my elevations here. And I can see that the person designing this actually didn't quite finish this part of the elevation. I need to add a couple other little pieces to this.

So, first thing I'm going to do is actually just go over here and grab my Select tool. Now, this is the same Select tool that we would have on the desktop. I have Crossing Windows or Selection Windows.

So if I don't want to do a crossing window, I tap and drag. And we can see I've got my green crossing window. If I move to the right, I've actually got my selection windows. So I'm just dragging my finger back and forth. So I want to this little guy right here. As soon as I select it, again, I get all the contextual editing options down here at the bottom of the screen.

I want to offset this to the outside. So I'll go grab the Offset tool, tap on it. And then I need to pick which side I want to offset my object to. I'm going to go ahead and tap.

And right now, I tapped at about 10 inches. That's a little bit too big. That's not quite what I wanted.

So what I'm going to do is tap inside that measurement, and now I can actually enter in the precise measurement that I need. So in this particular one, let's go 5 inches and hit done. Yeah, it looks a little bit better.

It's not quite as clean as I want, though. I need to trim out the lines around that keystone up at the top there. So let's zoom in here and grab this. Again, I'm going to grab that Selection tool. And again, we've got the same ones from the desktop.

So if I tap and drag my finger to the left, I've got my selection window. It only select the objects inside the window. I'm going to scroll over till I find my Trim tool and select that. And now all the objects that I've selected have now become cutting edges.

So this is, again, the reverse of what you're used to on the desktop. You're selecting your objects first, and then choosing what command or what modified tool you want to use. Whatever you're choosing, that stuff is either going to be-- in the case of trim or extend, it's going to be you're cutting edges or your boundary edges that you're going to use.

So now I can actually trim out what I want to get rid of. In this case, I'll just tap on the two lines there and there. And I'm all done. I'll hit the checkbox there. And there's my window. It looks a little bit better than it did before.

Let's take another look here at the other elevation here. That's a really empty wall over there. I want to add another window over there. And it actually is already in the plan. I just need it update it on the dimension.

So, I'm going to go up to the Visor up the top there, and I'm going to go over to the fourth tab there. And that's all the blocks that I have already available in my drawing. I'm just going to scroll down here till I can find the one that I want.

And I'm looking for-- it's window 20. There it is right there. So I'll tap it. And then I'll tap to place it out in the drawing.

I can move it around, get it placed wherever I need to. It's looking for those object's snap points. I'm going to place it there and go ahead and close that. All I have to do is tap anywhere else on the screen, and my window is set. And obviously, that looks a little bit like it's in the wrong spot there. So let's go ahead and see if I can align that and get it where I need to go.

So I've selected it. I'm going to use the Move tool. And then I'm going to grab the top right corner of this. So again, hold my finger, rock till I get the point. There's my endpoint there. And now I can start to move it.

And I'm going to drag my cursor over to the other endpoint and then drag away. And we can see that I've actually gotten the object snap tracking. There we are, right about there.

I'm done, tap out in the screen, and my window's been set. So I've actually aligned the window to the other geometry in the drawing. That's a little bit hard to see.

And obviously, that window isn't even on the right layer as the other objects. So again, I'm going to select it. Let's go up to the Visor up here. Let's take a quick look at the Properties.

So right now, the color is green. I definitely want to change that back to bilayer. But I also want to change the layer itself. This needs to be on the proper layer. So let's grab the Annotations layer.

Again, when you're editing in AutoCAD mobile, it actually creates this little blank Annotations layer for you. It's got an underscore, so it puts it right up at the top of the list. But this way you know that anything-- any changes you made by default are put on their own separate layer so they're not affecting any of the other objects in the drawing.

Now, this particular one, I need to-- let's go down here. Let's look for my-- there it is, glazing. There we go. So now that matches the same as the rest.

Hit Deselect. And I can close my Visor. And I placed my window. Pretty straightforward, right?

So again, when I'm ready to actually share this, I'm going to go change my view here. Let's go look at one of the sheets. Let's look at the first floor plan there, collapse that.

So there's my first floor plan looking at the-- I've got all my dimensions there. I've got all my layers and so forth. There's my little rev cloud that I made before so I can have somebody check that out.

Let's see about sharing this and getting this out of here. So I'm going to go up to the Share button, and I'm going to go to Plot. So for the plot style again, we can either do essentially black and white or color. That's really the only options that we have for the moment

This is definitely the layout that I want to choose. But I can switch this right from here. I don't have to necessarily go back to the drawing if I decide I want to pick another layout. I can choose this right here in the sharing button.

