First drawing

In this tutorial you create a drawing, draw a rectangle with lines and a circle, save it as DWG, close it and open it again. It takes about five minutes.

1. A new drawing

On start, LinceCAD shows an empty drawing. To start another one at any time, enter NEW, click New on the Quick Access toolbar or press Ctrl+N. Each open drawing has its own tab above the drawing area.

New drawings are metric: one drawing unit is one millimetre. Coordinates are typed on the command line, at the bottom, where Command: appears.

2. Drawing some lines

Enter LINE (or L) and press Enter.

Specify first point:

Type 0,0 and press Enter: this is the coordinate origin.

Specify next point or [Undo]:

Type 100,0 and Enter: the first segment is drawn, 100 mm to the right.
Type @0,60 and Enter. The @ means a relative coordinate: 60 mm up from the last point.

Specify next point or [Close/Undo]:

Type @-100,0 and Enter: 100 mm to the left.
Type C (Close) and Enter: the line goes back to the first point and the command ends.

If you get a point wrong, type U (Undo) without leaving the command. After the command has finished, Ctrl+Z undoes the whole command.

3. Drawing a circle

Enter CIRCLE (or C) and Enter.

Specify center point for circle or [3P/2P/Ttr (tan tan radius)]:

Type 50,30 and Enter: the centre of the rectangle.

Specify radius of circle or [Diameter]:

Type 20 and Enter.

To see the whole drawing on screen, double-click the mouse wheel or type Z, Enter, E (Extents) and Enter. The wheel zooms in and out; pressed and dragged, it pans the view.

4. Saving as DWG

Enter SAVEAS or press Ctrl+Shift+S.
In the dialog box, choose the folder, type the name primero and click Save.

The status bar confirms the file and the version. SAVEAS typed on the command line saves in the DWG 2018 format, the one used by AutoCAD 2018 to 2027. For another version, open the LinceCAD menu (top left), hover over Save As and choose from the list: DWG 2018, 2013, 2010, 2007, 2004 or 2000, or DXF 2018 or 2000. Choose an older version when the recipient has an old program.

From then on, QSAVE (Ctrl+S) saves to the same file and in the same version, without asking.

5. Closing and opening again

Enter CLOSE (or use Close in the LinceCAD menu). If there are unsaved changes, the program asks whether to save them.
Enter OPEN or press Ctrl+O, find primero.dwg and click Open. You can also drag the file from Explorer onto the program window.

The drawing opens in its own tab, as it was saved. LinceCAD opens DWG files from release R14 up to the current one and DXF files from R12 on; large drawings are read in the background, with a progress bar.

Notes

Press Esc to cancel a command halfway, and Enter (or Space) on the empty command line to repeat the last one.
The program saves an automatic copy of the drawing every so often; if it closes unexpectedly, opening the file again warns that there is a more recent copy.