AutoCAD Tutorial 15: Project Three – Creating a Desk

This is the third project in the AutoCAD tutorial series. Unlike the previous tutorial, this will involve more skill and is more advanced. I will not be as detailed as the last tutorial but I will provide instructions clear enough to follow. Below is a picture with a few dimensions of the desk that we are going to be creating. I haven’t supplied all dimensions as I will be giving you them within the tutorial. We will be working in centimeters. Note that the dimensions are just a guide, they will not be final and I will be most likely be modifying them.

I assume you have read my past tutorials and know where the tools that I have mentioned in the previous tutorials are located

Well, why don’t we get started? Fire up AutoCAD and start up a new drawing. I’m going to start with the most complex pieces of the model, first off is the handles on the draws of the desk.

Well, create a circle anywhere in the drawing with a radius of, let’s say 10:

If you don’t have the object snap toolbar on, turn it on now. This toolbar is very important. You can turn it on by right clicking the space above the AutoCAD drawing, going to ACAD and clicking on Object Snap:

Once that’s sorted, select the line tool which is underneath the Line tool by clicking on it OR by typing “_line”.

Then on the object snap toolbar which you should be able too see since you activated it, click on “Snap to Quadrant” which is the circle with the 4 smaller circles around it:

Now click on a quadrant on the circle (preferably the one I have clicked in the picture below):

Once you have clicked there, go back to the object snap toolbar and click on “Snap to Quadrant” again. If you make a mistake and click the wrong one, press ESCAPE and start over from creating the first line.

Move your mouse down and click on the quadrant below the previous quadrant as shown in the picture below:

Create another 2D circle with a radius of 9 using the centre of the last circle as a snap:

Now activate the press pull tool, click on the inside of the outer circle but outside of the inner circle and to the left of the 2D line (see picture below). Then for the height input 1.5 and press ENTER:

Good, now we have our desk handle. Delete all of the 2D lines and circles, we don’t need them anymore. Adjust your view so it’s similar to mine in the picture below:

Create a 3D box using the top right corner of the handle as a snap, for the length input 25 and press TAB to input width. For the width input 5 and press ENTER:

The height can be whatever, but just make sure it goes DOWN:

Activate the 3D rotate tool. Select the handle itself and press ENTER. For the base point, use the same corner as you did for the starting point of the rectangle. Pick the blue rotational axis. Then lastly for the angle point, click on the same spot as the base point.

Now the handle should be rotating with your mouse. This time holding shift isn’t going to work so we are going to rotate the handle the hard way. Zoom in and get a closer view. Adjust your view so it is comfortable and easy to work with.

Now take your time and move your mouse until the other end of the handle touches the box and seems align with it. This part can take a long time but don’t rush this. Once you are satisfied, click to finalize it. See the picture below if you are unsure where to place it:

Once it is aligned, delete the 3D box as we don’t need it anymore. The handle though we DO need so don’t delete that.

Adjust your view so you can see the inner curve of the handle and create two 2D lines crossing as shown in the picture. This will give us an intersection snap to work with:

Activate the copy tool located under erase tool by clicking on it OR by typing “_copy”. Select the two 2D lines plus the handle itself and press ENTER.

For the base point, it doesn’t matter at all; just click anywhere close to the handle.

Now there should be another handle that is moving with your mouse. Just place it close to the original handle, doesn’t matter as we are going to move it again later:

Create a 3D box relatively close to one of the handles with the dimensions as shown in the picture below:

Remember this step’s location; you are going to come back and repeat these steps. Select the 2D line tool and click on the “Snap to midpoint” snap located in the snap toolbar:

Then click on the left side of the rectangle midpoint, a red triangle should appear in that place:

Once you have clicked there, activate the “Snap to midpoint” snap again, and click on the other side of the 3D rectangle’s midpoint. You should end up with a line looking like this:

Then draw a 2D line from the above left corner down to the midpoint:

We are going to draw another 2D line, but first activate the “Snap to midpoint” snap. Click in the middle of the newly drawn 2D line:

Then activate the “Snap to perpendicular” snap as circled in the picture below:

Then go to the other side of the rectangle and click at the 90 degree sign as shown in the picture below:

You should end up with another line like this:

Then find the centre of that by drawing 2 lines intersecting each other from the corners of the 2 lines going across the rectangle. I have done this a lot in my tutorials and the picture below shows what you should have:

Great, remember how I told you to remember a certain step’s location? Well we are going to repeat from that step to the one before this step, but this time on another 3D rectangle with dimensions as shown below:

Once done, you should have something that looks like this now:

Now it’s time to join the handles up with these rectangles. Adjust your view until you can see your handle’s X formed by the 2 lines.

Then select the 3D move tool, select a handle (doesn’t matter which one, but make sure you only select ONE handle), press ENTER and set the base point as the intersection of the 2 2D lines of the handle.

Now your handle should be moving with your mouse, adjust your view so you can see the intersection of the lines of the first 3D rectangle that you drew earlier.

Then click at the intersection:

And now your first rectangle should look like this:

Do the same and join up the second handle with the second rectangle. You should have something like this now:

Now select the fillet tool. Input “t” and press ENTER and press ENTER again for TRIM:

On the first rectangle (the bigger one) select the bottom edge:

Even though the entire object was highlighted, only the edge will be selected. For the fillet radius, input 3 and press ENTER.

Now select the 4 edges on the rectangle that surround the handle (be careful that you don’t select the 2D lines that we drew before):

Then press ENTER to execute the tool. Now your rectangle is nicely rounded off:

Fillet the other rectangle exactly how I showed you just now.

Now you should be left with this:

Moving on, activate the 3D move tool; select both the handle and the panel of the smaller desk draw.

Now for the base point specify one of the lower corners of the panel, but that corner cannot be a filleted corner:

The smaller panel + handle should be moving with your mouse. For the next point click on top corner of the bigger panel. That corner cannot be filleted as well. It also must be on the same side of your smaller panel’s base point (if you chose the bottom left corner, you would choose the top left corner of the bigger panel, don’t worry it will snap into place):

Now you should have something like this:

Adjust your view so you are facing the back if the panels if you aren’t:

Select the 3D box tool once again, click on the top right hand corner (the one in the picture below):

Input the width of the rectangle as 50 and the length 100 then press ENTER:

For the depth, click on the bottom left corner (the un-filleted one) and it will adjust itself:

Now we have something like this (I’ve adjusted the view):

Create another 3D box using the top left corner of the desk:

Make the width 105 and the length 150:

For the height, specify 10 and press ENTER

Currently we should have this (don’t mind the 2D lines):

Next, use the bottom right corner of the newly created rectangle as a snap and create a 3D box that is 105 wide and 10 long:

For the height, just use the bottom corner of the rectangle (NOT the filleted one) and click there. It will adjust itself to it’s level:

We should have this so far:

We are almost there, adjust the view so you see the back of the desk:

I’m going to create a panel for the back. The length will be 90 because 150 – 10 – 50 = 90. For the width input 5 and press ENTER. Use the top right corner of where the 2 rectangles touch:

For the height input 35 and press ENTER.

Now you should have something like this:

Ok, pull out the fillet tool and trim the edges pointed out in the picture below with a radius of 3 like we did with the panels (NOTE: You cannot fillet them all in one go):

Once you filleted all these edges, fillet these ones as well:

Now we should have something that looks like this:

Well, I guess there is one thing left to do, open the materials panel by right clicking at the top of the tools palette and selecting “materials”

Here is my desk: