From the course: AutoCAD: 3D Modeling for Mechanical Designs

Using the ELEVATION command to alter the drawing plane - AutoCAD Tutorial

From the course: AutoCAD: 3D Modeling for Mechanical Designs

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Using the ELEVATION command to alter the drawing plane

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- [Instructor] We're starting a new chapter now, and we're going to take a look at some of the tools that you might use to create your 3D design. Now this isn't really mechanical modeling, this one, it's more of how to use a tool to relate it to your mechanical modeling. Now we've got a new drawing for you to start this particular chapter, it's called usingELEVATION.dwg. And you'll notice the name of the file, the word elevation is in capital letters, that's because it's actually an AutoCAD variable and setting when you're working in 3D. Now when you first open the usingELEVATION.dwg file you'll see that we're in the model tab, and I've literally got two 2D rectangles close polylines in the drawing itself, in the model tab and they're on the objects layer. Now, at the moment, they're both flat. If you imagine a piece of paper and we've drawn two rectangles on the bit of paper, they're both flat. Now, it may be that these two rectangles represent something in a 3D model, but at the moment, because they're flat, their Z value is zero, which also means that their elevation is at zero. It's the default Z equals zero setting. And it's also, we're flat because we're in the top view. You'll notice that on the view cube and over here on the view control as well. Now, how do you change elevations of objects in your 3D drawings? Well, at the moment you wouldn't be able to tell what the elevation of either of these two rectangles actually is because you're looking at the top view. And in essence, you're looking at a 2D plan view. Now, if I select the left rectangle, this one here, and I right click, and I go to properties on the shortcut menu you'll notice here the elevation is zero in the properties palette. That elevation there is zero. Now I'm going to leave the elevation of that left hand rectangle at zero. So I'm going to close the properties palette, hit escape a couple of times to deselect it. If I select the right hand rectangle here, and then right click and go to properties, I'm going to click in elevation here and change that value to 500 and press enter like so. Now when I close the properties palette and I hit escape a couple of times, it doesn't actually look any different whatsoever. So this is where I need to change my view in my 3D model. Now, I'm not actually modeling in 3D just yet. What I'm doing is I'm setting up the variables, features, tools, et cetera, so that I can work in 3D. Now, I'm on the top view at the moment, so if I go over to the view cube and click on something like southwest isometric, you'll now see that they look a bit weird. The best one to look at is something like the left hand view. And there you can see that those two rectangles are a different elevation, a different Z value. There's the Z axis on the UCS there. So this one is now 500 above the lower one. So the lower one is Z equals zero, the higher one now has an elevation of 500, which means any Z values on that rectangle are at 500. Now what I'm going to do is do an orbit. You hold down the shift key, hold down the mouse wheel, and just move the mouse slightly. Can you see, they are obviously at different elevations when you rotate that in an orbit. Now the other thing that's really cool here though is I can still use my object snaps to join these two rectangles together to make in essence a 3D shape. It'll be 3D geometry, not a 3D solid in this case though. But what I can do is I can use the draw panel here on the home tab on the ribbon, go to my line command like so, and I'll snap to that endpoint there. Left click. I can now come up to that end point there. Left click. Press enter to finish. And I've now drawn a line from one elevation to the other. Let's repeat that. Let's do that line command for each corner. So I'm going to come off of this corner and go to the corresponding corner up here like so. Enter to finish, right click. I can repeat line using the shortcut menu. And I'm going to do this making sure that each corresponding corner is joined by a line. And then last but not least, I'll do this corner here on the lower rectangle to the corresponding corner on the upper rectangle. And then I'll press enter to finish. Now, because I've drawn those lines, if I now do an orbit, hold down the shift key, hold down the mouse wheel. Can you see we have what looks like a 3D shape like so. Looks a bit weird on the eyes because it's kind of a parallelogram kind of thing. But here's the clever bit. If I select one of these lines like that, and then I right click and go to properties now, the lines you'll notice have different values for their coordinates in the geometry. So I noticed the start point of the line started at a Z value of zero. The end point of the line goes to a Z value of 500. So that's where I'm going from. Z equals zero down here to Z equals 500 up here. And that's what that elevation does. So things like close polylines, regions, and so on, you can bring those up or down using a positive or negative elevation value. So that's how elevation works in AutoCAD when you're 3D modeling. Just close the properties palette now and hit escape a couple of times, and you can save this particular drawing if you want to.

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