I'm going to change my paper size here. Let's do architectural D. I'm going to be printing the extents. Next one down is the orientation. So I can do this in basic landscape mode I'm going to do this at a one-to-one scale. I want to make sure that this is printing at the right scale, it's not going to zoom, or pan it, or anything like that.

I'll hit Next. And then all I have to do is type in-- it's going to access my contacts. And I can type in my email address and send it off. And that PDF, once it's generated, will be emailed off to whatever user that I asked it to.

And there we are. File's sent successfully. So if I look at my email, that PDF will be there. I could open it up and do whatever I like with it.

So I'm going to skip back real quick. Let's go back to the model space here just a little bit. I'm going to put one or two other quick dimensions here.

So I'm going to go find my Measure tool there. And again, we've got a couple of different options here. We've got distance. We've got area.

So if I want to figure out the area of a specific space, all I have to do is click it. Again, I'm just going to tap the different points on the screen. So just like the Area tool on the desktop and down at the bottom, we can see we're getting a live update every time I add another point. It's updating the area down there at the bottom.

So I use my objects snaps if I like. Let's hit check on that. And let's go back and try this with something a bit more precise.

I need to figure out the area of my formal living room here. So I'm going to click on area, again, tap and rock, get that endpoint there, draw my line straight over. There's my perpendicular point there. Turn and release.

And I'm going to, again, click and rock. There's my endpoint there, and last one right there. So 72-foot perimeter, 315 square feet. So I know exactly how much carpet I need.

So that's some of the basic functions. But there are a couple of best practices or tips to follow along with too. Templates-- by default, AutoCAD mobile doesn't support DWT files. It doesn't support creating new drawings from templates.

So what I typically do is I'll actually save a DWG file. I'll create it from my template file so it has all my layers, all my blocks, and everything like that. And I actually make a special one just for the mobile one because there are extra blocks that I might want access to or things like that.

And I'll save it in my cloud file. This way, all I have to do is go back out to that-- every time I'm at a job site or anything I need to do, I'll open up the file, and I'll simply copy it. And I'll duplicate it, rename it, and then I've got my template, as it were, to just get working and start working out in the field.

Another handy tip is image underlays. So let's take a look and see exactly what that looks like. So I'm going to create a new drawing. And I'm out in the field, and let's say, I decide I want to-- I'm taking some certain measurements or so forth, and I've got a window up on the second story. I need to figure out exactly how big that window is.

Now, I know how big the front door is. So if I'm using the example here, the door over here, I know that that door happens to be 6-foot wide. So what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to draw the dimension that I know real quick. So I'm going to draw a little rectangle here. Oh, I need to change my drawing units first. So let's go to that.

Settings-- right now, it's unitless. I'm going to set this back to inches. Again, go back to Draw, Rectangle. So I need the width of this-- oops.

So the height right now, let's say 8 feet. And the width is going to be 6 feet. So that's pretty close to what I was looking for. That should be pretty close to that door out there.

So now, I'm going to go ahead over here click on Annotate and Insert Photo. It's going to ask for permission for my camera here. So let's see if we can take a quick shot. There we are. And I'm going to go out and use that photo.

Now from here, notice as I'm-- if I grab any of these grips I can actually scale my photo and move it around. So what I can do, if I zoom in here just a little bit, I can actually move this around. Let's get it right about there, see if we can get it big enough.

To actually line it up with the door that I drew, I'll zoom out just a little bit. Once I get it pretty close, I've got it laid on top, I hit Enter. And now it's uploading that image file to the DWG file. It's uploading it to the cloud so I have access to it. So that'll take just a moment.

When it's all done, it'll actually place the image. Notice it's behind the geometry. So by default, it does a "send a back" and puts my image behind the geometry there.

So now if I wanted to figure out how wide that column is, all I have to do is go grab my Measure tool, grab my Distance, and now I can actually measure on a live photo. So not quite as cool as the AR kit stuff that Apple's been showing about taking-- the virtual reality stuff, augmented reality stuff, but still rather handy in the field when I don't really want to climb up on a ladder and try and measure a window or I can't really get to.

So one other useful tip here, and that is the Apple Pencil. So I highly recommend a stylus. It's going to be more accurate. It's going to be a little bit easier.

