Nancy Fulton has trained thousands of AutoCAD and 3DSMAX users. You can find her training blogs online at http://learn-autocad.blogspot.com and http://3dsmaxtraining.blogspot.com as well as at www.complete-support.com.
More than ninety percent of all design and drafting jobs in today's market require the use of some computer aided design application. In some cases that application is Autodesk Inventor or Solidworks, but most commonly it is AutoCAD. With a greater than 70% market share, AutoCAD is probably the best application a prospective job hunter can learn. On the other hand, courses in the software can cost several hundred dollars. For someone out of work, that investment can be hard to find.
There are several ways you can get the free training you need.
- Download a free trial of the application from the Autodesk website. You will find, after you install the application, that there are some free tutorials provided with it. These tutorials rarely cover all the skills you need, but they provided a good foundation for additional training.
- If you have a high school or college student in the house, you may not be aware that they can purchase AutoCAD at a very substantial discount, or that they can download Autodesk applications from the Autodesk Student site at no charge. The student versions of AutoCAD often come with more than the usual ration of training materials.
- Use Google to search the internet for terms like "free AutoCAD tutorials" or "need free AutoCAD training". You will find a number of links pop up with lessons for every version of the application.
- If you really want to have face to face instruction, you may that your local Autodesk User Group has free lessons and seminars. There are thousands of these groups across the United States and around the world.
Learning how to use AutoCAD doesn't take long. A motivated learner can pick up the application in under 40 hours. Start with drawing and editing commands, then learn how to create scaled drawings, then work on dimensions. Create a few sample drawings within your discipline to practice your skills. Before long you will be ready to start working with AutoCAD professionally.
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