Getting started
Drawing your first line, and the handful of things an experienced drafter needs to know before the muscle memory takes over.
Your first drawing#
Draft opens on model space: an infinite, unitless 1:1 world where the design happens. Paper comes later, on a layout sheet.
1. Draw a line. Type L and press Enter (or Space — Space is Enter at a command prompt). Draft prompts Specify first point. Click once, move, click again. Press Enter to finish.
2. Draw one that measures something. Start L again, click a start point, then type @10<45 and press Enter. That is 10 units at 45°. Type 24 with Ortho on and you get 24 units along the locked direction. Coordinate entry and picking are interchangeable at every point prompt — see Precision drafting.
3. Snap to what you drew. Press F3 to make sure object snap is on, then start another line and move the cursor near an existing endpoint. The cursor magnetizes, a square marker appears, and the point the command receives is the exact endpoint — never the raw cursor position.
4. Modify it. Select the line by clicking it, then type CO for COPY, or O for OFFSET, or TR for TRIM. Draft accepts both orders: select first then run a command (noun-verb), or run the command and let it ask for a selection (verb-noun).
5. Undo. Ctrl+Z, or type U. One step per command.
The ten-minute orientation#
If you have drafted before, these are the things worth knowing before you stop reading.
The command line is the primary input. Every printable keystroke on the canvas is captured into the command line, where it is matched against command names and aliases. L starts LINE because l is LINE's alias, not because a key handler fires. That is what lets L, LINE, 10,5, @10<45 and a keyword letter all arrive through one input path.
Bare letters are therefore not hotkeys. The only keys bound directly are the ones that must not reach the command line: modifier chords, the function keys, Esc and Delete, and the mouse.
Space is Enter. At a command prompt, Space repeats the last command; inside a prompt it accepts.
Esc cancels, then deselects. One press ends the running command. A second clears the selection.
Right-click is contextual. Its behaviour depends on what is happening — see Command reference.
Settings are JSON. There is no .pgp and no .cuix. Bindings, aliases, ribbon layout and themes are data, which is why a workspace profile is a config file rather than a code change. See Settings & customization.
The function keys#
These are inherited unchanged, because this is exactly where muscle memory lives.
| Key | Toggles |
|---|---|
| F1 | Help |
| F2 | Expanded command history window |
| F3 | Object snap (OSNAP) |
| F5 | Isoplane — cycles Left → Top → Right → Off |
| F6 | Dynamic UCS |
| F7 | Grid display |
| F8 | Ortho |
| F9 | Grid snap |
| F10 | Polar tracking |
| F11 | Object snap tracking |
| F12 | Dynamic input |
All of them are remappable. These are only the shipped defaults.
Saving and opening#
Drawings save as .amdr, Draft's native format. It is designed so that opening a file does not require reading all of it — the preview image, the title block metadata and the external-reference list are all retrievable cheaply — and so that a file written by a newer build opens in an older one without corrupting what the older build does not understand.
To exchange with other tools, use DXF (read and write) or DWG (read, through an external converter). See Files & interoperability.