I'm using the iPad Pro. So obviously, that one works terribly well with the Apple Pencil. And by default, the Apple Pencil is always on. And AutoCAD mobile actually recognizes that.

And what it does is it puts you in this constant state of Smart Pen mode. So as soon as you take the Apple Pencil and put it on the screen, it automatically assumes that you're trying to draw a new shape. So if I take my pencil-- and again, I'm not in any command down at the bottom, I can actually just start to draw a line, or draw an arc, or a circle, or a smaller arc, or a circle.

So again, I'm not in any command. But all I have to do is grab my pencil and start drafting. And I'm already just drawing my objects.

And again, anytime I enter a value, you see the Value highlight up there. All I have to do is tap on it. And then I can enter in the actual value that I want.

So one or two other quick things. So aside from the Smart Pen-- and the Smart Pen feature does work, again, obviously with your finger. I should you guys that more in the beginning. So you don't necessarily have to go out and buy the Apple Pencil to use the Smart Pen. Using the Apple pencil, it just automatically knows that you're in Smart Pen mode as soon as you put the Apple Pencil to the screen.

A360, so A360 is another Autodesk app. And this one allows you to view the rest of your files. So obviously, DWG files are the most important ones, obviously. AutoCAD's the best program out there. But A360 allows you to manage all the other files that might have to do with your project.

Oops. I'll log back in here real quick. Don't worry, it's an empty account. Oh, come on. There we are. So with A360, I can look at all of the other files that I might have to work with-- my Revit files, even SolidWorks files, and so forth.

So this is a Revit model. I can control the layers that I'm looking at, the different parts. I can turn off different pieces and parts to this.

Let's turn off the roof here. And I can turn off the roof soffits. Let's turn on-- let's look in here nice and tight. Let's turn off the doors so we can see inside.

Again, this is a full-sized Revit model that I'm just panning and zooming around on my iPad. And this will work the same on my Samsung tablet, or my iPhone, or anything else. So I've got Revit models here. Here we've got a-- so nice engine block we've got here, Inventor files.

And again, the nice part with these programs is you don't have to be a CAD user to actually just open up these files. This could be a stakeholder, a client, a contractor used AutoCAD 360, especially the measuring aspect of that, for landscape designers that need to be out in the field, and so forth. So they don't have to be a CAD user just to be able to go in and pull a couple of dimensions that they might need or actually collaborate, markup little things, and send them back to you in the field.

So, now that you've got your iPad, and you've spent all this money on it, you need to go buy more stuff. So there are a couple of handy little accessories that I find when you're actually out in the field working with these things, they're going to be rather useful. Obviously, almost everybody goes and buys a case first. And if you're going to be out in the field, most people buy something like an OtterBox or a nice big rugged case. But then when you're actually out in the field, you need to find a way of actually holding this thing while you're-- with one hand, while you're using it with the other.

So there are a number of different straps and so forth. I kind of like this one. This one's actually made my OtterBox. But the idea is it's got a nice little hand strap that I can grab and keep it in one hand.

This one actually comes with-- you can see a little carabiner there. And it's actually got a little lanyard. So I'm getting up on a ladder, I can throw it over my shoulder, and climb a ladder, and then pull it back out, and make my changes and so forth.

But there are a couple of other factors to keep in mind. You're going to have other accessories with you. So if you're to have a stylus, or an Apple Pencil, or something like that, make sure whatever case you've got has a spot to put that thing. So in this particular one, I can slide it inside of the thing so I'm not grabbing it.

If you notice on my Apple Pencil, I've actually got a little clip here that I added from-- I think I picked this up on eBay, or Office Depot, or something like that. But it lets me put it in my shirt pocket, and it's not falling all over the place. So, cheap little $0.15 thing, but makes a world of difference when you're out in the field.

Keyboards. If you're going to be doing a lot of typing-- and that's actually the inside of the Apple Pencil. It's what it looks like if you take off the nice pretty white exterior. So keyboards, if you're going to be doing a lot of typing, maybe you're not, obviously, just going to be doing AutoCAD. Maybe you're going to be writing emails and so forth, you want to think about a keyboard. But keyboards can come separately, or they can come as part of a case, so keep in mind.

And also, there are a couple of factors with power. Most keyboards either have their own internal battery, or in the case of the Smart Cover, they actually pull the power directly from the iPad itself. So it's one less thing you have to think about charging.